discuss: secular music on sunday mornings at church?
I came across an interesting article that discusses the question of secular music in the church. On one hand, you’re relating to nonbelievers by playing stuff from their arena. People who know nothing about God can still say wise things that are in line with Scripture, so as long as the morality of a song doesn’t contradict Scripture, then it should be okay to use, right? But then there’s the question of inspiration. What caused that person to write their song? If not by inspiration from God, then by what power? If we play one song in the church, will that encourage people to buy that band’s album, which may contain some bad stuff?
It’s an interesting question, and I await your answers!
Cheers,
Brendan
December 25th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I would say that music should not be necessary to make nonbelievers feel comfortable on Sunday morning. We should be the ones to make nonbelievers feel as welcome as possible through building relationships with them.
However, I propose that music alone cannot make a nonbeliever feel comfortable. I would say that services will always be uncomfortable when somebody is presenting a different worldview than your own. Worship services were awkward for me in September 2007 before I truly entered into the New Covenant, and I don’t believe that any amount of pandering to me would change my views towards it so long the gospel message was not changed. Certainly, you could try to convince me of your worldview during service, though unless you have a lot of time, you cannot also provide the spiritual needs of the believers.
February 11th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Whenever I hear someone say things like, “The music didn’t move me”, or ” I didn’t like the worship set of songs,” I aways want to reply, “The worship wasn’t for you.”
When we build or design worship around the whims of people to make them feel comfortable we lose soemthing of the presence of God and we dumb down fresh fire and replace it with false excitement and fire.
The song, “It’s all about You Jesus” just about sums it up.
In all of my years as a believer I have attended only two Churches that fit my musical taste.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Ultimately, worship is all about God. However, I think that those who have worship need to be careful with that statement. I could play worship songs with screaming electric guitars at a really loud volume, with someone kicking the double bass as hard as possible. It’d be worship, it’d be all about God, but people would have a tough time worshiping because of the music.
I think we need to be sensitive to our congregations. If we have older people who have the hymnal memorized, we should draw on these excellent songs of old, and the younger people need to learn to appreciate them. If we have younger people around, we should play anything from the new songs that Christian artists are singing, and the older people need to understand that this music is okay.