Choir Note – Sunday, September 22, 2013
I had quite the experience last Saturday evening… I attended a service at Rick Warren’s church in Orange County. It was definitely eye-opening. A couple observations from the service:
It was man-focused. The music was all about the performance. The high-def live stream up on the screens zoomed in and out on the drummer, the bass player, the soloists, the guitarists and the congregation. I was totally and completely distracted away from the message of the songs.
It was devoid of masculinity. The men involved in the music service were effeminate and emotional. There was no manliness about them, and they did not portray a masculine spirit. I did not want to be associated as that kind of a man. I wasn’t getting the sense of David’s mighty men up there on stage. Most of the involvement was from the women.
Almost no one participated. We would not have known it was congregational singing if they had not said, “Let’s all sing together.” We stood together, but when the contemporary song service was going on, I looked around and almost no one was singing. I mean… almost no one! Of the 200 people I could clearly see around me, I would say about 30 of them were kind of mouthing the words, and maybe 4 (ladies) were really into it. There definitely was no passion, and any passion seemed to come from the hype (the lights, the music, the video pan…) rather than the truth of the song.
It was sad. My wife started crying in the first song because tens of thousands of people are assembling every week to this, and they are so far from where God wants them to be, according to His Word. It was a wake-up call to me to once again be extremely diligent about intentionally worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
–Bro. Ryan
MUSIC QUESTIONS – If you are missing any music, please let Mrs. Carla know by asking her directly or dropping a quick note in her box. She is diligently sorting all our music and we want to know exactly what we have and what we are missing. Further, if you do not have a black performance folder, please see her, as well.