Happy Birthday, elehu!


I was musing yesterday during service about how our church does worship. This is for the second service: the "contemporary" service. I love the songs, but I have a beef, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed it.
Let me preface this by saying that I was spiritually nurtured by the music of Ben and Robin Pasley, one of the best improvisational worship teams I've ever heard.

The phenomenon of worship CD's has been good for the Christian community. It allows everyone to know many of the same songs without having to travel hundreds of miles to attend the particular church the worship band ministers at. However, there is a drawback, in my opinion. It creats a staticity of worship. When many small church (or big church, small town in our case) worship leaders get a worship CD, they listen to it over and over, and fall in love with some of the songs. So, they bring said CD to their team, and say, "We're doing this one. " Said team listens to the CD over and over, getting every chord right, but also memorizing pitch, tone, and how long the song goes, how many refrains it has, even how many "hallelujahs" the singer adds. I don't mind the addition of the artist's own descant, heaven knows I do it myself. But, when you will only sing that song that way, I think it's limiting to the worship experience.

The church I grew up in had a different approach. They'd get the music or CD for a new song, and learn the chords. Then, they'd decide how they'd start it. Maybe it'd be sung two times, or whatever, and then, it was up to the pastor and team to feel things out.

I even sense more improv in the 8:30 service, which is the traditional service. There, the pastor has been known to test the organist's patience, by limiting or expanding the number of verses sung, depending upon the need. I've even seen him give her a sign that said, "keep playing, there's still people at the altar."

I don't sense that in the later service, where it seems it should be more prevalent. It's really starting to grate on me, and I'm trying to prevent that. I'm there to focus on God, but when it's so static I can tell you how it will go, how many letters'll show up on the power point slide, it's hard. I miss the simple days of overheads, or at least simple PP presentations that require up and down keys, not just paging through the way it'll go exactly.

The other thing that bothered me about yesterday's service was that the pastor had been gone and the worship leader said something to the effect that we should sing more loudly to welcome the pastor back, and then it was a song directed at the Lord... it really seemed incongruous to me. I understand stirring the people to worship, but ... that seemed downright wrong.

Of course, I was grumpy yesterday, for several reasons, not the least of which is a mild chest pain I've been having. I don't know if it's from the gas stove, having hurt my diaphragm, or just stress.
But, having the threshold of pain I do, I didn't recognize it for pain until it had gone away. If it persists much longer, I may have to see someone about it.
Hopefully it doesn't though, because it makes me grumpy and we're uninsured for a couple weeks...