Men in Ties Singing Hymns
It has not been cool to wear a tie in church for a long time. Personally, I have always hated ties and only wear one at Easter and job interviews. The only people who seem to wear ties anymore are Mormons and a few of the older men in the back rows. They have this funny idea that dressing up for church shows respect for God and his church. Mmmmm...
Hymns are out too of course. Since the 80's, choruses and new praise songs are in. Virtually every modern evangelical church does them, and many got rid of the old hymnals entirely, relying now on powerpoint and video. The argument is: we must appeal to the young, the next generation. All well and good, I suppose. The problem is : it's not working.
According to folks like George Barna and Josh McDowell, the hip approach to "do church" has resulted in something like 75% of youth turning from God by the time they are 18. Divorce, partying, profanity, cheating, sex-for-fun-all are worse than ever. In short, the rock and roll generation is farther from God than ever, in spite of Chris Tomlin, U2, and wearing shorts to church. Modern youth ministry has simply failed our kids, inspite of Jars of Clay concerts and podcasts. The umpteenth edition of the new youth Bible just doesn't matter.
We have lost the war for the hearts and minds of the next generation.
You know, the coat-and-tie generation (hereafter referred to as the CT's) won a world war against unimaginable evil and tyranny. The hymn singers ended slavery and fought for civil rights (Martin Luther King , minister and tie-wearer led the way. Heck, even Jesse Jackson wore a tie.) It wasn't the long haired hip Jesus movement who opened crisis pregnancy centers, it was the CT generation. And, it was they who published and produced the new hip Bibles and CD's of the modern Jesus movement.
My point is this: the CT generation did a tremendous amount of good for the cause of Christ. Clutching their KJV bibles with boring black covers, they opened mission fields like China and India. With amazing courage, they spread the gospel all over the earth.
So let's not be too quick to turn our backs on all that has gone before, thinking our new, cool worship styles and latest hip Bibles will do the trick while we light the candles and listen to our I-pods
Maybe instead, we ought to sing a few hymns.
Or even wear a tie.
Hymns are out too of course. Since the 80's, choruses and new praise songs are in. Virtually every modern evangelical church does them, and many got rid of the old hymnals entirely, relying now on powerpoint and video. The argument is: we must appeal to the young, the next generation. All well and good, I suppose. The problem is : it's not working.
According to folks like George Barna and Josh McDowell, the hip approach to "do church" has resulted in something like 75% of youth turning from God by the time they are 18. Divorce, partying, profanity, cheating, sex-for-fun-all are worse than ever. In short, the rock and roll generation is farther from God than ever, in spite of Chris Tomlin, U2, and wearing shorts to church. Modern youth ministry has simply failed our kids, inspite of Jars of Clay concerts and podcasts. The umpteenth edition of the new youth Bible just doesn't matter.
We have lost the war for the hearts and minds of the next generation.
You know, the coat-and-tie generation (hereafter referred to as the CT's) won a world war against unimaginable evil and tyranny. The hymn singers ended slavery and fought for civil rights (Martin Luther King , minister and tie-wearer led the way. Heck, even Jesse Jackson wore a tie.) It wasn't the long haired hip Jesus movement who opened crisis pregnancy centers, it was the CT generation. And, it was they who published and produced the new hip Bibles and CD's of the modern Jesus movement.
My point is this: the CT generation did a tremendous amount of good for the cause of Christ. Clutching their KJV bibles with boring black covers, they opened mission fields like China and India. With amazing courage, they spread the gospel all over the earth.
So let's not be too quick to turn our backs on all that has gone before, thinking our new, cool worship styles and latest hip Bibles will do the trick while we light the candles and listen to our I-pods
Maybe instead, we ought to sing a few hymns.
Or even wear a tie.
posted by Rob | 10:23 AM
13 Comments:
To quote Russell Casse, the crop-duster, "I'm Back!"
It's hard to not respond to your dirge over modern praise and worship music.
I do think that there has been a
4th Great Awakening and "praise songs" are the new songs to the Lord. The Cloth-Tie (CT) crowd was often resistant to what God was doing in a new generation of believers. Though some CT-ers were serious about their ministry (Bill Bright, Billy Graham), but they were often the exception rather than the rule.
The CT-ers did help win WW II. However, by 1960 most evangelical churches were “KJV-only”, Bible-banging, conservatives who spoke shamelessly against Catholics. John Kennedy had to speak to evangelicals to quiet the accusations that he would submit the United States Government to papal authority. The same conservative congregations resisted the Civil Rights efforts. The Civil Rights movement was mostly manned by black Christians and supported by Northern liberal idealists (the New Left). Religious white congregations were mostly quiet or vocally opposed to civil rights. Only embarrassment and time dragged a belated apology from the Southern Baptist Convention 1995! I am still very aware that my own conservative Evangelical Congregation does not celebrate the brilliance of my brother in Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., on his memorial. Not a peep on Martin Luther King’s day 2007!
In regards to CT Mormons ... I left the Mormon church in 1972 for many reasons, but one of them was the widespread racism. My priesthood class teacher wanted to ‘plug the SOB n-gg-rs with my shotgun’. This was the day after the Black Panthers announced a planned visit to Salt Lake Temple Square. There is a bit of ‘Dixie’ in Utah CT Mormonism still. (Note: I am aware of the irony that I now attend an evangelical church, which is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, though it is not very Baptist.)
When I was traveling to sing in churches and Christian colleges in 1980-81, my little music duo spent winters in the South singing mostly to tie-wearing, white congregations. Separate but equal was still their preference -- to their shame. I would visit small black churches on my free Sundays. What wonderful hand-clapping, body-swaying praise music! At that time the black churches still had some old folk (and I mean OLD folk) who led in african-style call-and-respond worship. It was the only godly thing happening in the South as far as I could tell.
I defend the several decade long movement toward new songs of worship and praise. This revival was enlivened by a youthful Jesus movement lead by converted long-hairs like Barry McGuire, John Fischer, Tom Coombs, Randy Stonehill, Phil Keaggy, and Steve Green. None wore ties … except as headbands. While the Jesus Movement of the 1960’s is often accused of being mile wide and an inch deep, it did leave its mark. There are now many Vineyard congregations and Calvary Chapels. The movement inspired new translations and paraphrases of the Bible to replace the KJV. Remember how ubiquitous “The Living Bible” was? Rarely was it tucked under the arm of a CT churchmember.
Saying ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in prayers, reading only the KJV, wearing suits and ties to church, and quietly singing 100 year-old songs are not the life blood of this new generation of Christians. They know the forgiving grace of a long-haired Messiah-Savior. Many the 60's Jesus-freaks are now elders of churches.
I vividly remember an exciting 1975 worship lead by Karen Lafferty at the Calvary Chapel in Riverside California. (Karen Lafferty wrote “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God”.) 10,000 20-something year-olds were singing praise songs to Jesus. While there have been many missteps and excesses among the Jesus Movement adherents, the big scandals of the 1980’s were more often CTer’s like as Marjoe Gortner, Peter Popoff, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.
God has reinvigorated his American Church in the 20th century through oppress black believers, longhaired Jesus freaks, and a few CTers.
I think that you are really complaining about different phenomenon associated with revivals. One cannot be a grandchild of God. The Book of Judges seem to relate that God-seeking hearts seemed to skip a generation. Vibrant faith is not easily passed to a new generation. The Kids of Jesus Freaks may be be at risk.
Oh. "Robin Hood: Men in Tights"?
My two cents
My personal weakness is my connection of hymns and formal dress with my former religious experience as a Mormon. Now as an evangelical Christian I shy away from formal things, they are sometimes painful reminders of former times of outward ceremony with little attention to the heart of worship.
However, there is value in using these outward symbols to renew attitudes of reverence and holiness in the worship of the Lord. A danger in dressing down and singing new style songs is the loss of this reverence and holiness before God. There is no denying that God is love and does not want anyone to be excluded by the piety of believers from coming unto him, but He is also holy. The atmosphere of the community of believers should be welcoming to all, including the man wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt; and the man that is wearing a jacket and necktie.
Likewise, there should also be a balance of fresh new songs and the depth of traditional hymns. It is hard to find a compromise that will make everyone comfortable. There should be a measure of discomfort in worship though. The addition of one more ingredient beyond ties and t-shirts is needed. It is brotherly love. A needed glue to cover the discomfort one might feel by the two extremes. Those who wish for more traditional and reverent worship and also those who are of the come as you are crowd with their modern music. These peripheral issues can divide congregations when one side is pushed completely out and that is the real danger, disunity of the body.
I think that we are missing the main point here.. focusing on the externals rather than the heart. It is not the worship style that will bring true conversion or even keep people coming. The worship style or dress is not the cause of many young people leaving the church. A true child of God will seek out the fellowship of believers, even amongst severe persecution, let alone boring hymns. It is not necessarily true that we should always go back to the way it used to be, but hymns usually do have clear, rich, doctrinal truths that are more exalting to Christ. It is not about how it makes us feel or even how comfortable it makes the unbeliever feel (by the way, should the church really cater towards unbelievers? or is its purpose to feed the sheep?).
I guess the bottom line is that Christ builds his church and that we can do all we want to attract unbelievers and false converts, but in the end it is Christ's true sheep that will follow him. If you have to keep a person going to church by creating an emotional response or making the church like the world so that they really don't have to feel uncomfortable or even change their behavior, then all you are doing is filling the church with goats.
Amen Emily!
I agree that this conversation is focusing on the externals. I was reading in Exodus this morning and was wondering about God directing Moses to have super beautiful, ornate costumes created for Aaron and his sons, to then just sprinkle them with blood. In my mind, I couldn't figure out why He would "ruin" such beautiful outfits, splattering them with rust colored blood stains, and as I though, I was gently reminded that it's not about what we think we should look like, is it? Such beautiful outward appearances still required sprinkling with blood in order to be holy. I think that God wants our hearts to be pure and holy(throught His blood) and that He desires holiness more than what we think we should give.
I experienced several churches between Maranatha and the Calvary Chapel that I'm now a part of and some of those churches made me feel excluded based on my clothing. I think that we need to avoid making people feel turned off by something WE are doing or not doing and let the Holy Spirit do His work. There needs to be a certain amount of being all things to all people in our lives, but I agree with Emily when she brings us back to church being a place for the feeding of the sheep. We should not be stumbling people, but we need to not isolate ourselves in a fashion bubble or a music bubble that drives a wedge between us and the world. Let Christ be the block of offense, not your tie! :) We are to be in the world, but not of the world and not out of touch with the world- how can we reconcile people to Christ if we can't relate to them or we stand out as oddballs?
There are some amazing hymns in those old dusty books, but I can tell you that those weren't what reached me for Christ. It was the relationships that I saw, the love of the church and the newer music that truly touched my soul.
A
a,
I think r and v were both discussing internals ... though they generalize two generations of Christians based on their external identities. CTers represented the WW II generation and long-hairs or Jesus Freaks being the 60's generation). But they were talking internals.
r said the contemporary church lacks something that perhaps the CT-folk have. Maybe 'fear of God' is lacking in the casual 60's crowd. r was looking back to a generation that seemed to understand 'Fear of the Lord' and personal responsibility a bit more. That is internal.
v said that many of the CT-churches in the 60's lacked some serious internal guiding truths (i.e., racism). The 60's crowd brought a new internal life that the church had been missing.
Both had internals in mind was they broadly labeled the two generations by their external appearance.
They seemed to agree that something is still not quite right with contemporary churches where the "60ers" now lead. Most kids of a new generation do not embrace the faith of their parents. Why?
What does the "faith of their parents" look like? Does it go beyond church on Sunday...can the kids see further than the externals? Is what they are being taught by the lives of their parents, school teachers and text books, and friends supportive of a deep faith? The church cannot replace the parents...whose responsibility it is to train their children. And do the parents live a life the children would want to pursue? What is the marriage like...is one of the parents bitter or angry? These are the things that I would imagine most influencing the lives of the youth. Some people might have stopped training their children...trusting others to do it for them. Some are so busy and distracted...
Are Christians seeking to train their children to be responsible? And how much time do Christian parents spend on a daily basis with their children (doing things like talking to them)?
Tori,
Bingo! I think you win.
Great comments for the most part, especially the last few-thank you Tori, Emily, and A. That was my point, of course. It was not really a criticism of modern church praise and worship-I play it, sing it, lead it myself! It is only when we rely on it and think it is the magic bullet, along with candles and Birkenstocks, that we make the error that is costing us the next generation.
Certainly, the generations before had their share of negatives e.g. racism, judgemntal attitudes, legalism, etc. But they still did a lot for the kingdom of God. The post-modern church is too quick to judge them, the very thing the pm generation wants to avoid.
Love God, love the truth, love your family. Do that, and everything else falls into place.
Rob
PS The reason many conservatives and evangelicals do not embrace MLK Day and his legacy with open arms is his personal legacy. No one denies his greatness in the leading of the civil rights movement, but revalations of his sexual escapades, foul language, etc. in his private life(documented in several biographies by other black leaders)tarnished his image as a dynamic man of faith. Also, his widow's support of Gay Rights further distanced conservatives (interestingly, his daughter does NOT support the gay agenda.)
Rob,
I thought I would wait for someone else to defend Martin Luther King, Jr. ... To my dismay no one said anything. I cannot wait any longer.
I am dismayed at your casual dismissal of Christians I admire (Jimmy Carter, MLK Jr). This is a case of the Christian moralist judging the Christian altruist. I am pondering this topic, perhaps with too much formality ... here -> "Is Christianity a moralistic or altruistic religion?"
You suggest that Evangelicals are saying "his personal life has moral failures, so let's discount the importance of his public life to our Christian community."
Jesus was generally quick to forgive those with moral failures. He was equally quick to judge the moral-but-selfish person who could care less about another individual.
If I am assessing the Christian witness of Dr. King, who had moral shortcomings, and Kenneth Lay of Enron, who seemed to have all the good moral trappings of an evangelical Christian but despised the workers in his 'fields' --- I might bet on Mr. Lay being the one left outside the gates of heaven. Morality in life has some benefit, but despising or loving your neighbor has a much bigger consequence before God.
Probably Mrs. King suffered under her husband's infidelities, but they remained married. It was revealed in the 1970's that the FBI had hired women to seduce MLK to discredit him. While there have been two books that have 'documented' affairs and the FBI tried to cast aspersions, there is no strong evidence that he did have affairs. In any case, I am not sure how I would do if the FBI was hiring women to seduce me.
It is true that MLK Jr. is judged harshly by conservative evangelicals because of his alleged infidelities. But it is also true that conservative evangelicals hold Ronald Reagan in high regard inspite of his alleged infidelities. Ronald Reagan was married to Jane Wyman for twelve years and supposedly had many affairs before their divorce (documented in several books). A subsequent affair after the divorce left Nancy Davis 'with child'. He proposed to her and they married while she was several months pregnant.
I think the generally negative view of MLK Jr. in conservative evangelical circles has not really been based on his infidelities, that is just rationalization. It has always been based on racism. While the more modern evangelical will deny overt racism, there is a subtle remaining dislike of Martin Luther King Jr that is rooted in the racist past.
In my opinion, Martin Luther King, Jr is the most important person for the betterment of our nation in the last century. He help white Christian American get past its despicable racism. I am very grateful for his two decade effort. I would have been very much less inclined to become a Christian if conservative Southern Evangelicals had kept their aparthied system in place. God has been good.
Vince-I would hardly characterize evangelicals not liking Carter, etc. for "casual" reasons. There are very GOOD reasons for rejecting his actions and ideas. Also, I was merely explaining WHY many people have trouble calling it MLK day, not defending them. It is easy to dismiss criticisms of heroes, as fans of Reagan probably do. I just think there is justified cause to celebrate Human Rights Day, rather than celebrate the man.
By the way, I have read biographical accounts quoting transcripts of King's private conversations with colleages, and they are incredibly foul-far beyond what you would expect from a minister (who wore a tie by the way)
Rob
I have got to give this up. We are such political opposites that you bring out the polemic writing in me. I know you are at the political center in Utah, but anywhere else ???
I think any point I would make on this subject has already been said.
For some wonderful music that takes old hymns and puts them to new music check out "Indelible Grace". They have richly blessed Dave and I this past year. We recommend all 4 of the CD's in the series. I think Emily and Tori can also agree with us on this:)
Laura Farris (former Swank)
www.igracemusic.com
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