What do We Do Now that Rock Won't Go Away?-Part 12

What Do We Do Now that Rock Won’t Go away?-Part 12  

        At this point you may wish to ask the question, “What is the answer to this worship dilemma?”  In my opinion, there is no easy solution to such a plethora of worship confusion.  Once a church fellowship is led into such a mess by “leader shift” philosophy that erroneously supposes that the church must pander to everyone’s musical tastes, the result is that the fellowship of believers is permanently divided by music styles.  Unless the church is financially able to keep building little “sanctuaries” to accommodate each new musical clique that can exert enough power to demand its own style of worship experience, it seems to me that this diversity praxis is a dead end street. 

       It has never been easy for a church’s pastor and board of stewards to make the leadership direction decisions that are absolutely necessary to prevent constant “leader shift” confusion that will prevent the church’s purposes from being fulfilled.  I am not credulous enough to believe that all fellowships of believers are going to draw the musical lines in the same place.  However, as I have often stated in my writings, it isn’t the fact that all Christian churches do not draw all the musical lines in exactly the same places that bothers me, but it is the fact that so many churches are no longer drawing any musical lines in the proverbial sands of time.  Philosophically speaking, all Christian musicians must remember that direction determines destiny.  If we continually go in the wrong direction musically we can, without doubt, be responsible for debouching public music worship.

        Christian musicians should remember that it was the advent of religious words which were attached to rock music that brought on  the music division that has separated the church’s unity of worship.  It was not any of rock’s first cousins that brought the irreconcilable differences that have permanently divided many fellowships of believers.  The current generation of church musicians who will be in charge of the direction that church music is going to take in the future need to remember that it was the advent of rock that brought on the multiplicity of church music worship wars.  Many church musicians are too young to remember what church music was like before the advent rock music and ipso facto how the worship wars  ensued.