Our Musical Preferences and Splitting Up Church Servies

The church is a beautiful place!

It is a place where broken people can come and gather together and find solace.

It is a place where we come gather with people that we really have nothing else in common with, other than our need for a Savior, and a need to be rescued from our sins.

It’s no wonder that sometimes our churches are filled with fighting and bickering. It should not come as a surprise.

But the thing we need to remember is that we should not give up on each other and this thing called the church too easily. But I fear most churches have done just that.

See here is the thing…when I see a church that has a sign on it that says things like ‘Traditional service 8:30 AM and a contemporary service at 11:00 AM’ I can derive two things from that church: #1. The members of that church are not truly fighting for each other and they are not truly loving each other.

How can I say that? Because we have allowed music to dictate who we fellowship with.

Let’s think about this for a moment. A traditional service has mostly ‘older songs.’ and a bulk of the people who go to that service are ‘older.’ A church that does this has isolated older people from younger people…this is anti-Biblical.

Titus 2:3-8

3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

6 Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. 7 In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness 8 and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

Older people are to help train and guide younger people, and if we have all of the ‘older’ people in a traditional service because ‘they don’t like the new stuff’ then how in the world are we going to have proper biblical training?

Let’s look at contemporary services for a moment these are attended mostly by younger people who have a passion and a zeal to be on mission…and what we’ve done by splitting the services is we have isolated our young adults from the older adults and this is anti-Biblical. Older adults sometimes need to see and hear encouragement from younger adults, and if we pit the older against the younger (which is what we’ve done by setting these types of services up) we will lose spiritual battles.

The second thing I see when I see things like this is that the pastor is not truly shepherding well. That a pastor is allowing his congregation split up over musical preferences proves that #1. the church in general is not truly concerned about biblical teaching and is more concerned with what will make them happy. We narcissistically chose our church services based upon our own desires and what will please our ears.
And #2 shows that the pastor is more concerned with pleasing his church members desires and preferences than leading them into a holy walk with Jesus Christ.

We when go to church #1 we should be longing for a desire to see Jesus made much of and #2 we should come with a loving and willing heart to serve others. That means dying to our own desires and letting our rights be put on the back burner. That includes musical preferences. CHURCH IS NOT ABOUT YOU AND ME! It’s about JESUS! Jesus said that we must love and serve one another. Are we doing that by bickering and complaining about the music services? I think not.

If you leave a church or even go to a church based upon your musical preferences you are not truly interested in living a biblical lifestyle, you are interested in living a selfish/self centered lifestyle. A life that is all about you and your desires not Jesus. If you walk away from a church because the MUSIC is either too loud and hip or too boring and slow you are a shallow believer, and if you get angry at other believers over the musical preferences in your church and stay mad…I’m going to even call into question your salvation. Because if music is all it takes for you to get angry it reveals there is a heart condition that needs to be dealt with. I am truly alarmed at how quickly people can get so upset over something as small as musical preferences, on both sides.

When it comes to music in the church and our rights in the church in general we should be fighting for one another more. We should be willing to lay down our lives to help someone else. We should have a longing to help other members come to know and worship Jesus Christ, not just come in and want it to be all about our needs, wants, and desires. Being a Christian means we die to self and follow after what Jesus wants us to do. And I can think of no better way than to LOVE ONE ANOTHER by putting someone elses preferences above your own preferences.

I honestly think the only time you should have more than one service is due to space issues, and each service should look and feel exactly the same.