A Prescriptive approach to Church Music Part 3

                                 A Prescriptive approach to Church Music  Part 3

Is church music completely a matter of personal taste?  If so, whose tastes do we cater too musically?  This dilemma has caused what I term the worship-gap.  First, the church decided to cater to musical tastes of the baby-boomers.  This did not work, so the church had two Sunday morning services.  Now the baby boomers don’t like the music of the baby-busters, so we have three Sunday morning services.

There is nothing wrong with having two worship services or three or four for that matter.  The problem comes when the basis for these added services is only musical style.  It is one thing to have two services because of seating space in the sanctuary, but another when the second service came about because of a musical feud going on in the church.  When we segregate worshipers on the basis of music style, music has become the “main thing”.  Music is not the “main thing” when it comes to matters of worship.

Hebrews 10:25 reminds us to, “Forget not the assembling of yourselves together, and so much more as ye see the day approaching.”  In my opinion, the late 20th century concept of dividing the congregation into heterogeneous assemblies has divided the congregation until they can no longer take advantage of the warmth and strength of having the different age groups worship together.  Older people need the energy of youth in public worship and younger people need to see God’s exceeding weight of glory on those who have loved and served Him for many years.

So, having multiple services to accommodate the schedules of a very busy congregation may be very helpful, but splitting up public worship solely on the basis of music style is unfortunate in many ways.  It seems on the surface that dividing into worship groups will solve all the problems of style of church music.  However, it doesn’t.  The church must struggle with style and form in music just like it deals with all the other practical nitty-gritty issues of Christian living.  Dividing congregational worship only avoids the problems of musical worship.