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Hey JT, love the discussion topic - one of my favorite things to do is go to the nursing home and play hymns on the guitar, as well. My favorite (and theirs) seems to be "In the Garden" - they request it every time and I gladly oblige. Oddly enough, however, it seems that even in nursing homes, there's a large variation of what people know depending on what tradition they grew up in.

I think the "longevity" of songs is a legitimate issue, as is the idea of having a theoretical "songbook" - what my worship professor at Dordt would describe as the 40-100 songs that are repeated fairly often. I think this number reduces if churches only have one service on Sundays and how transient the group is (we're lucky if many of our folks show up every three weeks).

To the latter, we solidly focus on the team approach - 2-3 fixed bands that always play together (just like in the real world). With that, we have teams select songs they'll play (whether hymns, worship songs or songs they write) and they are then ineligible for the other teams to pick. Each of the teams works with about 20 songs at a time (if they add one, they drop one) and get really good at those. The added benefit is that we repeat enough music that the church gets to know the music, too.

There's another church in GR that writes all their own music and gives CD's to guests so they can know the "songbook", as well.

To the former, I think longevity of songs is nice, but I think it can become an idol like any other good thing in life (and church life). I love being able to hum songs to myself (and God) during quiet time, but I'd say its 33%/33%/33% between hymns/songs I sang when I started in worship in the 90's/songs my bands play now. Maybe that's indicative of the modern worshipper - we all hide certain songs in our hearts.....and it might mean I don't know the songs the guitarist plays in MY retirement home, but I'm cool with that. :)

Its really a lot like classic rock and modern pop songs.....everyone knows a couple Beatles songs, a couple Elvis songs, a couple U2 songs.....and something by Lady Gaga we heard last week and wish we didn't. Music has both a personal and corporate dimension and both are important, though not exclusively.

Mark Hilbelink on October 14, 2010

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

I definitely agree that Driscoll is sometimes not the most benificent Reformed leader, but I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as you did.  Even though I may disagree with him on some issues and the way he presents his arguments, I think this book is actually fairly well written.

I love the focus on God as the source - each chapter is "God Is" or "God Speaks" or some other action of God.  I also loved some his choices of themes throughout the book - particularly some of his insights on our idolatry of sexuality.

I think sometimes what our theology books get wrong is that they're trying to solve problems rather than affirming the solution.  In many ways, this is a book written for postmoderns, and though I may not agree with all of it, is fairly on point, in my opinion.

Have you read it?

Mark Hilbelink on March 3, 2010

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

Hi Ernie.....welcome to the conversation!

First of all, I want to say that I'm encouraged by your willingness to stay involved in your church's worship committee, even though you may not all be in agreement. Like all things in Christian life - this an a real iron-sharpens-iron subject and I'd like to welcome you as someone who really has a different perspective on the subject.

I think you bring up some really interesting questions that we may not agree on, but I'll try to give an honest answer as someone who's led worship in traditional-blended churches moving toward modern worship....

1. In regards to songbooks, its really a tough issue. Since most modern worship music is created and sung in environments that use projection exclusively, I don't know of ANY church that actually keeps an up-to-date modern worship songbook. If you can pull it off, more power to you - but I can imagine it is a hefty challenge. Modern worship comes out of the pop/rock music genre, which often lends itself towards free harmonizing rather than printed 4-part harmonies - often in thirds or descants. The only source I know of for 4-part harmonies in modern worship music is CCLI's hymn sheet database, which varies in cost depending on your church size. See my comment on your other post about printed music.

2. In regards to projection not matching printed words, etc.: In my experience, it is rarely a malicious attitude that causes such confusion. Projection is a touchy business and mistakes are far too common, even in megachurches. One way that we try to avoid mismatching is to have the projectionist prepare the projection ahead of time and do a "dress rehearsal" with the worship team. This requires more time on behalf of the projectionist, but often results in a smoother service, thus enabling people to worship more easily. In addition, often bands play from chordsheets, which do not necessarily match printed music - or simply add additional choruses or verses as a creative method.........that's part of what makes reading the music hard. But again, you have to remember that hymns and modern worship are different genres and thus, are written out and played differently. It doesn't make one or the other bad - just different.

3. Regarding changing stanzas at the wrong time, I can tell you that we as musicians and projectionists screw up, even on our best days, about 10% of the time. Aggressive practicing can help this, but that's often not very realistic in a small church atmosphere.

4. Re: Music on the radio. I will grant that there are some songs that are played on the radio that are not good for congregational singing, but we'd probably disagree on a few. For instance, we sang "If We Are the Body" by Casting Crowns on Sunday and it was executed flawlessly by the band and the congregation, even though its not a particularly "congregational" song. I think the bigger issue is often that churches try to play modern worship songs without a modern worship band. Chris Tomlin, Hillsong United, etc., who write most of what we sing as "modern" songs today play with no less than an rhythm guitar, a lead guitar, a bass guitar, a drummer, a keyboardist and a CLEAR worship leader. Trying to play worship songs and expecting them to sound like they do on CD's without a worship BAND is foolish. Many churches make this mistake and end up ruining their chance for modernization. The #1 rule of worship transition - if you're going to do anything, do it WELL. If you can't do it well, don't do it - you'll just face controversy. And you're right - worship can cause divisiveness if its not changed well. I encourage you to keep encouraging your musicians and your worship ministry to press on in faith, hope and [the greatest of these] love.

I'd love to talk more about it! [[email protected]]

Hi Allen.....funny meeting you here :)

This really brings me back to the Willow GroupLife conference. On the way home from Chicago, the discussion in our car went something like this:

Most church experts agree that there's three big keys to growing, healthy churches: small groups, great [modern] worship and children's ministry. Oddly enough, these are the three things that seem to be most lacking in our pastoral training.

That said, I've been wrestling with the issue myself. Here's the deal - if you're a chuch planter, you can infuse small group DNA into your church, and everyone talks about that. However, if you're a church "resurrector", the situation we both find ourselves in, how do you infuse small group DNA into an established church?

This is now my second try (my first one wasn't good in the small group development dept.). I see two key lessons that I learned and am now trying to apply:

1. Don't fool yourself into thinking EVERYONE is going to get into a group (ie, the old "household" model). This is bad and good. Bad because even the best big churches have 50% participation. It is good because it also means accessibility for the unchurched. For instance, our small group is meeting next week and I can invite my neighbor, who has absolutely no interest in church but wants to belong.

2. Don't fix what ain't broke --> usually, established churches already have men's groups, women's groups, bible studies, prayer groups, etc. Instead of replacing those for people, recognize that they work and grandfather them into the small group structure. Start calling all your bible studies small groups; call your worship teams small groups; then encourage them to act like small groups and work unconnected people into new groups.

What's your take on this?

Mark Hilbelink on February 9, 2010

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

Re: Small Groups in an existing environment

My only issue with that argument is that, if you yank a moving ship around that quickly, people are liable to fall off. Now, obviously you can't pander to everyone's little existing pet groups, but, as you well know, small groups can take lots of different forms.

My point was simply that if you have only knowledge-based or activity-based groups, which many established churches are full of (as you pointed out), challenge them to go deeper and more missional where they currently are (missional=being the Church where you are). Maybe they can't handle it and you end up ending the program right then and there.....but I should think you can give people a chance to make their existing groups more missional and spiritually deeper.

The added bonus is that people don't see the pastor/small group pastor as the human wrecking ball telling them that they now need to be in new small groups with new people when they've already got a level of intimacy with a group.

I agree that the simple church model is fantastic goal for streamlining discipleship, but forcing it on people suddenly, rather than over time, has the potential to be very divisive simply because it is an unknown.

We've hit some stagnation here, so I'll throw a hot topic out there: paying team members.

You may or may not realize that many large churches keep their worship musicians (both instrument & vocalists) on staff, or at least pay them a per-gig fee. The larger the church and the higher the commitment to quality, the more prevalent this is (although church plants are often pinned into this situation, as well). For those of us in large cities, it is an even bigger issue because church musicians are at a such a high premium with multiple mega-churches competing for the best guitar players, drummers, etc. in the Christian world.

Then there's this: when I tell people back home that I pay a couple of my musicians, they get up in arms about how church is "not supposed to be a concert". BUT, they've been paying their organists for years. When I first got into worship leading, the organist would make $75 for playing 2 songs and we got a pat on the back for leading the other 5 with a full band that required coordinated rehearsals.

So what do you think.....pay musicians or no? And in what situations/how much?

Great thoughts on reaching the "Alpha Cities" in North America. I agree whole-heartedly. Population in North America is increasingly urban, so that's the place to focus our resources, IMHO.

 

However, when you visit the NAMB website (http://www.namb.net/cities/), the source of the Alpha Cities focus, one other MAJOR trend is seemingly ignored, the Latinization of North America. As a Texan, I noted some really strange Texan cities missing from NAMB's map that are in the top 20 population centers in America (Houston-#3, San Antonio-#7, Dallas-#9, Austin-#11, Forth Worth-#16, El Paso-#19), as well as Mexico City, which is the biggest city in North America. What do all these cities have in common? Loads of Latinos and loads of Spanish-speakers. Are we scared or ill-equipped to reach this demographic?

I think, in addition to focusing on cities, we need a couple other focii:

-Regearing & reloading to reach post-Catholic and post-Christian Latino populations, which doesn't fit with many of our financial-sustainability or education-laden church planting models

-Breaking down the walls between international church planting & domestic church planting. For instance, Mexico has 9 of the top 25 most-populated cities in North America and there are lots of English-speakers there, as well as Spanish-speakers. That's true of urban centers all over the world, which is why many American mega-churches now have satellite campuses in foreign countries. We've got impressive networks all over the world we could be leveraging in this direction and co-learning with them.

Thanks, Phil, for this post. Its something our church has been discussing for pretty much the whole time I've been here. That said, I think there's two things I'd like to add to the discussion:

First, I think we need to figure out why attendence of worship services is important. I mean, I know all the cliche and even some theological ballpark reasons why, but why is weekly attendence important - and why is that better than bi-monthly attendence....and for that matter, why are we not meeting daily as the early church did? If we don't know the answers to these questions, that's a good place to start.

Second, I think we need to recognize our own bias & emotional investment as pastors. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel really discouraged when we get a small turnout with no real explanation. And that personal pain shouldn't factor into the "why" rationale for attendence - for those of us where every-2-weeks is the norm, I think all too often we fall into the trap of resentment - the heading off of which is something we've now purposefully built into our leadership development - our musicians & artists take the pain of poor attendence & lateness even more starkly than we as pastors often do.

Love it, Allen.  I think the key thing that stops most churches, especially in our tradition, from becoming alive to the idea of small groups is fear.  That may seem odd, since small groups are, by nature, small and unformidable, but I think its true.  The base fear of small groups is that people know your business, know your deep thoughts and struggles, know your pains and weaknesses.  The irony, of course, is that this is also what makes small groups so great in the life of the Christian.

In my opinion (maybe also in yours) the BEST way to make small groups work as the core contigent of the church is to eliminate programs that would compete with it (ie, the Simple Church) method.  While there are certainly some demographic groups that need programs (kids, people with disabilities, etc.), most other programs could probably be eliminated because they'll compete for time and energy with small groups.  Its a bod and difficult step, because people LOVE programs - especially those who fear most the idea of sharing life in a small group.  But we're attempting that bold move - running our service projects, adult ed, pastoral care and most other things through the channel of the small group (so, if you're not conected to a small group, you're virtually unconnected). If you really want Hydra to grow six new heads, you need to chop a few off first.

Mark Hilbelink on January 25, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

I agree with you there, too.  We're currently imagining what it would look like for our children-youth-adult transitions to be increasing amounts of small group presence in those ministries.  So many people have noted the problem of hemorraging people between transition points - children to youth or youth to adult, etc.  Maybe the problem is that our ministries are too dissimilar and not comprehensive enough.  What if we started kids at 3 years old with the idea of prepping them for small group discipleship slowly but surely over time?  How can we teach from the outset that the norm of our spiritual community is small group discipleship?

I often wonder at how strange of a phenomenon Sunday mornings are - a bunch of people faced forward singing songs and listening to someone talk at them.  Yet, everyone seems to accept this as basic to the life of the Christian.  We've created that phenomenon through intentional teaching and modeling.  How can we make small group dischipleship just as normal?

Mark Hilbelink on July 15, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

Hey Josh, thanks for being the first courageous one to respond!



So, I think you bring up two basic questions here: "how much of this is based on personal preference" and "why worry about disconnect?". (feel free to correct me if those are innacurate paraphrases).

So first, I think we've all heard the dread "p-word" in worship war discussions (preference). Obviously, there's nothing wrong with preferences. The problem comes when our preferences implicity exclude others (ie, the opposite of mission). My argument would be that, far too often, when mission is at odds with our preferences, we choose preference most of the time because it is the path of least resistance or is most self-beneficial. I'm fairly certain neither of those was Jesus' way.

For the second point, there's obviously nothing wrong with preferring a style of worship that is more "traditional" - in fact, there are some wonderful parts of traditional, liturgical worship.  The only issue I'm pointing out is that, if we engage relationally and at the level of people far from God six days a week on mission and then try to invite them to a worship service that is far different both intellectually and stylistically, its kind of like letting someone test drive a Chevy and then sending them home with a Ford.  We shouldn't be suprised that many of our churches are missionally engaged with their communities but very few people ever make a home in our worship services.  If we're okay with that, then I guess we carry on.  I just don't think Jesus would be.

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