Contemporary vs Traditional "worship"

Pretty soon members of the congregation will begin getting drunk in the spirit and falling into the isle ways and sermons will be interrupted with a non-stop laughter and dog barking.......

 

....because that is the next logical step when you are someone outside of the situation with little knowledge other than they changed the style of music......

 

I was just answering the question to the best of my ability...

 

Probably will depend some on whether it was a leadership decision or a congregational decision. If the former I would look for membership decline for a time till the fun music starts bringin them in.

Of all the churches I witnessed doing the shift the reaction/result was from drastic decline of numbers to not much problem, depends on the area and the people involved (age heavily involved with the people end of it).

Maybe the church should define for the congregation why they felt this change was necessary.

 

it sounds more like you were venting.

 

No, I wasn't venting, just my humble attempt at humor. Sorry if it failed to translate.

 

Our previous church has had praise and worship for the last 10 years, hasn't happened there either.

 

When ou previous church began with praise and worship 10 years we lost no one because of it. And most were senior citizens, so age didn't make a difference.

 

Soooo much hinges on leadership.

Heavy-handed, "you've been doing it wrong, now we'll get it right" kind of approaches don't work. Neither does pitting one "group" against another.

I agree w/excentric. An important question is, "Why are we doing it?"

There's room for old AND new at our church, and both our "contemporary" (whatever that means) AND "traditional" (whatever that means) services are growing, and God is moving.

 

The awswer is in the question.

 

So why? is a very good question. In fact, it is the key question.

Here are some possible answers:

We want to make worship "fun," so we'll incorporate some "fun" music.
We want to make worship "fun," so we can attract more teenagers.

We want to make worship "relevant," because we already have the young 'uns and that's the kind of music they like.

We want to make our services "exciting," and boy do drums and hot guitars do the trick.

We want to make the worship easier, because the traditional hymns come from hymnbooks, which some older folks still use, and make it hard to wave both hands in the air and sway back and forth, and besides the praise choruses are so simple they can be memorized or read off the big screen, so you don't need a hymnbook anyway.

We want to make our worship worshipful, with the primary focus on God himself, with sense of awe, and an attitude of adoration of the Savior. Going contemporary will help us meet that goal.

We want to accommodate the traditional music culture of our older members, while doing the same for our younger members' tastes. So we'll divide our people, split them up to make them all happy. They'll rarely ever worship together again as one body, but it's a necessary tradeoff.

We're going contemporary because that's all our worship leader knows. He wouldn't recognize "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" if it slapped him in the face.

We can double our attendance, even if it runs off the old folks.


No doubt you detected some sarcasm here from someone who hates CCM. I don't. I even like some of it. I'm more schooled in the traditional, and that's what I like.

The conclusion is that if you're doing it to grow your church, that's not good enough. If you're going to tick off your older members, what in the world are you thinking? If you truly intend for CCM to enhance and deepen the worship, and think it will, go for it. It doesn't need to be fun; it just needs to be real.

 

That sums up my feelings...

If the move comes from within the congregation it works better than top down...

Hey, afterall, we are Baptists~

 

No one ever wins in worship wars...

maybe the only question is: if you removed all of the musical aspects of worship...all the staging aspects...all of the people leading...what would your church do when the pastor calls them to worship?

 

I am not a fan of contemporary services if they include movie screens to project hymns. I like the old hymn books. I also disdain drums.

Having said that, balance is the key to functionality. There is no reason why we can't give and take in one service aspects of both.

I remember the day when in Canada Baptist preachers wore tails in the pulpit. It graduated to a suit coat, waist coat and striped trousers (mourning dress). Eventually this changed to just suit and tie......So, change is inevitable even as society changes.

Cheers,

Jim

 

When we start planning our worship services with the thought of "what people want", then our corporate worship has become man centered. Instead, our primary thought should be what pleases the Lord.
Honestly, I hate it when a church has to have two or even three (as my own does) different musically styled services in order to keep everyone happy. I'm afraid that doing so, tells the world that what binds us is our musical preferences, rather than the gospel. I think that church members need to learn to get along and be impacted by the gospel enough where it is o.k. to worship and actually sing together songs about the gospel, despite the style. Honestly, for me, if the song accurately displays the glories of the cross and the majesty of our God, I really don't care if it's an old hymn from the 1500's or the newest Chris Tomiln song.

 

And we should all keep in mind...there's a huge difference between "designing" worship services to "keep people happy" and offering our corporate worship in adoration of our Lord. For our church, that is done several times per Sunday, in several different ways. But God is the object, not man.

Well said.