That sounds SOOOOO horrible, doesn’t? Especially when you think about what a mutt is. You may even have one in your home. A mixed breed. They automatically get looked down on. People see one running around the neighborhood and automatically think, “Oh that’s just a mutt. No one wants him.” Or at least it used to be that way. Now it seems that people are purposefully mix breeding dogs looking for combinations of dogs that will be the strongest or the prettiest. Now it’s not so bad to be a mixed breed evidently. Except for dog shows…they still want pure or nothing at all.

I feel like sometimes worship gets looked at the same way. Everyone has their opinions about how worship music is supposed to look or sound or feel. You either have to move forward and be progressive as the music is progressing. Or you can only be musically pure in the church if you stick with the standards and the traditional. That’s when music was at it’s best. I’m not saying that I’ve heard ANY of these things said before (hehehe), well maybe I am… but the truth of that matter is, people are rarely going for the mix. The question is why?

The mix is hard. The mix walks a fine, fine line that I believe worship/song leaders of the day don’t really want to walk. By the way, I am writing this as more of a discussion starter because I constantly deal with this myself. The whole concept of blended worship is one that continues to change, making it hard to get a grasp on. By everyday terms in the church, blended worship basically says “We don’t want to make anyone mad, and we want to keep everyone here happy so let’s do our best to make each week and safe, even mixture of music for everyone. We know we can’t continue to do hymns forever because we are losing our kids by the second. But we don’t want to make the elder people mad because they have helped build and sustain this church. And their name is on that pew…” So at best, we’re asking our worship leaders to be diplomats on a weekly basis. It’s not easy to feel led by the Spirit and be a diplomat. Let me tell you that from experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing the idea of a blended worship gathering. But a lot of times, my present situation included, a blended service is only a means to and end. Over a short period of time, people eventually move toward multiple services where those who want traditional hymns and things of that nature get to wake up earlier and come here the sleepy sounding, not as cool, energy-less “old people music. Then the later service is the hip, ultra cool, contemporary, “the only way the music could be this cool is if you wake up later and can drink coffee in the sanctuary” music. There is NO division in those two families of thought, right?

How do we treat the concept of a blended (or later named converged) worship experience from becoming ‘mutt worship’? I know from experience that doing this on a weekly basis can be terribly hard to maintain. I’m not saying that it is really easy to do either of the extremes. However, it seems to take an extra bit of planning because you have to keep everyone’s musical taste in your thoughts each week. You have to remember that Ms. Whatsherface thinks that new fancy song you played last week had too much of a beat and she felt like she was at a club. You also have to remember the group of young college kids that told you how lame that second song was and that if they have to hear that one one more time they may just lose it (with a couple OMG’s thrown in cause they sent this to you via text message). Then you think, “shouldn’t worship be about the one we’re worshiping anyway?” Hmmmm…

Well, I’m doing my best to continue writing my thoughts about worship styles and how I see them. In response, to my friend Charlie, I’m making sure to write about worship from a contemporary viewpoint today. I may take a break tomorrow and write about another on Monday. With all that being said…

So my answer to this question will be the same as the answer to the previous blog’s question…NO! I will step out on a limb and say that everything about contemporary worship is not good. We have gotten some great songs over the years from some great musicians and writers. We have also seen this music be something that has brought up some new musicians. We think about songs like “How Great is Our God” and “Your Grace is Enough” and you wonder how anything about contemporary music can be bad. But here is what I feel has been the BIGGEST issue with the world of contemporary music. Surprisingly enough, it won’t have anything to do with Chris Tomlin or Steve Fee. It has to do with the people in our churches…

People who have contemporary worship services tend to be alienating of other worship styles. Most of my experiences with people who sing contemporary music has been where the singers have negative thoughts about hymns of the past.  Now I know that to some degree this is an overgeneralization, but I’m just speaking for arguement sake.  I feel that sometimes we can get so excited about something new that we just blast whatever was old. That is something that hurts harmony within the body. Then we start seeing seperate services for traditional and contemporary in the same morning. Although I’m not a huge fan of separate services because of differences in style, I’ll take it over the other thing that tends to happen.

Some churches will attempt to update music and do things in a new way, but with people who don’t understand the music. When musicians try to do things they aren’t familiar with without the help of someone who IS familiar with it, that is really frustrating to me. I will try my best not to run off on a tangent, because I’m sure that’s not helpful to anyone. I think at this point I’m going to stop and leave this up for discussion…

Well, in one word, the answer to that question is an emphatic NO! Tradition worship has its place even in today’s world. Is it for everyone? I don’t think so. For some reason, people look at was is older than them and think it’s bad. You may not like it, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. I was having a conversation about this very thing with my dad and he was telling me that when he was young, they used to hear the stuff that his parents listened to and thought it was weird.  Some of us have looked back at the music of the 70′s and thought “really???” We always look to the things before us with sort of a mindset that that’s old and everything we do now is so much better.

So how should we approach traditional worship today? Well, we MUST have a healthy appreciation for it in order to express our love for the whole body of Christ. Our older body members are still important to the body. Sometimes we tend to push them to the side after a while, and they still have great validity. How do we handle this situation, well, that may be different from a church to church basis. However, I will tell you this. If you don’t respect them, you are automatically bringing tension within the body that can never be beneficial. Plus, if you listen long enough, you might learn something from those who have been around awhile. Church doesn’t have to be about reinventing the wheel. But we can do things to make it continue to roll. Whether  you want to believe it or not, traditional music was contemporary at one point. It knows a little bit about rolling…

So I’m sitting here on campus while I watch the ice fall from the sky. I’m also trying to figure out why I’m here. But that’s beside the point now. I’m writing now to tell you all about an event that’s coming up that I’m really excited about. We finally put it all together and have things in place for the first event that is being called story:song:life.  This event comes from the idea that songwriters are also storytellers and we are sharing our stories through music. It was also created as a way to bridge the gap between Christian and non-Christian songwriters and musicians. We are excited to see this thing take off. The first one will be February 20th at 7pm. It will be held at West Hills Community Church. The goal and desire is to have the event be held at different venues for the sake of variety and involving other people. If you want to hear more about it, be there Friday night. By the way, there’s going to be some good music, too. Along with myself, Brittany Howard, Eric Bausell and Christy Kelly will be performing that night. You don’t want to miss this at all, I promise. If you have any questions, email me at harry.walls4@gmail.com. I might even write something else about this as it gets closer because we are in the process of creating a site for this ministry. Stay tuned…

Community Life…It’s sort of a buzzword in the church. We like to use it as a catchy name for our small groups. It invokes thoughts of people being together doing life together. What does that really mean? I believe we are called to be in each others lives intimately. Knowing each other and being together in peace is what God wants for us. One of the things we overlook or input on our own is community ‘part of’ life. In the church our groups are part of our busy lives. Now I know that these are generalizations, but hear me out…

I’m a sports fan. Whenever you watch sports news or interviews, people are always talking about chemistry. It’s not only what happens on the field, but it’s the relationships and ‘life’ that happens off the field. The most successful teams always talk about how much they were like a family. Yeah, things got tough and I’m sure they fight, but they were family. The things you don’t see highly affect what you see on television or in the stadiums. What’s in the heart comes out on the field.

How does all of this apply to corporate worship? I’ve read and talked to people who have said they feel like something is missing on Sunday mornings. When you ask them about it, they feel disconnected to the people around them. Church becomes more like a concert or a conference. It is easy to get lost in the crowd and then you begin to pick and choose the things that you like and don’t like about a specific church. Then it becomes more and more about you. It makes it easy for you to choose one place over the other and jump from church to church.

We can begin to experience deeper, more intimate worship when we know the people around us that we are worshiping with. What relationships do you have with the people around you on Sunday morning? Do you really know them? Do you have any community within your church body? If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that people need community. Churches need people in community. Worship needs people that are in community. Think about what the worship in your church could look like if the people worshiping together actually KNEW each other? I don’t think I’m quite done with this thought, so there may be a part 2 to this one in the near future…