The defining feature modern people use to choose a church?
Music.
Churches increasingly define themselves by their Sunday
morning music. Seriously. Well, wait… let’s run a little self-diagnostic. Are
you in a hipster church? A rock Church? A traditional church? A Bible church? A
pop church? Chances are good (really good) that your church plays the kind of
music which would attract that kind of crowd.
Yeah, I doubt very much that you are singing a U2 song at
the Calvary chapel; just as I doubt that you are singing a Wesleyan hymn at
your hip church. Unless, of course, a local musician didn’t know it was a
Wesleyan hymn, and turned it into a smooth new tone with plenty of high
harmonies. Then you might sing it at hipster church.
Have we come that far? Is our music all about attracting the
right crowd?
Isn’t there something more that God might demand of our
corporate worship in song? After all, aren’t we primarily ministering to Him,
and not ourselves?
I have not seen, in all my years attending and leading in
churches of various shapes, sizes, and flavors, a topic that causes more controversy
and side-taking than which songs we sing on a Sunday morning.
I think we may have been asking ourselves the wrong thing the
whole time. We have been asking ourselves how worship was for us. We should
have been asking how worship was for God.
