Christian music that crosses those imaginary lines in the sand.

[Le_Cracquere]

I probably did not make myself clear, I am sorry. My husband would rather be at a Taize Service or a Gregorian chant Mass or using the Hymnal with the oldies but goodies singing all 4 verses while I would rather be at a Contempory Service. I think what we need to remember is that a “one size fits all” is not always the truth especially when it comes to how we come to Jesus and give Him praise.

God Bless!

And to you! Believe it or not, I don’t believe that “one size fits all,” either. In the real world, though, I’m struck by how often attempts at introducing variety into worship simply end up as a different species of monotony and conformity, with a different direction.

Push one old ritual out the door (seeya, sign of the Cross!), and a new one climbs in the window (wave them hands!). Flush the Creeds/Confessions down the toilet, and a posted mission statement shoots out of the sink. The Imperium of the pipe organ segues to that of the Flying V with scarcely a blink. And when new developments in a church are as harmonious with the dominant culture as modern contemporary services are, introducing them is child’s play; it takes far more work and ingenuity to define their bounds, maintain them, and keep them from corroding away things that oughtn’t be corroded and can’t be recovered after a generation’s break in continuity. Is it so unwise to be suspicious of them?

 

[emeraldcoast]

And to you! Believe it or not, I don’t believe that “one size fits all,” either. In the real world, though, I’m struck by how often attempts at introducing variety into worship simply end up as a different species of monotony and conformity, with a different direction.

Push one old ritual out the door (seeya, sign of the Cross!), and a new one climbs in the window (wave them hands!). Flush the Creeds/Confessions down the toilet, and a posted mission statement shoots out of the sink. The Imperium of the pipe organ segues to that of the Flying V with scarcely a blink. And when new developments in a church are as harmonious with the dominant culture as modern contemporary services are, introducing them is child’s play; it takes far more work and ingenuity to define their bounds, maintain them, and keep them from corroding away things that oughtn’t be corroded and can’t be recovered after a generation’s break in continuity. Is it so unwise to be suspicious of them?

What Church do you belong too?

God Bless!

 

[Le_Cracquere]

What Church do you belong too?

God Bless!

Well, I was reared in a Pentecostal church, and my wife & I currently belong to one that styles itself “Evangelical Anglican.” It’s a formerly Episcopalian congregation that went independent over a decade ago, having reached its last straw long before the Gene Robinson debacle.

We’re in mid-relocation to a new city; my wife is trying to sell our old house in Atlanta, and continues to attend there, as do I when I’m in town. Here in S.C., I attend the local Catholic church, but my wife won’t hear of that, so I’m trying (fruitlessly, so far) to find a Protestant church we both can agree on.

 

[emeraldcoast]

Well, I was reared in a Pentecostal church, and my wife & I currently belong to one that styles itself “Evangelical Anglican.” It’s a formerly Episcopalian congregation that went independent over a decade ago, having reached its last straw long before the Gene Robinson debacle.

We’re in mid-relocation to a new city; my wife is trying to sell our old house in Atlanta, and continues to attend there, as do I when I’m in town. Here in S.C., I attend the local Catholic church, but my wife won’t hear of that, so I’m trying (fruitlessly, so far) to find a Protestant church we both can agree on.

Praying that your house is sold quickly in Atlanta and that you and your wife will be in one location soon. Finding a Church that a couple likes can sometimes be like finding a song on the car radio that everyone in the car agrees upon… I pray that you and your wife will find a new Church home that you both can grow together in Christ.

God Bless!

 

[rev_kevin]

In my experience, this is an unstable state of affairs that tends not to last. The “traditional worship service” becomes effectively ghettoized, and is the first thing to go if cuts are necessary.

Again, I can only draw on my personal experience here, but I find that the older music is preferred mainly by the older and the younger ends of the congregation’s age range. However, the demographic that generally runs the church still seems to suffer from some quasi-adolescent animus against what they take to be “your parents’ church music” (never mind that they’re the parents now, or even grandparents). They tend to dismiss the oldest members’ concerns, much as they bucked their opinions as teenagers

As for the younger members and children, the 50-ish leadership tends to think that their own musical tastes are something the young members couldn’t possibly fail to share, or at least have no business not sharing. It MUST be what the kids are demanding, whether or not anyone heard them demanding it. (“Regardless, the traditional stuff bored us as kids; ergo, anyone sensible must be bored by it; and so we’ll be blasted if the children will be overexposed to it, if exposed to it at all”).

Eventually, the traditionalist taint is limited to one or two token hymns thrown into the weekly “praise & worship” and accompanied by acoustic guitar. Finally, the last traces are quietly conked on the head with a shovel and buried in the churchyard (or would be if the “worship campus” had a churchyard).

It sounds like such a fair statement: “Where in the Bible does it say that the only type of religious music should be played with a piano or a organ?” But for such a liberal-minded question, it has a peculiar way of leading to the enforced gagging of such music.

See at my church we have the traditional service which is a mix of people from young to old and the same with the contemporary. The oldest that goes’s to the contempory ranges from the 80’s and 90’s. So not all are young that go to the contemporary service. The older ones tend to really like the music. Times change and we felt that we need to keep up with the times. So we kept both to please everyone in our church and so we won’t loose members. There was no demand to change one of our services to contempory. We had a church wide meeting and it was up to the members to change or not. Supersing some of the young members around 18-20 wanted to keep the services the way it was. both traditional and some of the oldre members wanted to change it, there ages around 50-90. Having both services is no problem and it works for us.