Battle

A battle is raging in my church. It's a fight that's been going on as long as I can remember. The body of believers I'm a part of now is the body I spent the first 18 years of life growing up in. The fight quietens at times and roars at other times. Right now, it's roaring. It breaks my heart. It's always broken my heart.

What is it that professing believers in Christ can rant and rave over, turn beet red about, fire staff over, and finally run away to a different church??? Music. Too fast, too slow, too repetitive, too old, too young, too different, too loud, too boring, in the hymn book, not in the hymn book...all reasons to divide a church, right???!

So far the solution proposed is to try and satisfy everyone. Usually that works to satisfy no one, right?

As I was praying about this crisis Monday night with a group of ladies I sing with and minister with, I threw out the proposal to just throw the music out for a while and pray through scripture. Seems like that's been done before, hmm. "I'm coming back to the heart of Worship". Gasps and silence was the response I received.

To the silence, I shared my heart. It's not the music that's the problem. It's the hearts of the people. Why throw out the music and focus on prayer and scripture? Because worship is a priveledge. A priveledge none of us deserve, but one God freely gave us when He gave us His son for our salvation. Music is the part that feels good, to me anyway. Many times I've been full of selfish sin, but if the music was just how I liked it, I could feel like I was worshipping. I think that's the problem at my church. Lots of hearts are full of sin. And when the music style isn't exactly what they have an emotional attachment to, they don't feel like they are worshipping...because they aren't. So we blame the music director, or the band leader, or the singer, or the sound guy...everyone but ourselves.

To the proposed solution of satisfying everyone...I say that's letting us all off too easy. No one wants to cause further turmoil by doing something drastic. Wow. Drastic is where we are, people. We've been spoon feeding for too long. It's time to take away the crutches, in this case music, and bring people to God's word through prayer.

The ladies were definitely shocked, but as they considered it, they timidly thought it might be the answer. I don't know if totally throwing music out for a time is the answer for our group of believers. We might not be mature enough for that. I don't know. What I do know is that there is never a reason not to seek out a solution through prayer and the Word.

I want to stand up before the congregation Sunday and scream at them. Don't you know that there are millions around the world who can't sing music of any style in a beautiful building like this because they could be killed for it!! Don't you know that there are millions dying around the world who have never worshipped with any style of music because they've never heard the truth of the gift God offers to save their souls!!

I'm a bit passionate about this. :-) But seriously, my soul is aching, literally about to burst, with wanting to draw my beloved brothers and sisters back to the heart of worship. When I think of talking with some of the advocates of the music fight, I get so emotional I end up blubbering more than talking. Maybe by airing out my frustrations and passions to my faithful blogger friends it can be kind of a catharsis that will help me with my grief for my dying church and enable me to rationally reach out to the members.

Please pray for my church and its leaders. And, I know that our little church isn't the only one experiencing this in America. Pray for the western church.