Modern & Traditional Music In The Church

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To begin this topic, I want to start with saying how much I respect those that are involved with church worship bands, and how much sympathy I have for them. There is so much that happens behind the scenes and off the stage that most people aren't aware of. It is a very tasking situation to provide music the same congregation every week, while trying to keep the experience fresh and exciting week after week. Not to mention, how much more difficult modern worship music has become, it is extremely time consuming to replicate what people expect to hear on many of these songs. Musicians spend a lot of time and money on purchasing the correct equipment to play the material, usually without receiving any financial compensation for their expenditures.  Outside of the hours of rehearsal time with the worship band, most musicians and singers have to spend hours of their personal time learning their respective parts to sing and play. All of this dedication takes place during the work week, while most involved are working full-time day jobs! Imagine this is your life week after week. It would be easy to see how participating in a worship band feels more and more like a job, rather than a ministry. Now, imagine this; you've logged countless hours in personal practice, band rehearsal, arrive to church at least two hours earlier than everyone else so you can squeeze in one more warm up before service, and now the moment finally arrives for the actual service and you sing and play your heart out. You look among the crowd and there is little to no response. The people seem disinterested in the songs. Once the service is over, you begin hearing unfavorable feedback about the music service. Welcome to the life of a worship team member. 

The worship team has the hardest job in a church service. If you think the pastor does, you're mistaken. The pastor in the modern church service, generally has one job. Most of the time, the pastor doesn't even greet the people until it's time for them to bring their sermon. I'm not saying that the pastor doesn't have the liberty to inject during any part of the service, as many do. The point is that the pastor doesn't have to do anything more than speak at their respective part of the service. Usually, when a pastor takes his place to speak, the crowd has been warmed and loosened to be attentive and receptive to the sermon. The atmosphere for a good service is made or broken by the work of the worship team. We aren't excluding the work of the Spirit within each service, we're just focusing on the "mechanics" of the human factor.

Each service, or gathering among fellow believers, there are two elements that govern the body. These two elements are "Emotional Leading" and "Spiritual Leading". Let's define what each of those mean.

Emotional Leading:
We are led by our emotions 99% of the time. There is nothing wrong with this, because God designed us to function this way. We make the mistake of trying separate our emotions from our spirit, as if the two are separate entities within us. This is simply not the case. Our spirit is who we really are. Our mortal body is the shell that incapsulates our true self. When our shell dies, our spirit is what remains. It is our spirit that lives for eternity. Emotions are the visible reactions of our spirit. Many times when someone gets excited and shouts or dances in a service, someone might say; "That person is in the flesh." What they mean by that statement, is the person is actually not feeling emotional or being led by the Spirit, but rather they are just putting on a show to get attention. This kind of thing can happen a lot more times then you'd hope. However, we see people making the same sort of judgement when someone is truly emotional about something concerning God. I've heard people say that they don't want people get caught up in their emotions, but rather they get caught up in the Spirit. Point and case in this topic, we must realize that visible emotions are derived from the spirit of a person, they are indicators a person's spiritual condition, you cannot "touch" one without affecting the other. Correct, you cannot influence the emotions of a person, without influencing their spirit. Likewise, you cannot influence a person's spirit, without influencing their emotions.

Spiritual Leading:
We realize how we are led by our emotions and how they are the window to our inner "spirit person", but what does it mean to be led by the Spirit?


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