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…

Before yesterday, I had never really thought about this much because I do it all the time. I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday morning and she was asking me how the new job was going. We got to talking about the time that it takes for me to do what I do. She asked how long it took to choose the worship song set for a Sunday morning. Her guess was quite astronomical in my own mind. And as a result, she was quite surprised when she found out how much time I actually took to choose music for a Sunday morning. That got me to thinking after she left. Am I spending enough time putting together these song sets? Am I taking for granted what it is that I do and not putting quality time into creating a flow for worship? Is it okay that I’ve gotten this down to a point that it doesn’t take me as long as it used to? Could I do a better job of choosing music?

To all of you who have had to do this before, how long does it normally take you to choose music for your church services? Or for a retreat weekend? Do you go about it the exact same way you did when you first started out? What has changed for you? What has stayed the same? For the record, it generally takes me between 45 minutes and 2 hours to select and craft my song services.

So,
I decided to take a short break in the action from the series to write about some new music that I heard last night and my new favorite band. Also, anything to get Jim and Jeremiah to stop talking about love crevices (see WSM #3). Anyway, I will get back to doing a couple more of those either tonight or the beginning of next week.

Last night Eva and I went to a concert at the 9th Street Abbey in Soulard last night to hear The Fundamental Elements and JR. Let me tell you, this was some downright good stuff. This building is cool and very much Soulard. The high ceilings and the stained glass windows were very cool. The room pretty much asked for some good music. However, it was a tricky room to do sound in as we soon found out with JR hit the stage. JR has quite the rock feel. His performance was very much Andre 3000 with the sound of John Legend in his voice. For those of you who don’t know either of those people, click on the name…

Anyway, a couple friends of mine were playing in his band, so you always want to see your friends succeed. Let me tell you, they succeeded. The beat was thumping and the sound was electric. Unfortunately, there was so much reverb in this room that the words got REALLY muffled and eaten up by the rest of the sound. I believe that what he was saying was good, but you could only catch a couple words. That was a bummer because you could tell he was really working to share his gifts with everyone. It wasn’t lost on me, JR…you did your thing.

After their 7 song set that ended with a Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ outro (which was hot), we waited a couple minutes for the second group. Surprisingly, they didn’t take a long time to set up and get ready to go. They got in and got it started with a little ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ by MJ. I have been loving all the MJ tributes at concerts and stuff lately. They did a great job. Then they went into their set of music. I was instantly hooked. The beats were infectious and the lead singer’s voice is just smooth. Again, it was a little tough to hear all the words, but you don’t have to hear words to hear a good voice. Song after delicious song brought me in more. I’ve never heard 5 white guys bring straight soul to the stage like this. I had been exposed to them by their song ‘That Girl’ that I had recently heard on the radio, so I was waiting to hear that one. Good stuff.

One of the highlights of the night had to be when the bassist and the drummer, brothers, went off on a planned jam session. I think I died for a couple minutes. There’s nothing in this world like family connection when it comes to music. They just fit together and it was amazing. They went back and forth between drum and bass solos. I could still be sitting there listening it was THAT good.

I want to wrap this review up by saying that there is some amazing musical talent in the St. Louis area. If you don’t believe me, grab a newspaper, find out where the live music is going to be and find yourself there. You will be totally surprised. In the mean time, I’m going to sit at home and wait for this group to say that the keyboard player got mad and decided to leave. Then I’m gonna drop whatever I’m doing and play for them. Until then, I’m just their newest groupie. And I’m not afraid to admit that man crush.

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…

So, I’ve been looking lately for different ministry positions for different churches all over the country. One of the things that churches always put on the front of their page is the type of worship style they have. There are many different styles (trust me, I’ve studied them all) and everyone has its place. I think the one thing that I’ve decided that these differences can sometimes be divisive and problems come from that divisiveness.  I then decided that I would sort of write some of my own personal thoughts about these different styles.  Keep checking in because I will trying to write one everyday this week about some of the different styles that are out there.

In other news…the job search continues. The search has been expanded to the rest of the country now (which is sort of sad…), but we are finding some prospects. Keep praying that God will show us where he wants us to be. I’ll keep you posted on that, too.  Check in starting tomorrow for the first worship breakdown.