Quote:
Originally Posted by votivesoul
I invited a friend and co-worker to my church who came from a different Christian background.
He arrived early, during the time when our church prays before service, and someone decided to start playing Skillet over the sound system for some unknown reason.
It was very disturbing to him. His statement was "The Holy Spirit inspires peacefulness. This kind of music isn't holy" (I'm paraphrasing since this was several years back).
I took what he said to heart. I'm not against a single genre music, per se. But I am against the idea of thinking we can just do whatever we want with "our music" while demanding that the people we are trying to win to the Lord should "just deal with it".
My church lost the chance to minister to my friend and co-worker, because of the music.
Currently, I am trying to win a different co-worker, who grew up in a very conservative, hymnal only Baptist church. Getting her to come to my church and getting her past the contemporary, sometimes vapid Pentecostal music, is going to be a big challenge.
I wish it wasn't so.
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Thanks for your response Votivesoul. I have a couple of comments for your consideration:
1. There are many people with many varied musical tastes and backgrounds in this world. I believe God has churches with many various tastes in music for this very purpose. Perhaps you could find another church in your area that has musical tastes that are closer to those of the people that you would like to win, unless of course you are trying to win them to your church and not just to Jesus (not meant to be an accusation, just know that this happens, sometimes without our fully knowing this is what we are doing).
2. I am not a huge skillet fan, I like some of their stuff in small doses, but I know of churches that specialize in this genre of music whose purpose it is to reach those to whom this type of music speaks (mainly the younger population). I don't believe this is wrong? Does your church have an outreach plan that includes and targets specific demographics or is it scattershot like most apostolic churches (in my experience anyway)? While we want to reach everyone, it is not always possible to please everyone, and a targeted outreach plan can help solve this issue (at least until you can get some of these people to mature enough in the Lord that they can perform their own targeted outreach).
3. I invited a friend to church several times and he ended up coming to our church dedication service (Nathaniel Wilson and Myles Young ministered, and Pastor Young sang). It was a great service, he loved the music, the preaching, the atmosphere of the presence of God, but he was deterred by the formality of our dress (he attends a non-denom church in the Portland, OR metro area, and area known for being casual). He could not get past the fact that everybody was wearing a tie, and when I said he wouldn't have to wear a tie his comment was, "I could never feel comfortable in that atmosphere." So why do we have to wear ties? We don't, there is not a shred of Bible for it, and yet we possibly turn people away who are not comfortable with this or perhaps do not have the money to dress in this fashion. On the other hand, there are people who truly believe we should put on our very best when we attend the house of God. So, to whom should we minister? Clearly it is difficult to do both.
So it is not just music, but culture that welcome or repel people. We don't always have control over that, but we should do our best to exercise control over the things we can. Like I suggested, is there another church in your area that you can point these people to? Perhaps start with a Bible study and use that time to discuss some of these issues? There may be another route you can take to get these souls to hear the rest of the story without being turned back by something as difficult to affect as culture.
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