FBFI "Why we are still here"

How is Sharper Iron doing? Compared to 2011 in that link Jim, things look a little thin around here.

[Andrew K]

Mark_Smith wrote:

To me, the entire issue with “convergents” is about 2 things. First, if you want to loosen your music standards from traditional worship, and you start from the BJU/Maranatha/etc position, you will start singing Getty and Sovereign Grace songs. Maybe you will stop there. Maybe not.

Take out your church’s hymnal sometime and look at the dates of composition on a handful of the pietistic, revival songs. Most of those songs were considered a “loosening” of the traditional worship standards long before the Gettys. In many cases deservedly so, might I add.

Can you do me a favor? Can you list 5 songs that you love to use in worship at church right now?

You dance well. You know what I mean…

Membership. I used that word in the broad general meaning of “people who post here”. You took it to mean “pay to be a member”. Nice dance away from the point that, compared to years ago, SI is a ghost town.

Jim broke his neck about 20 years back. He walks usually with crutches.

[Bert Perry]

Jim broke his neck about 20 years back. He walks usually with crutches.

Dance is a “figurative term” for “moves around the topic of discussion to write about what he wants to rather than what he was asked about.”

As for walking with crutches, how on earth would I know that and use it as an insult? I have never met the man, or ANYONE at Sharper Iron. Why would I insult him?

What Andrew is trying to point out to you is that hymnody has changed quite a bit over the centuries. Real rough draft, but you’ve got the Gregorian chants of the middle ages, along with popular songs of that day (see Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, also Canterbury Tales hints at this) that sometimes (but not generally) hinted on spiritual topics. Until the Reformation, laity were prohibited from singing in church, believe it or not. Then you’ve got the Reformation hymns of the Lutherans (some of my favorites) paralleled by the Geneva Psalter of the Reformed, then the early age of hymns in the 17th and 18th centuries going into the Wesleyan hymns and those of Watts, then revival songs of the mid-19th century, Victorian hymns (e.g. In the Garden), then 20th century hymns that tend to be in the revivalist bent, but with simplified harmonies. Long and short of it is that your hymnal has tons of different genre, and your pastor probably has a preference of a subset of one of these.

(writing as a tenor, the best stuff for singing is really from the 16th & 17th centuries, in my not humble enough opinion)

Each major innovation in music incited its own “worship wars” in the way that we’ve seen with southern Gospel in the 20th century, rap, rock & roll, and CCM. A lot of the arguments are even about the same, and IMO many derive from the fact that time gets rid of the mediocre tunes. For example, the Wesley brothers are said to have written thousands of hymns, but even a Wesleyan/Methodist hymnal today has only a couple dozen of them at most. What would we say today if we saw some of the worst? Probably about the same thing we do with CCM, IMO.

Also similar through time is the fact that God appears to have used all these styles to bring a lot of people to Him, so even if I don’t like, say, Michael W. Smith’s “Breathe”, God may use that.

Modern songs I like? “Cornerstone”, “Revelation Song”, and such come to mind. Now the trick, though, with your argument is that if we’re going to argue that something is “loosened” or degraded, we have to have criteria on which that evaluation is made. Perhaps it is incumbent upon you to provide evidence that, say, use of the 12 bar blues in music in church is wrong (again, no guilt by association or personal attacks, please), or that drums are wrong (Psalm 150: 5), or music with a beat is wrong (again, Psalm 150), etc..

To put it gently, I’m not going to be holding my breath waiting for a Biblical, rhetorically sound argument along those lines. Scripture simply doesn’t go there.

I never said the Blues Riff was bad. Never. I never said a beat was inherently sinful. All I wrote was what I perceived to be what the writers of the “congruence” articles meant by “congruent”.

I will ask why you want to being the Blues Riff into the church.

I will say, if you stand up on the platform looking like everyone at the CMA awards, or acting like a worldly musician, you have a problem in the church. You see, rather than impacting culture with the new life in Christ, too many are bringing in the culture to the church because that is what they are comfortable with.

I also think it is a grave error to confuse “worship” with “music”, and that is what almost the entire evangelical community does. Now, many won’t admit it, but it is. Most evangelical church services, especially the ones at the “successful” churches, are 30-45 minutes music. Maybe more. Then the pastor comes out in skinny jeans, and gives a talk on “5 Ways to a Better You”. That whole thing is what I have a problem with.

Look, if a church wants to sing some Getty Songs, fine. But the evangelical church is WAY PAST Getty. My main concern is Hillsong, Elevation Church, Bethel Worship, Kari Jobe.

You bring up “Revelation Song”. Man, WAKE UP. That is pure Charismatic music. From Christ for the Nations. Maybe you are ok with it. I wasted 15 years with the Charismatics. I wish to God that I could have the time back. But I can’t. There is NOTHING that the Charismatic church does that we should be emulating or using.

We would concede that SI is a limited number of people, but we might wonder what the relative interaction among those people might be. Obviously as a non-FBFI member, I can’t judge FBFI on that score. What I can say, though, is that on this forum, we have visits from everyone from KJVO advocates to some evangelical feminists, which just might be a broader spectrum than FBFI enjoys.

While I don’t believe in diversity for its own sake, diverse views can, of course, be a great way of checking our assumptions. It’s the first step towards being able to argue the opposing point coherently and avoid straw men.

is the evangelical feminist who posted here?

I’ve heard that the introduction of the piano to accompany and eventually replace the organ was resisted because the piano was the musical instrument associated with bars and brothels.