Worship wars
I read 3 articles about worship music today. One person who's opinion I highly respect said that there's been no new music for a really long time, that it's just copies of copies of copies. He said there's a real void right now, but that he believes that God is about to birth a new sound.
Another part of the issue is that it kind of makes sense that your style of music will determine who you attract. I had one African American teacher at Fuller and he commented that he understood that people were really enjoying the Vineyard music that swept through the church, but he had a hard time with all those banjos! I thought that was so funny and I told my worship musician friend about it, but I really learned something from it. That is that music is cultural as well as generational. From my tiny view, it looks like mostly the church is not mulicultural, but most churches do have more than one generation or age bracket in it's meetings.
I think that we all struggle with wanting to hold onto the old and known, while being scared of the new and different. But there's always going to be a younger generation younger than us that God is drawing that wants it's worship music that it uses to connect with God to be in a style they can relate to. And, if we want to reach out to or be attractive to other cultures, I think that we need to have music that crosses cultures or have cultural flavor of the cultures that are coming to our meetings. These seem so obvious, yet I have not seen it happening from my little window. I know it must be in some places. Another thing I understand is that you might need musicians of the culture you want to emulate or sound like.
Another part of the issue is that it kind of makes sense that your style of music will determine who you attract. I had one African American teacher at Fuller and he commented that he understood that people were really enjoying the Vineyard music that swept through the church, but he had a hard time with all those banjos! I thought that was so funny and I told my worship musician friend about it, but I really learned something from it. That is that music is cultural as well as generational. From my tiny view, it looks like mostly the church is not mulicultural, but most churches do have more than one generation or age bracket in it's meetings.
I think that we all struggle with wanting to hold onto the old and known, while being scared of the new and different. But there's always going to be a younger generation younger than us that God is drawing that wants it's worship music that it uses to connect with God to be in a style they can relate to. And, if we want to reach out to or be attractive to other cultures, I think that we need to have music that crosses cultures or have cultural flavor of the cultures that are coming to our meetings. These seem so obvious, yet I have not seen it happening from my little window. I know it must be in some places. Another thing I understand is that you might need musicians of the culture you want to emulate or sound like.
Comments
Post a Comment