Kevin graced me with some more of his comments, much like frills grace a 18th century male blouse.

D: Do we want to reach out to out culture? Yes.

K: yes we want to reach out to culture. but our primary purpose is to glorify God, not to witness/evangelize. witnessing/evanelizing is a WAY of glorifying God, as is corporate worship. but we should never cramp our ability in glorifying God so that we are better able to witness. what i mean is, FIRST choose music that glorifies God, whether it be from the blue psalter or from some $5.99 worship CD. SECOND, think about how appealing it is to those singing (as Dax showed to be important in his response to my last post. and THEN think about how appealing it is to those we wish to witness to.

Yes, your sequence of events is very nice and good, but you’re reading your own subtext into what I said: I didn’t argue a sequence of events. I merely pointed out one (of many) considerations that have to be given to the topic of worship. But let me be more clear. A church service is not the place to evangelize to people, because a church service — unless you’re running a mission church — is for the edification of God’s people. However, people do come to these services, and one consideration we need to give as a corporate body is that they can at least understand what we’re doing in the context of modern culture. What I did not just say is that they need to be able to understand it intellectually: most nose-breathing people can figure out what our hymns mean. What I mean is that the form and the style be in the cultural language people speak today.

D: because I want church to be just as much a vibrant part of my life as anything else, not like stepping into some shift in time.

K: i don’t persay want to jump into the past every time i enter the church’s building, but i DO want church to be different. i don’t want it AS much a vibrant part AS anything else. i want it MORE SO. it should be different … i don’t want a band up front … i want something different from my daily life … i’m not trying to say that modern worship music is on the same level as our radio music, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have music that is in a completely different DIRECTION than what we’re used to.

Now you’re arguing personal preference. What you want is cool, let’s take that into consideration, but if I were the leader of a church, I would have to remind you that church is — among other things — not about your or my preference.

I mean, if we’re going to do worship right we might as well go to the source first, before any other considerations are given. Hints about worship are scarce in the Bible, but they are there. Not enough to build a ridiculous doctrine like the Regulative Principle of Worship (a horrible, pharisaical idea). But enough to give direction. For instance, Psalm 150. Look at all the instruments listed… that’s not just a band, it’s a freaking orchestra. And yet we balk at using more than an organ. How can that be justified?

Are you submitting to me that lyrical content and musical stylings are somehow related? Because you seem to be constantly confusing the two. Worship music is already going on another DIRECTION than your regular music, simply by virtue of the fact that it’s vertical and not horizontal music. The stylings change with time and culture.

D: You see this in young Sihk men not wearing turbans, young Muslim woman not wearing burqas, these sorts of things. We all gravitate toward the central melting pot (a good thing), or the culture we’re a part of will become more and more irrelevant and separate until it ceases to exist at all. This isn’t to say that elements of Reformed culture can’t stay: you see in a lot of naturalized third- or fourth-generation cultures a lot of attributes and traces of the original. Why haven’t our church’s stylings gone the same way?

K: because it’s the church! thank God we HAVEN’T gone the same way! i think that what you meant to say here and what i understand you to have said are two very different things. i hope so. b/c we definitely should not be joining in as the world conforms to the culture they are in. we are called to be different. there is a big difference between cultures and religions. i have nothing against cultures meshing. i do have a problem with the salt that is called to go out into the earth becoming a part of the mix. i do have a problem with the light that is called to go out into the darkness blending in so we get a sort of homogeneous dim light. candice said the (Reformed) church has its own culture. now i’m not huge on different denominations having their own “cultures” from eachother, but i AM big on the church as a whole having it’s own “culture” from the world. christians should never gravitate to a central melting pot. this is NOT a good thing.

Kevin, the Christian religion is above the culture that it’s in: Christianity is supposed to guide and inform the culture. But stylistically, it is also under the culture — note that the content of the religion does not change just because the form in which it’s presented is — in the sense that it sounds and looks different in different places.

How else do you explain so many different-looking churches in so many diverse times? The modern Reformed church vaguely resembles the past Reformed church, which vaguely resembles the Roman Catholic church, which very vaguely resembles the church of the apostles, which is based on Jewish synagogual worship. Not to mention churches in India which don’t resemble churches in South Africa at all, which don’t resemble churches in China at all, which don’t resemble churches in Brazil… I mean, face it, the church doesn’t have a uniform culture all over the world, and it though we differ from the world and always well, we still look like them.

Frankly, the church as its own culture has very much become irrelevant to modern society, mostly because they are trapped in a Christian Ghetto where they speak Christianese and have their own little bookstores with their own little music market, with their own little clothing manufacturers; this is not an effective way to fulfil the great commission, or to glorify God. We need to engage the culture, not run from it, and part of that is to worship in at least a slightly relevant way.

D:Our churches are in the world, as in on the planet, but not particularly in the world, as in functioning as a redemptive part of the culture. Frankly, you can’t change the culture into the image of Christ from a distance, much like you can’t conceive a child over email. We need — much like Christ — to become like what we want to save. Don’t think the culture’s got it right? Fine; use the culture as a base of operations and move out from there.

K: dax, you’re frightening me. i love how you always challenge me to think about the church looking outward more rather than so inward, but i think you go too far. “become like what we want to save”? honestly, dax. i don’t think that’s christian by any denomination’s standards. but as you pointed out, i do know you, so i guess you just didn’t do so hot with the phraseology there. how would i be able to help someone save themself from themself if i was trying to be like them? …and the next bit i take issue with as well… “use the culture as a base of operations and move out from there”? no. christians should use God, christianity, and a unified corporate faith body as a base of operations. your own “analogy” references an army-type “BASE of operations”; an army must have it’s base in it’s own body, not in the foreign land they’re invading among those they’re invading.

Come on, Kevin, you know me well enough that if what I was saying is somehow confusing, then you can probably figure out what’s going on. You do have to become what you want to save. But of course that doesn’t mean that if you want to minister to prostitutes you have to become a gigilo. That’s just stupid, and of course I didn’t mean that. But if you want to minster to prostitutes, then you have know what they’re up agaist, the life on the streets, gangs, whatever. It’s no use dropping a 19-year old rural white girl in the middle of that crowd; that’s called not using your brain, and though God can do things in spite of people not using their brains, you’re expected to use the noggin. I believe that also negates your base of operations analogy.

Besides, you can argue with me, but I submit that you shouldn’t argue with Paul and the Holy Spirit on tag-team. I Corintians 9 says this, For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you. If Paul is a cultural and traditional chameleon that he may save as many as he can, what is the church to argue, or do differently?

Frankly, we’re not using the world “culture” in the same way. I think you’re using “culture” in the same sense as I would use the word “society”, whereas I’m using the word “culture” to mean the outward forms and stylisms of our society, not the moral beliefs of the people from that society, regardless of how their beliefs affect the culture.

D: there were a lot of crappy hymns written as well — we just don’t sing them anymore because the church as a whole eventually realized they were crappy. I give you for an example some of the stuff the Gaithers bring up every once in a while, stuff that sounds like a 1950s television commercial soundtrack. I have every confidence that the music of today will bear the same scrutiny and only the best will be brought into history with us.

K: it’s a really good reminder that we need not get hyped up over having some crappy songs now - you’re right… they probably will die out. but then again, why are they so popular now? USELESS songs that slap GOD in the face like “yeslordyeslordyesyeslordyeslordyeslordyesyeslordyeslordyeslordyesyeslord”. not to say that song has no place; but while it may be okay for a man and his guitar basically wordlessly praising his Lord in emotion, that is NOT a chorus to be sung in a youth group. but — as dax would say — i digress. …we must keep in mind, dax, that the shoddy songs of the hymnal (even by your own explanation here) were lousy musically. but what we take issue with is songs that slack off on the MEANING. but yah, moving on.

If by this paragraph you mean you’re frustrated with the fact that church isn’t perfect, I’m sure the church is pretty frustrated that you’re not perfect either.

D: Also, bear with the worship music. The renewed interest in writing worship songs is a baby phenomenon. We may have to wait twenty or thirty years until some of the worship leaders become truly mature enough to write great, not just good, material.

K: good point.

Thank you. I knew I had one.

D: What I mean by that is we’re all fine and dandy with singing out of the blue Psalter and sitting around pointing out how little clothes the emperor of modern worship is wearing, but which of us is doing something about it? Are any of us writing songs? Well, sure, some people are. Is there any way to get those songs out to the churches? Do we have a mechanism to spread good music? The answer to these questions is maybe, no, and no.

K: true, true. while i disagree with some (or much!) of your thoughts, you are always right when you remind us to stop bitching and start fixing.

Yeah, I’m sick of people sitting around and criticizing little things behind people’s backs, so I’ll talk about big things in public… I don’t much like it when people tell me to stop bitching and start fixing, because sometimes I need to be the skunk, and I can’t always be a part of fixing what’s backwards. On the other hand, this is something I can help with, and would if I could, which I don’t, because I can’t.

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