The New Stuff

The forty-two voice “Hallelujah! Kids Choir” presented their spring musical this evening. The production, “Who is like the Lord,” featured contemporary praise music and custom-crafted dialogue for our children and our church. The voices of youth and optimism filled the building as they sang and quoted scripture.

As usual, they made the leadership look stronger than we really are.

There were a few moments of adventure. Children made decisions to do things they never did during practice. It wasn’t possible to stop and correct. We just continued and enjoyed the creativity and responsiveness of those young hearts.

The music was difficult at times. Contemporary rhythms are hard for me to count and even harder for me to teach. For the most part, they grasped them immediately.

The parallel “Praise and Worship” format our church uses made our job easy. There was no disconnect between what we asked the children to do and what they hear on a regular basis in the worship services.

I know that some dismiss the contemporary praise and worship style as “7-11 music” (you sing the same seven words eleven times). I won’t deny that at first glance some of the music found in “P & W” services may come across as meager. After spending over 18 months as part of our church’s worship leadership team, I do not share the desire to dismiss the music as shallow and lacking in life-changing content.

However, I do reflect on my journey into this “new stuff.”

The church culture that nurtured me reflected the strong work ethic of the members who lived through two great defining events. The Great Depression shook the nation to its very core. A whole nation found itself having to work everyday just to get by. There was no guarantee about tomorrow. There was only today.

This prepared the nation for a complete commitment needed to win a war fought on a global battlefield. Every sector of national life rewrote its purpose to include doing what was necessary to defeat the enemy. Families sent loved ones off facing the fear the generation they birthed and nurtured would not return.

The church needed a hope to hold as well as a hope that held.

Our music gave promise. We sang of our hope in the hereafter. “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” and “Shall We Gather At the River” recently comforted me when I questioned how much journey was left in my life.

My childhood memories recall songs that exhorted us. “We’ll Work ‘Till Jesus Comes,” “Are Ye Able,” and “Toiling On” ingrained in our heart that free grace is but one side of God’s coin of the realm. The other side reminded us we had a responsibility to do our part in building the kingdom.

To be sure, we had our “Praise and Worship” music. “Holy, Holy, Holy” still reverberates in my soul as does “To God Be The Glory.” The music of my heritage often made great theological statements. Some were a whole systematic theology as in the marathon hymn “One Day.”

A few of the hymns made the transition. They are still part of our church’s musical literature. “Amazing Grace” is destined to live on through the ages. “It Is Well With My Soul” will comforts the heart of the grieving and discouraged for generations to come.

Whether we sang songs of testimony (“Whosoever Surely Meaneth Me”), songs of divine protection (“No, Never Alone”), or words intended to encourage a decision (“Only Trust Him”), these songs became a part of my spiritual heritage. Sometimes I miss them. They are “the stuff” of my religious heritage.

One of the biggest raps against the generation that leads the church today is that it is selfish. Some say we want it given to us and we believe the church ought to pay for it.

If that charge is true, then the accusatory voices should take great comfort in the “Praise and Worship” format. Every time we meet, our musicians remind us that community church worship isn’t about us. Whether we sing “What A Mighty God We Serve,” “Lord, I Lift Your Name On High,” “Awesome God,” “Holy Ground,” or “Majesty,” we are humbled in the presence of the Almighty.

I suspect that some Sundays I am not alone when I miss “my stuff.” I get nostalgic for the songs of my youth. However, when I am in the position of worship leader and I see the church energized by music designed to replace the issues of this world with eternal ones, I am loath to return to that more familiar worship format, as comfortable as it was.

My children’s choir stood before more than 200 worshippers last night and proclaimed, “This God, He is our God.” They sang, “He knows my name.” The children’s voices literally shouted “Nobody” when they asked, “Who is like the Lord.” A young man led the night off with a contemporary systematic theology of his own as he sang “I believe in a risen Savior.” A relationship with the divine was affirmed when they stated, “Jesus, you are my best friend.”

I may miss “my stuff,” but the “new stuff” I have in common with the children of my church is a reminder to me. Childhood biblical lessons, resting on scripture and set to music, still serve me well. That style of teaching works today, regardless whether the rhythm is accented with a trap set and a few bass guitar riffs