Posted on 07/05/2011 3:43:55 PM PDT by Cronos
I wrote an article on this site a few months ago in which I expressed a change of mind. After many years of kicking against my native Anglicanism, I found that the American version of it, the Episcopal church, was to my liking.As I previously explained, this church is proof that Anglicanism is not necessarily defined by the intolerable (to me) conservatism of the C of E. There is a world elsewhere. I always vaguely knew this on a theoretical level, but since moving to New York I have experienced its truth.....
I've been attending a well-known arty-liberal church in Manhattan called St Marks in the Bowery. It has an excellent priest, a rising star of international liberal Anglicanism, called Winnie Varghese. It nearly always has amazing visiting musicians, often gospel-singers, which helps. But the main attraction is that it feels inclusive, participatory. The pews have gone, and the seats are arranged in an oval. There is no organ – both it and the pews were casualties of a fire some years ago – a godly fire in my view. I consider organ music too loud, too powerful – it alienates, cows. Instead, the liturgy is accompanied by a piano...
I don't know whether it reflects on my own spiritual dullness, or the incompetence of most churches, that it has taken me so long to realise: church can really work.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
you just need a show as the author writes
Ya know what else would be neat? Give women their own worship space. And let them wear veils. And lets all pray towards Mecca.
So-called “contemporary” services are part of what’s turning churches rotten. The author of this piece is deluded....
Wow, that's right up there with being the newest sensation in vaudeville.
IMHO, the denominational churches has been getting away from The Word and are so set in tradition over everything else and are losing people and the non-denominational churches like the Calvary Chapel’s are flourishing since they are into The Word and are not traditional like the Pews, music, the Sunday dress clothes. In other words, the kind of church that is not your “father’s church” are attracting people.
I disagree. I think they’re moving away from The Word because they are discarding traditional worship. I know of some churches that no longer sing traditional hymns. Just have a bunch of juvenile twenty-somethings up front bangin’ on drums and strumming electric guitars like a garage band. And they’re bringing their liberal theology with em’.....
Not trying to argue, but even “traditional” hymns were new at one time.
Music is tied to culture, and people are going to worship according to their cultural bent. Besides, I have been to many churches over the years that sang nothing but traditional hymns, and more than one were not places filled with people worshipping and adoring the Lord. My church home is one where we do worship using guitars, drums, keyboards and the like, and we have a strong core group of passionate Christ-followers that seek to serve and love.
He is an evangelist for the ripping out of pews, so that worship is based around this drama of participation.
A younger generation is absolutely essential to keep a church alive. Think about what this means when it comes to the atmosphere of the church and service.
Traditional hymns do not attract the young(though we do still sing them at my church, we also mix in modern music.. and we have an electric guitar, and acoustic, a drum set, and a piano... the drums being manned by a 16 year old).
Our pastor also happens to be in his early 30s and is my former youth pastor, which took a while for the older generation to accept but the church has come to realize this guy knows what he’s talking about.
I agree. The organ, the “King of Instruments,” is gone. Enough said. I wouldn’t go near this church.
Sure, but not for the right reasons. And not because they are "into The Word" -- your phrase, not mine.
Sorry to disagree. I’ve read the “lyrics” in praise songs. Juvenile, pedestrian, hackneyed, uninspired tripe. A friend of mind calls them “seven-eleven.” Seven words repeated eleven times. They’re like junk food compared to the gourmet feast that is the traditional hymn. “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord,” is one example of this junk. Think of the image—a human heart covered with eyeballs that suddenly fly open. It’s grotesque. Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the lyrics to great Broadway shows, hated some of the lyrics he wrote for “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from my “My Fair Lady.” The line he hated most was “when all at once my heart took flight.” Never, he said, have human body parts flying around or expressing emotions or having eyeballs.
These praise songs are composed by people of little talent who are appealing to worshippers who accept mediocrity just because they think it’s “in” and younger people like it. A principle of economics is that the bad currency crowds out the good. That’s what’s happening in our churches.
Amen! The church is trying to conform to the world instead of the other way around. There is no awe and majesty in “contemporary” services..only theatre
Sorry, but a bunch of overweight middle aged moms and dads playing bad music poorly is not all that attractive to the “younger generation”.
As true today as it was in 1662.
that is the problem if one gets used to the idea of chopping and changing one’s church at whim
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