An Interesting Couple of Months

My wife and I have been going through a bit of a transition for the last 5 weeks relating to our church.

Some background that might be relevant to this story:

• Our church, which we just started attending 2 years ago this month, has had an "Early Service" for just shy of 3 years. Apparently it wasn't easy to get set up. This is a 150-year-old church I'm talking about here where most of the session members in the church grew up together some 60 to 70 years ago.
• Last summer, our pastor left for a calling at a church in North Carolina. An interim was brought in about the first of December 2006.
• This Spring, our former praise team leader KDC announced she was leaving the praise team. Shortly after that, she told us that she and her husband had decided to start looking at other churches. KDC is a 5th generation member of our church.
• A new praise team leader was brought in at the beginning of August.
• While people at the church may say that they feel our "Early Service" is moving forward and is successful, a large percentage are scared of it being called "Contemporary" and for that matter don't want a "Contemporary" service even though they continue to deny this but we continue to hear backhanded comments about it through the grapevine.
• One of the things that attracted us to this church was that the Praise Team at the "Early Service" was singing songs we enjoyed -- because the vast majority of them were contemporary.

Now we're sort of at a crossroads. There have been a lot of hurt feelings in the past few months because of some issues a lot of people at the church have been dealing with for a long time. There have been and still are some hurt feelings because of things that were and weren't said during the hiring process of the new praise team leader.

Around that time we lost another member of the "Praise Team" because she and her husband felt that our church was no longer a good fit for them. So in the process, the Praise Team has lost a very special feel to it that had been key in developing a close bond between the members. And it lost two very special people, who I would go to the wall for any day.

At first my wife and I decided we'd try to tough it out even though we weren't too sure of everything that was going on and how we felt about it. After a few practices with the new praise team leader, it was evident that this was going to be a very bumpy trip down "Music-we-don't-want-to-sing-because-it-just-don't-feel-right Lane" with no evident end in sight. My wife was frustrated with that and other things. I had been running the sound for the Praise Team and the "Early Service." I got frustrated not only with the fact that she was frustrated, but also for other various reasons.

So we decided to take a break. It's been five weeks now.

We went to our "Traditional Service" a few weeks ago. I remembered very quickly why I have always felt somewhat of a disconnect with God in the traditional church setting. It is so regimented; the recitation makes you feel like a robot; and it is just stuffy. There is no inspiration to it. I don't feel like it allows me to be in touch with God as closely and to worship him comfortably, in a way I want to communicate with him. Our "Early Service" started off making me feel so much closer to God than I ever have in church. I loved that experience. I love being able to talk to God and have a worship experience with him that I enjoy. That may sound selfish, but I don't think people should be forced to all worship God with the same songs, the same recitations, and the same monotone methods week in ,week out.

I also enjoy being able to sing songs that are written in a language that makes sense in modern times. I know there are people that love the traditional old hyms. I've never been a big fan of that. I like the contemporary stuff.

That word in itself scares alot of people who grew up in traditional church settings. We're seeing it first hand at our church.

We went back to the "Early Service" this morning. It was weird. The new praise team leader has changed up the Doxology from what we used to call the Funkology because it had a killer bassline to some really singsongy, showtuney version. I couldn't sing it. I just shook my head dumbfounded. None of the songs that were sung this morning had any relation to the message of the Sermon at all -- which was something that we had been working on establishing more and more of until all the recent changes.

Now we're not sure what to do.

We have a terrific,wonderful, close-knit group of friends in our Sunday School class who are some of the greatest people we have ever met. We have great discussions and studies in our class; we have all grown together spiritually and been there to support each other through bad times and share each other's joys in good times. We have each other over to our respective houses for various events like Super Bowl parties or Halloween parties. Several of the couples from our class went on a trip to the mountains a few weekends ago, ourselves included, and had a blast.

We don't want to be disconnected from that element. But we're so frustrated with the worship styles right now at the church and some other people's attitudes toward those.

Our only temporary solution for the time being is to pray for guidance from God and know that he will help lead us down the path that he knows is best for our souls and spirit.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Isaiah 40:31 (NLT) "The Lord is the everlasting God, The creator of all the Earth, He never grows weak or weary, No one can measure the depths of His understanding, He gives power to the weak, and strength to the powerless, Even youth will become weak and tired, And young men will fall in exhaustion, But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength, They will soar high on wings like eagles, They will run and not grow weary, They will walk and not faint"

It kinda seems appropriate to keep that in mind as we go through this transition.