Zach Vandenberg
I am the pastor of First CRC of Bellflower in the heart of metro Los Angeles.
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Posted in: My Grandmother Saved It, My Mother Threw It Away, and Now I'm Buying It Back
This article appears to be trying to ease tensions between people who advocate for different kinds of songs and styles. However, the author succeeds in ramping up the rhetoric by suggesting that people who don't like hymns are unformed, immature, thoughtless, heartless narcissists with no imagination.
Posted in: Do You Do Sermon Series?
the sermon series at our church tend to be as long as season of the church year we're looking at: fall series, advent, lent, summer, and few in between, so some are much longer series than others, which is kind of nice for variety.
There are also two of us here and I think the variety in style helps during longer series. For example, last fall our other pastor preached on the stories about David and I preached (once or twice a month) on a psalm of David.
We've really enjoyed preaching through series together because it's more interesting and gets better depth to have someone else to collaborate with.
Posted in: A New Hymnal - Lift Up Your Hearts
I find that our worship planners use a variety of congregational-singing & presentation music that comes from wherever they can find it - from harder rock to hillsong, gospel, hymns (new and old versions, with the band and occasionally the organ), as well as music from CCLI's top 25. Which is to say that there is an availability of music today that was not available at all the last time a hymnal was put together (available online, especially if musicians can figure out stuff they hear).
The CRC webpage says the new hymnal is an attempt to "give a common voice to our worship in the twenty-first century." But because of the speed and manner (online, radio, file-sharing) with which music is distributed today, I don't think it is possible for a hymnal to accomplish this goal.
The trend is to use multiple, not single, sources for songs & music, and I think the trend will be for churches to use this hymnal as one source among many.
Posted in: A New Hymnal - Lift Up Your Hearts
I agree that having a core set of songs that Christians can share is an eminently valuable thing. I just think that change in media over the last 20 years means that this goal is not likely to be accomplished through a large book.
I am all for using a hymnal as one resource among many.
Posted in: A New Hymnal - Lift Up Your Hearts
[quote=jborger]Zach, you may be in a church that utilizes many resources but what about the churches that only has one hymnal from which they sing? Should they not be provided with the necessary tools to worship in a relavent way? [/quote]
It's interesting that you wrote "tools" (plural) in the second sentence, but referenced "one hymnal" (singular) in the first sentence. I don't want to nitpick your words too much to make it mean more than you intend, but I definitely lean more towards helping churches access the many, many tools (and songs) for leading worship and would feel sad and restricted if all I had to use was one hymnal.
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Also, I am well aware of the many resources offered by the denomination/worship institute from my time at Calvin Seminary. We use some of them here. My only point in this whole discussion is that the hymnal should be considered one resource among many.
Posted in: "Contemporvant" Worship Video--Funny? Offensive? Satirical? Mean?
If you're looking for a satire of the opposite type of church service look no further than the Simpsons & Rev Lovejoy.
I like this video a lot because it's effective satire and shows that these guys are humble enough to reflect on where their approach is weak or even sinful. And then they applied their creativity to the situation.