So after the rant in my last entry, I feel that I have had lots of time to mull over what it was that I was ranting about and properly consider just how important my ranting was.
Honestly, probably not that important at all, in-fact possibly a little childish. Each human being has been uniquely created and therefore we are very diverse, with many different things that will float our boats.
Recently I was given the Kings of Leon’s new album ‘Only by the night’ as a birthday prize, and its great. I must say in the beginning I did have a little dilemma with an album that contained a hit single called ‘sex on fire’, but having got over that hurdle the album is musically fantastic. Something tells me though that most Chopin and Tchaikovsky lovers will probably disagree with me on that point, and most likely hate the kings to the core. What is quite interesting is that there is probably Chopin lovers and Kings of Leon lovers alike in many of our churches today. So how then are we meant to come to a compromise regarding the style of music we use in our corporate praise as a congregation, so that we are sympathetic to everyone’s likes and dislikes?
The answer is quite simply this; we don’t compromise in order to keep everyone happy. We can’t compromise to keep everyone happy because quite simply it’s not about us! In critiquing the liturgical model of his national church and indeed many other churches Soren Kierkegaard argued that God is the audience in worship. Fuzz Kitto (http://www.spirited.net.au/) explicates Kirkegaard by saying that the congregation are the performers in worship.
We are not the audience, and worship does not happen for our entertainment. Worship is for God alone!
So is suppose the big question is does God prefer the Kings of Leon or Chopin? Something tells me though there may be bigger issues on God’s agenda, things such as the state of the hearts of his people and the sincerity of their praise! Maybe if we spent more time getting these things right then we could move on to things that are a little less important in due course.
