Who Stole My Church?

A new book by Gordon McDonald confronts the generational differences that affect the church - ours is not the only one who will be going thru this change. Y'all have heard me say before that we have to be ready to turn over leadership to your generation. The elders will all be reading this book in preparation for our leadership retreat in Sep. One of the main sticking points is the differences in music style between the generations. You guys will not remember because you weren't born yet but the explosion of contemporary christian music started in the early 80's with Keith Green. When he was killed in the plane crash others stepped up to continue the musical renaissance. But we can't neglect the older generation and forget to use music that resonates with them so that they can enter into worship. Take a look at this video posted on crosswalk.com and see if we aren't all guilty of the same attitude when our particular style of music isn't being used: http://www.crosswalk.com/video/11576826/

Someone shared on our trip to Moody what goes on at his church and I hope we never get to that at CBC. He said that when praise songs are being sung the older folks just stand there with their arms crossed and scowling but when they sing the hymns they sing at the top of their lungs almost defiantly -- some act of worship isn't it?

Or how about when someone refuses to play or sing because they don't like a particular song. There are plenty of songs I don't care for but I don't refuse to sing them because the songwriter wrote it to worship God. Maybe we can re-arrange it to update it but to not sing because you don't like it isn't the thing to do either.

Maybe one Sunday the worship team should just stand up there and look at the congregation during worship like some in the congregation look at us every week. We really need to check our attitudes and as the video says figure out what worship is really about...