|
|
|
What's So Great About that Awful Music? |
|
|
|
|
Maximizing the Arts
“Parties were more the order of the day –
and it didn’t matter what day it was. But by the power of God, I stayed
true to my commitment to make attending church a priority. And I made
it my mission to bring my unchurched friends with me. After several
failed attempts, I finally convinced one of my friends to come to
church with me one Sunday morning. But as we sat in that service, it
didn’t take long for me to realize that my friend was in a completely
unfamiliar and foreign environment. He couldn’t relate to what was
going on around him.
As I watched church through my friend’s
eyes, I understood for the first time why a vast majority of my friends
didn’t have any desire to go to church. Church simply held no interest
for them. The message didn’t connect with their world. The music was
weird and unfamiliar. And to them, the overall atmosphere was dull and
boring – even tedious. While the message may have been true, to my
friends it seemed completely irrelevant.
So as I sat there with
my lost and confused friend, I was forced to ask myself a difficult
question: “Why would any of my friends want to be part of something
like this?” The honest answer was that they wouldn’t. Although my
friend later accepted Christ, he never returned to that church with me.
And
his early growth as a Christ-follower was hindered because there was
not a creative church for him to connect with. I’ve often wondered how
my college experience would have been different if there had been a
church that reached out to my friends where they were. What if there
had been a church close by that intrigued them enough to make them want
to return week after week? What kind of impact could one creative,
compelling, exciting and culturally-relevant church have had on my
friends?” – Excerpted from Simply Strategic Growth, by Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan
What
kind of impact could your church make? Let’s just say a big one. But
how do you get from “just church” to “creative, compelling, exciting
and culturally-relevant?” You speak the native language of the people
you want to reach. You learn their concerns, expressed more clearly
through today’s movies, music, lyrics, books and television shows than
through any other avenue. The arts are the heart of a culture.
This
is not a new concept. The Apostle Paul understood it when he went to
Athens. Instead of condemning the people for their icons, he used them
as a foundation on which he could build both a rapport and an
understanding of his message. Paul knew about the altar “To an Unknown
God” – which gave him the opening to speak of his God. He quoted one of
the popular poets of the day, using a message his audience already
related with to teach the Gospel.
There is a direct parallel
between Paul relating to Athenians on their terms and today’s church
using today’s music to touch the hearts of those who don’t yet know
God’s love. Author Tim Stevens, in Simply Strategic Growth,
acknowledges that some of today’s pop culture is disturbing. “But there
is so much that is exciting!” he adds. Listen to the lyrics of the Top
40 at any given time and you’ll hear about loss, confusion, despair,
longing and emptiness. One song among many, Stevens notes, expresses a
yearning that is virtually universal in our culture today: We were
meant to live for so much more! It seems the perfect place to start a
conversation, does it not?
[... Oh, and the earnest young man
mentioned at the beginning of this article? Ed Young, now senior pastor
of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas – one of the ten largest
churches in America.]
How can you use the arts to express Biblical messages in relevant, relatable ways? In this workshop, Maximizing the Arts, Butch Whitmire will show you how to:
- Use secular music to unlock hearts for Christ.
- Recruit, train and work with volunteer artists and teams.
- Craft God-centered worship services using compelling dramas, medias and set design.
- Develop effective visual elements for your services.
- Entertain and inform and invite people to Christ.
|
|
