Worship Wars
I can still remember the uproar when the youth song, “Pass It on” was first introduced to church worship services. I was thankful that our church was much more accepting of the new songs. I attended a church that had an amazing balance of music for being a small country church. We often sang Gaither choruses as well as traditional and classical hymns. Adding some more youth oriented choruses like “Pass it On” and “Kumbaya.”
Unfortunately churches today still struggle with what are often referred to as Worship Wars. Individuals with personal tastes, opinions and needs have trouble understanding that others have different tastes, opinions and needs. Is it possible to provide for the needs of all members in the same church? Probably not.
Worship is a very personal act that is performed for an audience of One, but we still must attempt to provide a style of worship that meets the needs of those who have joined with us to present their offering to God. Metropolitan churches have the luxury of planning worship for a targeted group. They can decide that their worship style will mirror the tastes of the Gen-Xers and will still be able to grow their church sufficiently to reach a congregation large enough to be self-supporting.
Moderate sized congregations can choose to offer multiple worship formats in order to accommodate a larger group of people. My church has two Traditional services and one Contemporary service on Sunday mornings and then one Modern to Emergent church style service on Sunday evenings for the Collegiate and Young Adults.
Small town churches have more difficulty doing this. They often do not have enough resources or a large enough base of people to pull from in order to have a single targeted worship service or multiple worship formats. This is one of the reasons that “Blended Worship” became popular. It was an attempt to provide multiple styles of worship in one service. After all, God did not direct us to use only Psalms in our worship, but to include hymns and spiritual songs as well.
I have served in churches which use the blended format for almost 14 years. From experience I can assure you that blended worship never completely satisfies anyone. Everybody is often left wanting more. I continually heard complaints from people who wanted more hymns or more Gospel music or more praise and worship choruses. And those who preferred the praise and worship songs usually desire that we do more of the newer songs they hear on their radios.
Style is not as important as quality. Perhaps Rick Warren says it best when he states that, “There is no style of music that God does not enjoy.” Lyrics, not styles, determine the nature of a song (sacred or secular). God created us to be creative beings. This is something He did for no other creation of His. Dolphins have yet to design and build things. Chimps do not have museums to display their art work, because there is none. Only humans were created in the image of God the creator and, therefore, we are expected to be creative.
The battle for quality brings about other problems that all churches face in the Worship War: trying to compete with the concert artists, Mega-church orchestras and choirs or worship teams and band, and trying to provide the quality that their members are used to hearing when they are plugged into their MP3 players all day. How can churches running less than 500 worshippers compete with something like this? It is very difficult.
In God’s eyes, quality is not based on ability, but rather on sacrifice. We could use the most professional musicians, artists, technicians, etc., but if our hearts are not in the right place, God will not accept our offerings of praise and adoration to Him. If our worship does not include sacrifice, it is worthless. Sacrificial worship will require hard work, dedicated involvement, creativity, etc. [The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise, Psalm 51:17]
Perhaps we would stop battling over worship styles if our focus was more on God and the needs of others and less on our own personal tastes, desires and needs. Attending a worship service that does not suit our personal tastes in order to minister to the needs of others is a sacrificial act that honors God. After all, corporate worship is only one way that we can experience God. If your church worship style does not meet your preference, try spending more time in personal worship with God. I worship best with Big Band Jazz music (like Denver and the Mile High Orchestra), but I do not know of any churches that use that exclusively.
Next post..."Defining Worship Styles"
Unfortunately churches today still struggle with what are often referred to as Worship Wars. Individuals with personal tastes, opinions and needs have trouble understanding that others have different tastes, opinions and needs. Is it possible to provide for the needs of all members in the same church? Probably not.
Worship is a very personal act that is performed for an audience of One, but we still must attempt to provide a style of worship that meets the needs of those who have joined with us to present their offering to God. Metropolitan churches have the luxury of planning worship for a targeted group. They can decide that their worship style will mirror the tastes of the Gen-Xers and will still be able to grow their church sufficiently to reach a congregation large enough to be self-supporting.
Moderate sized congregations can choose to offer multiple worship formats in order to accommodate a larger group of people. My church has two Traditional services and one Contemporary service on Sunday mornings and then one Modern to Emergent church style service on Sunday evenings for the Collegiate and Young Adults.
Small town churches have more difficulty doing this. They often do not have enough resources or a large enough base of people to pull from in order to have a single targeted worship service or multiple worship formats. This is one of the reasons that “Blended Worship” became popular. It was an attempt to provide multiple styles of worship in one service. After all, God did not direct us to use only Psalms in our worship, but to include hymns and spiritual songs as well.
I have served in churches which use the blended format for almost 14 years. From experience I can assure you that blended worship never completely satisfies anyone. Everybody is often left wanting more. I continually heard complaints from people who wanted more hymns or more Gospel music or more praise and worship choruses. And those who preferred the praise and worship songs usually desire that we do more of the newer songs they hear on their radios.
Style is not as important as quality. Perhaps Rick Warren says it best when he states that, “There is no style of music that God does not enjoy.” Lyrics, not styles, determine the nature of a song (sacred or secular). God created us to be creative beings. This is something He did for no other creation of His. Dolphins have yet to design and build things. Chimps do not have museums to display their art work, because there is none. Only humans were created in the image of God the creator and, therefore, we are expected to be creative.
The battle for quality brings about other problems that all churches face in the Worship War: trying to compete with the concert artists, Mega-church orchestras and choirs or worship teams and band, and trying to provide the quality that their members are used to hearing when they are plugged into their MP3 players all day. How can churches running less than 500 worshippers compete with something like this? It is very difficult.
In God’s eyes, quality is not based on ability, but rather on sacrifice. We could use the most professional musicians, artists, technicians, etc., but if our hearts are not in the right place, God will not accept our offerings of praise and adoration to Him. If our worship does not include sacrifice, it is worthless. Sacrificial worship will require hard work, dedicated involvement, creativity, etc. [The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise, Psalm 51:17]
Perhaps we would stop battling over worship styles if our focus was more on God and the needs of others and less on our own personal tastes, desires and needs. Attending a worship service that does not suit our personal tastes in order to minister to the needs of others is a sacrificial act that honors God. After all, corporate worship is only one way that we can experience God. If your church worship style does not meet your preference, try spending more time in personal worship with God. I worship best with Big Band Jazz music (like Denver and the Mile High Orchestra), but I do not know of any churches that use that exclusively.
Next post..."Defining Worship Styles"
Comments
I find it interesting that as we survey our folks twice a year to keep worship fresh, their favorite ten songs will undoubtedly be the most recent ones we've done. Never forget that THE PEOPLE IN THE SERVICE will make it what it is, regardless of what you think it should be.
Seasoned church members are the only ones with a set preference; over 85% of new Christians barely rate worship style as an issue... they want biblical preaching and a pastor and lay team that really cares for them, and they'll worship with you however you do it, so long as you do it well and sincerely.
Find your pastor's heart, make a decision to go one direction based on your resources, the church's vision and the worship leader's calling... and don't look back or you'll be stuck with pleasing everyone. As a smaller church, you'll benefit as you grow because this issue will be settled BEFORE A WAR EVER STARTS. If things change, you can change IN ONE DIRECTION, which is much easier to do as sytles change; they always change, and multiple styles require multiple updates --- don't go there.
That's the only position you wish to avoid at any cost, as we ought to obey God rather than men. Boy, is that ever hard as a worship leader! God bless.