About That New Music

I want to start out with two letters written to the church regarding music.

"I am no music scholar, but I feel I know appropriate church music when I hear it.  Last Sunday's new music - if you can call it that - sounded like a sentimental love ballad one would expect to hear crooned in a public house.  If you insist on exposing us to rubbish like this - in God's house! - don't be surprised if many of the faithful look for a new place to worship.  The music we grew up with is all we need"

Here's another one:

"What is wrong with the inspiring music with which we grew up?  When I go to church, it is to worship God, not to be distracted with learning one of these new hymns.  Last Sunday's was particularly unnerving.  The tune was un-singable and the new harmonies were quite distorting.  Myself and the faithful few who remain will look for a different congregation if this debauchery of music continues in God's house"

Thee letters sound like something people could write today but they are in fact not from people in our current culture.  The first letter was written because they disagreed with the introduction of hymns in their church in 1764.  The second letter was written in 1890 as a response to the introduction of What a Friend We Have In Jesus.

While in college I took a course on the History of Christian Worship.  As I worked my way through the class I was floored at the division caused in churches every few generations over preferences in how to worship God.  This isn't just a modern phenomenon with our modern "worship wars".  In fact, if you were to take a journey all the way back to the first and second century you would witness major disagreement and division between Jewish and Greek Christians regarding worship.

Phillipians 2:1-11 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a] 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[b] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Every few generations a major shift happens in the church culture.  There is major change.  Churches who do not understand or refuse to understand the shift and change to be relevant to culture ultimately decline and die.  No one understood this more than the apostle Paul who wrote the passage we just read from.  In all his travels we see the method he approached different cultures with changed dramatically as he travelled around the roman empire.  Our church needs to learn from his example.  Our church needs to consider others before ourselves and do what it takes!

But there is one thing he never changed.  The message and truth of the gospel.  We can never change that either.  We need to understand and value the past while also moving forward and investing in the future.

We do need to realize there are thousands of people at home on Sunday mornings who don't have the saving knowledge of Jesus christ.  Thousands of people within just a few miles of our church who's eternal destination isn't with God.  We need to be relevant to them.  We need to not sit back and focus on the glory days or what we used to be.  What we used to be no long works within our culture.  We need new ways to reach the lost without compromising the message of hope offered by Jesus Christ.

We need to remember that Jesus Christ brought radical change to our world.  Change that many didn't agree with, change that brought out hostility, hate, and the worst in people.  God reconciled the world to Himself by the sacrifice of Jesus.  Jesus willingly laid down his life to change our connection with God forever.  Only through Jesus' death are we able to boldly and humbly come personally before the Father and offer up our worship, no matter the style.  Let's remember that this week.