Easter was yesterday. I was a little disappointed in it, honestly. Our church didn’t really do anything special, and even the music was only a bit Easter-themed. In many ways, it seemed like just another Sunday for us, with no real recognition of what ought to be the most holy day of the year. We didn’t even take communion.
I’ve written a bit here about being saddened by our church. We’re a small-town Oklahoma church, and a bit behind the times. For example, we’ve managed to put off the worship wars until last year. Now, we’re fully in the throes of them. We’ve had a very active music program at church; when I started attending, back in 1995 or so, the choir put on both a Christmas and Easter musical or cantata every year, as well as singing every Sunday, with a special song every 3-4 weeks. There was also an active children’s choir. Sunday morning would involve several hymns, a special and an offertory. Being a small country church, our offertory sometimes featured harmonica or fingerpicked guitar; and, because there was also a very active school band, frequently one or more of the band members would play. I remember flutes and clarinets, and occasionally a saxophone or trumpet.
A few years later, we added in an orchestra, such as it was. With so many people who were either currently in band or who had been (many of the adults had played during their school days) it was easy enough to do. We got orchestration for the hymnal and a couple of books of praise choruses arranged for band. We had piano, organ, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, tuba, trombone, French horn, drums, and keyboards. It sounded great, and many of the older people commented that for the first time in many years, they could hear the hymn music. (Three trumpets playing melody will do that for you.) We played about the same mix of music as before, mostly hymns with some choruses added in. It seemed as though we would bypass the worship wars. At a time when many churches were splitting over whether to sing hymns or have a rockin’ band in worship, we seemed to have the best of both worlds.
Sadly, it wasn’t the case.
We had several people, mostly from Pentecostal backgrounds, who were unhappy with the music. They wanted all praise choruses, all the time. They wanted to raise their hands during worship and felt uncomfortable doing so. They felt that the music we had didn’t appeal to kids enough, specifically their kids. (The fact that their kids showed no interest in anything spiritual at all was clearly the fault of the music.) And they began to agitate for a change. More choruses. More freedom to raise hands. And these were not bad things, per se. Raising hands in worship is pretty clearly enjoined in Scripture, and I do think that (within the limits of Scripture and the regulative principle) people should be free to express their worship with their bodies. We are creatures of flesh and blood, and it is unnatural to expect that we would not show our worship physically, by raising hands, by kneeling, by bowing our heads. Some people got quite offended about this, however, and proclaimed that we were becoming Pentecostal, that soon we’d be leaping pews and falling down laughing, and who knew where that might lead? It might come to speaking in tongues, healing services or even dancing.
Very quickly, the two camps began to spiritualize their preferences. (And preferences were, and are, what they are, despite protestations to the contrary.) The hymnal group argued that the new songs “weren’t Christian” (interesting, since our music leader shows a strong preference among new choruses for those which are drawn directly from Scripture), or weren’t traditional enough, or were simply Pentecostal and hence evil. It certainly wasn’t just that they liked a different style of music; no, the praise and worship stuff was simply wrong, and the quicker we got back to the hymns the better. Of course, the P&W fanatics did exactly the same, only in reverse. They claimed that only if we started doing all P&W music could we have any church growth, because that’s what would draw people in, and keep them there. In fact, any worship that wasn’t done to the strains of the latest P&W hit was simply false worship and didn’t count. Those people who didn’t jump on board were told that they were holding back the work of the Lord, that if they would just sit down and shut up, then we’d see what God can do. I still recall our pastor telling us how he’d had a revelation that we needed to do things differently in order to attract people to our church (“differently” apparently being equal to “throw out all hymns and put a band on stage”). He told us that when he’d told his wife this (his wife played in the orchestra), she asked him “So, does this mean we just tell all the people in the orchestra ‘thanks, now shut up?’” He couldn’t come up with an answer for that, because, of course, it was exactly what he meant, so he hemmed and hawed a bit and then moved on. He had just gotten back from a trip and was very tired, or I think he wouldn’t have told that particular anecdote.
So we immediately went to all P&W, all the time, and the congregation exploded. We went from around 200 to almost 500 in the morning service immediately. No, wait, that wasn’t what happened at all. Instead, we began to see people leave the church, as the music they loved was replaced with shallow pop drivel. The pastor left a few months later, after a conflict with some other church members. (A bad situation for all; he was a good pastor and a good man, although he had tendencies towards arrogance and high-handedness. This set some other members to trying to undermine him behind his back, which led him to resign.)
The music situation is still bad, and we’re still without a pastor. We have an interim which is a good thing, and he preached a good Easter message. (It wasn’t one of his best messages, though.) In the meantime, both sides of the worship debate are still busy being selfish, still certain that everyone needs to do what they like or else get out. This kind of divisiveness strikes at the heart of the church; it’s easy to see that we don’t attract people. Not, I think, because of our music, but because we are far too busy sniping at one another to do anything meaningful for God. His love DOES NOT shine through us. His grace is nowhere to be seen much of the time. On Easter Sunday, we had far too much available seating. In our church, at least, His body is still broken.
Father, forgive us for our selfishness
Help us to love each other
To hold each other up as more important
To set aside our own desires
And to truly love You.
