Relevant Christian Blog

I was reading an interesting article by my blogosphere friend Chris Elrod entitled “Why Can’t We Have Hymns?”, and I found his argument very interesting.

He writes,

“I truly believe that this is one area where the Church’s obsession with chasing culture has caused us to throw the baby out with the bath water. As a pastor of young families and 20-something art freaks I understand that the world is a different place today…there seems to rapant ADD and warped speed living. The general mantra of life today is “give it to me now the way I want it”. But following Christ doesn’t work that way…disipleship takes time and stretching. I’m afraid in our effort to reach society we have dumbed down many things in church…including the music. Instead of raising the bar for people to live life above this world…we have brought it all down to a level that reaks of mediocrity.”

Let me tell you why I feel his thoughts ring very true to ‘most’ of Christians and Churches today.
Up until just a few months ago, I had been the Worship Pastor at what is considered to be a Mega-Church. I, and my Music Director, had decided to introduce the hymn ‘O Worship The King’ (Chris Tomlin’s version) to the congregation. After singing the hymn the second week, I was told by the Pastor and Executive Pastor that we couldn’t do that song anymore. When I asked why I was told, “Because it is way over people’s heads, they can’t understand it”.

Now I will admit, we do have a large contingency of simple country folk around here. Heck, I was raised about 10 miles from here in a little town called Cut-N-Shoot Texas. But, this is by no means a community of a bunch of dumb rednecks. We still understand the english language.

The main problem with the Modern Chrisitan Society is that we have too many churches ‘Just Scratching the Surface’ of the Gospel. They have a tendency to stick to a 3 point sermon with a list of 5 things you can do to be a better husband, father, mother, wife, or parent.

Where is the discpleship? Where is the exploration of the deeper realms of God? Have we become too lazy in this drive thru and get it now culture?

Is this truly the state of Modern Christian Society? Have we become a culture of people who want the same formulaic psuedo Christian mumbo jumbo fed to us?