Who's style is it anyway?

So the WLA arts team had a meeting on Saturday. We watched a great video from Francis Chan which I wanted to show to launch us into the new year thinking about how we can better reach our mandate of creating a church of joyful worshippers. Francis reminded us that although it's sin not to do the best we can for God there is more...effort is not enough. The point for us...let's pursue God first. Let's get on our face and recognize that it's only God who changes people and if we want a church full of joyful worshippers we need to seek God to do that. It's not our job to do it.

Close to the end of the meeting we got in a discussion about worship and style. I am not surprised by this as it seems to be the focus of most of the problems encountered by worship ministries. Always has been. In the 80s the discussion was do we move from hymns with piano and organ to a full time worship band with modern music. These days it usually has less to do with if we'll do modern music but much new stuff we do compared to the favorites of yester-year. This is a loaded question and one I think every church answers differently. As I said on Saturday I really think these conversations are missing the point a bit as I feel our selection of songs should be topically (lyrically) driven but the question does get asked and should get addressed. I think there are two things at play here - what's the stance and desired/believed mission of your church and what are you equipped to do. So for the sake of fleshing this out here is how I'd answer the question for us, today, at WLA.

I know that WLA is very committed to the entire body of believers. Young and old are equally valued and important to us. In order to facilitate worship for the whole body of believers every church who tries to do this makes compromises. Some churches choose to run multiple service or multiple sites/venues. This allows them to give people more of what they want. That philosophy can work. This is not the choice we've made up to this point. These days we're choosing to try and do services that makes compromises on both sides and hopefully creates a worship environment that gives everyone a similar opportunity to worship. It's true...we do music that is more modern than traditional. However, we make our best effort to put music from many eras into our sets - new music, older choruses and hymns. However, we also choose to tone down some of the newer music both in volume and edginess in order to be as broad in appeal as we can. I think it's important to remember both sides are making compromises every week. Maybe neither side is ever completely happy...but that's ok. People do need to always remember that worship is not about them...it's about the body worshipping God. It's God's honor we're primarily concerned about. Fortunately there is no biblically mandated worship music style that we need to adhere to. As long an our hearts are right and our theology is in check then God can be honored.

The second part is to do the best we can with what we have. Some of this is staff oriented and much of it is volunteer oriented. For instance, these days we don't have any hymn specialists active on the team nor am I aware of any who want to be active. To do an all hymns service on a regular basis we'd need people like this to pull it off well. Also, we don't have enough of the kind of musician necessary to do an all Hillsong United style service, just for instance. We have people how can, for a short time, do either of these things well enough to make it through a song or two but not to carry the weight long term. God has blessed us with a team of people who have a breath of talents,styles and abilities and as we select our music for worship and put together teams we keep this in mind. Fortunately it happens to support the view of worship the church wants to have for the time being.

I'd be daft in a post like this not to admit that the people who are selecting the music don't have influence in this. And yes it's true that 3 of the 4 worship leaders and right around the 30 mark and so fall into the younger half of our church. This is intentional as WLA is doing our best to rejuvenate the church and grow up new leaders. We are doing our best though to make sure these leaders are choosing from a large, broad list of songs. It's important to remember that if the list of leaders were a bit older we'd lean a bit more to the older side and thus the younger people in the church would be more dissatisfied than they are now.

So where does that leave us? I think it leaves us to admit that no one's philosophy will ever make everyone happy. Also, we must remember that God's glory is the ultimate goal here. Division in the body over music style does not achieve that goal. We're all making compromises from our personal desires and that's the way the body should be working together. As far as I'm concerned and my job is concerned I'm committed to doing my best to create an environment where as many people as can be welcomed into worship are welcomed. If someone is ever feeling like they can't worship at WLA I'd warmly encourage them to give me a call, send me an email or walk into my office one day. I'd love to hear from them and see what of their wisdom can be fused with that of the rest of the body to create the kind of worship environment we're striving for...the kind where God is glorified and His style is paramount.

Sola Gloria Dei