When it comes to your worship style, are you contemporary or traditional? Or does it matter?
Recently there have been many changes at our church. We have a new pastor, who I was unsure of at first. Mostly because he seemed too plain, too safe, too ordinary. Now I know he was just biding his time until the time was right. He is a professor of the Old Testament at a nearby seminary and believes in preaching and teaching straight from the Bible. Not only that, but applying biblical teaching to our church. His goal is to strengthen the congregation so that we can go out into our community and spread the good news of Jesus Christ who died for our sins and promises us eternal life through belief in him. This has me excited. But like most people faced with change, sometimes I just want to dig my heels in and refuse to budge.
OK, it's not the bad yet, but there are other subtle changes that I'm not as excited about. For instance, the entire feel of the worship service. One of the things that drew me to this church was the traditional worship service (i.e. people dressed nicely, singing from the hymnal and a general reverence of God). Well, that and that they didn't start worship services until 11:00 a.m. Hey, I like to sleep in if I can.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't really care what people wear to church, but I've never thought it was appropriate to show up to church in shorts and tank top. You should at least consider church services to be a special enough occasion to put on clean, modest and presentable clothes. Even if all your clothes come from the thrift shop (which many of mine do) and you only own two pairs of pants, jeans and slacks - wear the slacks. That's all I'm saying.
And while I don't believe church services have to be a somber affair-our worship should be joyful after all-but I do think there should be some air of reverence. I never speak of God as my friend or my buddy because He is more than that. He is our heavenly Father and most of all He is HOLY.
At our church lately, the services are getting lighter, less restrictive, and perhaps more spontaneous. And there are so many new people now breathing life into our congregation. I am grateful for that, but I can't help being a little apprehensive too. Some of these new people are already teaching Sunday school classes or have become ministerial interns leading morning prayers. Some dress in ways that I don't consider to be modest or altogether appropriate. And we have begun singing some praise songs along with the hymns.
I'm not the type of person that believes in packaging Jesus' teachings for a specific segment of the population or a specific age group. Jesus' words should never be watered down to be more palatable. His work on the cross should be boldly proclaimed. This is why I'm leery of praise songs. They seem to focused on scripture, which is wonderful, but don't not teach a larger doctrine like the old hymns.
I guess, I just don't know what to think. I like some changes while others not so much, which all is to be expected. Tell me what you think about the different worship styles today. Is one better over another?
4 comments:
I'm a hymn girl at heart, but I've really only discovered many of them the last 10 to 12 years or so. You see, most of my church experience was of the boppy praise and worship type, and yet even before I discovered hymns, I didn't feel right about some of the lyrics. They were very "me" centred and not very reverent to God. I didn't mind the early scripture in song stuff, cause at least it was biblical.
I've always liked reading old church sermons, and books about Spurgeon, Luther, Whitfield Wesley etc and eventually I added a hymn book to my collection, even though I didn't know how the tunes went, I fell in love with them!
We stepped away a bit from the "modern" church scene, and fellowshipped in a Presbyterian Church for 2 years, as we were turned off from the increased worldliness, in the more modern style churches, and the watered down theology was really getting to us.
Now this is just the churches in our local area I'm talking about, so things might be different in other countries.
We really enjoyed the worship at the Presbyterian Church, they did half hymns, and only praise and worship they felt was theologically correct.
Now that my husband Pastors our little independant church we sing mainly hymns and only a few carefully chosen other songs.
Being Australian, we are very familiar with the Hillsong type Praise and worship. When they started out with Geoff Bullock writing most of the songs, they were great- but I only liked the slower stuff, these days I find them really hard to listen to. They come across a very worldly sounding, and mostly me-centred.
I can really touch God when I reach out to Him through an old hymn or two.
Claire
Thank you, Claire. I was hoping you would respond as I knew you really identified with the old hymns. I don't think your experience is all too different from what I've experienced here in the States. The modern mega churches seem to me to be a little too worldly, their message watered down and their worship services focussed too much on those who are worshipping rather than the One who is being worshipped. In my mind, if your church is so hip and happening that the world feels completely at ease there, everyone is likes it and no one is offended, then you're doing something wrong.
I'm with you on all of it.
We used to attend an up-and-coming megachurch but felt they were losing the right focus. The teens especially were dressed in immodest clothes. It seemed many people literally rolled out of bed and grabbed sweats when our worship should require at least a little sacrifice from us in the way of neat appearance.
When the church installed a Starbucks kiosk and did a sermon series entitled "The Gospel according to Starbucks" we were all done. (It wasn't quite as awful as the name implied, but was still pretty much worldly fluff). The church had reached the point that there was a smoke machine and swirling lights during the service.
(Funny aside- one Easter, the children were included in the service, i.e. no child care, and my 3 year old son kept asking me in alarmed tones, "Is the church on fire?!" I would tell him "no," to which he would reply, "Then WHY is there smoke?" WHY INDEED?!)
I am really enjoying the traditional hymn style worship of our conservative church now, but occasionally miss the emotionally moving praise music. I've got CDs and radio for that, though.
Dreamer, I see I'm way behind on your blog. I'll try to get caught up soon. We're under the weather here. Hope you all are well and had a great Thanksgiving.
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