Vanessa

Thanks for sharing.

Maybe this is just our excuse because we are turning into the old
fogies that we complained about when we were younger. I thought I was
already very accepting but when they injected that Hip-hop music I was
so angry for “disrupting” my worship that I couldn’t focus anymore.
Indeed, our experience with music is so varied, we need to be more aware
of other people’s intent and appreciation. After all, it isn’t about us.
It’s about Him.

TGIF!

Thanks for your sharing today. At times I feel like the church is trying to be more like Hollywood than the church and so we want to show how free we are to be as much like “them” but always careful not to go “over the line.” I agree with your assessment of the hip-hop kind of music today and once in a while I long for a service of awe inspiring experience with God such as the Psalmist who said “the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him.”

Sometime back, however, I was in a worship service where a large group of young people (college age) were enjoying the rock and roll style of music in the service and while it did not appeal to me, I noted that they were in church and enjoying the experience. I had to ask myself if I was being too selfish with what I wanted rather than what was reaching the younger generation. One of the songs was a total turn off to me (“Stamp on Satan” during the singing of which we were all told to jump up and down) and I did not participate with it. Occasionally I see goofy things going on in church and I have to ask if it has integrity and a proper sense of who we are and in whose presence we are celebrating and worshiping.

You raise some good points that often reflect the challenge of getting all of God’s people under the same roof worshiping the same God. When we went more contemporary at our old church years ago, a dear older woman told me that what we were singing was not her favorite kind of music, but because it made the young people feel welcome and they were with us in the church that it was okay with her. I gave her a hug for her gracious attitude and tried to learn from it myself. Everything in church cannot be just the way I like it, but it surely must have a good focus on who God is and how we are to reverence God even though the style is not my preference. We go to a church where the preaching is superb and so is the music, but it is not my kind of music and I try to focus on the words in it and less on how they are delivered.

Bless you for your thoughtful words.

Lee

Great approach and clever writing!