This short article goes hand in hand with the one below by Sally Morgenthaler. Worship leaders/pastors/planners take heed!
This morning I was reading Next Wave, an e-zine on which there's a fascinating article by Sally Morgenthaler regarding Worship as Evangelism. Long story short, it looks like the champion of worship evangelism (she literally wrote the book) is now leaving that cause due to the overwhelming evidence (Barna, etc.) that people aren't being saved at worship events; that the greater energy and effort has to happen after the worship service ends. "Unsaved" people are just not going to church anymore. SM says, For all the money, time, and effort we've spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.
Morgenthaler left this post on her website when she shut it down:
"Sacramentis [her website] has been a pioneer site on worship and culture for seven years. From the beginning, it has been a gathering spot for the most helpful worship ideas and resources we could find. Sacramentis has also been a place where church leaders could go deeper into what classic Christian worship is and does, and where they could re-imagine worship for communities where churchgoing is no longer the norm. But as culture has become incessantly more spiritual and adamantly less religious, we at Sacramentis have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building. Worship must finally become, as Paul reminds us, more life than event (Romans 12:1-2). To this end, we will be focusing on the radically different kind of leadership practices necessary to transform our congregations from destinations to conversations, from services to service, and from organizations to organisms."
And she did all this mostly because, as an unchurched journalist wrote in 2005,
"The [worship team] was young and pretty, dressed in the kind of quality-cotton-punk clothing one buys at the Gap. 'Lift up your hands, open the door,' crooned the lead singer, an inoffensive tenor. Male singers at [this] and other megachurches are almost always tenors, their voices clean and indistinguishable, R&B-inflected one moment, New Country the next, with a little bit of early '90s grunge at the beginning and the end.
"They sound like they're singing in beer commercials, and perhaps this is not coincidental. The worship style is a kind of musical correlate to (their pastor's) free market theology: designed for total accessibility, with the illusion of choice between strikingly similar brands. (He prefers the term flavors, and often uses Baskin-Robbins as a metaphor when explaining his views.) The drummers all stick to soft cymbals and beats anyone can handle; the guitarists deploy effects like artillery but condense them, so the highs and lows never stretch too wide. Lyrics tend to be rhythmic and pronunciation perfect, the better to sing along with when the words are projected onto movie screens. Breathy or wailing, vocalists drench their lines with emotion, but only within strict confines. There are no sad songs in a megachurch, and there are no angry songs. There are songs about desperation, but none about despair; songs convey longing only if it has already been fulfilled."
A bitter pill.
I took my Worship Team to Seattle a few weeks ago to hear Mark Driscoll, Harold Best, and Tim Smith speak at Mars Hill Church, where Driscoll pastors what seems to be mostly non-Christians. Seattle is considered to be one the most un-Christian cities in America. Unlike Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee, the states I've lived during my 34-year tenure on earth, Seattle, WA doesn't have churches at every corner, crosses rising above the trees, or marquees that say "Sign broken, message inside".
The article says,
On any given Sunday at Mars Hill, it's possible that a visiting fire marshal will get saved. But it's just as likely that a guest will flip him off before walking out.
Mark is on a mission. A lot of people don't really like him, or his style, or just think his church's music is too loud. But from the looks of it, people who don't like religious people like going to Mark's church, which sounds a lot like the way it was with Jesus.
Anyway, give the article and some of the links above a visit.
-w
There's a fairly compelling testimony/argument for the existence of God, written by Marilyn Adamson, at www.everystudent.com.
Click here to listen to it.
Click here to read it.
Click here to download a PDF of it.
(It's about 17 minutes long.)
My friend Bill Taylor, Global Ambassador for World Evangelical Alliance, pleasantly surprised me Sunday morning when he showed up at church to worship with us. After the service he told me about an exciting thing that his son, David, will be doing in Austin, TX. (David has a cool blog too; almost cooler than mine!)
In early April next year, David will host a Transforming Culture symposium, at which some phenomenal people will be the plenary speakers addressing some serious questions (my favorite of which is "The Future: What is a vision of the evangelical church in the year 2058?", which will be given Jeremy Begbie, whose new book I talked about recently).
Other speakers include Eugene Peterson, John Witvlet, Andy Crouch & others.
Hope to see you there!
After reading much of Dawkin's "The God Delusion", I was surprised at the rather genteel way Dawkins handled this debate. The uncut video is an hour and 10 minutes, and worth the time to watch. As far as a "winner" goes, this debate has been going on for millennia. And no one has prooved God yet. However, in this debate, I find McGrath's arguments compelling. Maybe it's his demeanor, or his accent. It just sounds intelligent. Dawkins also has some "excellent" questions, as McGrath often says. At any rate, when talking about the cross of Christ, McGrath fails to mention anything about the substitutionary death of Christ; that the wrath of God was poured out on Christ. Dawkins was left feeling that McGrath was talking about the cross as an example for Christians or something. He could have done better than that, I think.
Anyway, here it is:
Check out this interesting (and alarming) entry at Albert Mohler's Blog.
The future isn't far off. That sounds stupid, and idiotically self-evident, but every now and then certain developments in our world make the future seem to happen quicker. The one I'm talking about in this instance is the Virgin Galactic Commercial "Spaceport". By 2010 you'll be able (if you have $200,000) to get a seat on a ride into space. Amazing.
Check this out. (But print it first.)
Music in the Bible and Music on the Radio: A Biblical Theology of Music Applied to the Contemporary Music Styles Debate
I love Jeremy Begbie's mind. And I'll definitely buy his upcoming book Music in God's World (click to read excerpt).
Ron Mann has a helpful newsletter that comes out monthly. I subscribe to it, and highly recommend it. This month's is particularly helpful regarding the last Sunday of the month, AKA, Reformation Sunday. Check it out here
Here's a video from Brian, giving some background to Holy God. We're doing this song this weekend.
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