Okay old-timers, listen up.
I’m speaking to people 95 and above, with a few young whipper-snappers in there too, like me. I’m only 75, but I “get it” when you talk about some of the music in the church.
Here’s the deal. Growing up, my church, probably your church too, had these books. Remember the books? Huge collections of songs written anywhere from the Middle Ages toIsaac Watts, the Fanny Crosy era, to just a few years back. We sang it all. What we didn’t understand, the better songleaders would explain, and our comprehension of the things of God grew in every song service.
No one style was honored above another. There were fast bumpy tunes and majestic making-you-want-to-worship songs. Songs we could relate to and songs that were “out there” to be discerned on another day. Songs for the young, songs for the old. Variety.
Fast forward. It’s the twenty-first century. By and large, youth have taken over the music program. It was wiser, we thought, to give them sway, than to see them go down the street to another church that was “woke”, or to no church at all. And all of their “homies” (remember that word? That was contemporary just a few years ago, now smiled at) would be able to hear about Jesus. We would grin and bear it.
And. The music they brought in was often theologically sound, even if the other “sound” was unpleasant to half the congregation. But the music they brought in was the only music we heard after awhile, not that great mixture I described above. Monolithic. One relatively small group of musical offerings. Gone were the Middle Ages. Gone Isaac Watts. Gone Fanny Crosby. Only the cool stuff with an occasional bone sent out to the 95 and over crowd to let them know they were in church…
Yes, us old guys can still learn. We can “move on” if we must. But does it have to be at the price of a treasured collection of music God has given His people over the centuries?
C’mon, dust off those books. Some of us are so old we can’t see your screens and we certainly don’t know the words and we can’t rock to the beat. Give us a break, yes? Let us know that the church we helped bring into the world wants to bring us back into the church.