Most churches would agree that any segregation arising from racial or economic bigotry runs contrary to the nature of the gospel and should not be tolerated. But there's another kind of segregation, perhaps more subtle, that many churches today have unapologetically embraced.
Following the lead of the advertising world, many churches and worship services target specific age groups to the exclusion of others. They forget that, according to the Bible, the church is an all-age community, and instead they organise themselves around distinctives dividing the generations: Busters, Boomers, Millennials, Generations X, Y, and Z. Many churches offer a traditional service for the tribe who prefer older music and a contemporary service for the tribe who prefer new music. The truth is, however, that if the only type of music you employ in a worship service is old, you inadvertently communicate that God was more active in the past than He is in the present. On the other hand, if the only type of music you employ in a worship service is new, you inadvertently communicate that God is more active in the present than He was in the past.
The only way to musically communicate God's timeless activity in the life of the church is to blend the best of the past with the best of the present. In other words, we must remember in our worship that while "contemporary only" people operate with their heads fixed frontwards, never looking over their shoulder at the stock from which they have come, and "traditional only" people operate with their heads on backwards, romanticising about the past and always wanting to go back, the Church, in contrast from both extremes, is called upon to be a people with swivelling heads: learning from the past, living in the present, and looking to the future. That's the only way to avoid in worship what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery".
- Tullian Tchividjian, We Are One
No comments:
Post a Comment