{"id":656,"date":"2019-04-10T17:30:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T23:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=656"},"modified":"2019-04-09T08:08:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T14:08:24","slug":"worship-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=656","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Like the Music?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[To follow The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s no secret that some of us prefer some styles of church music over others. I was raised with hymns accompanied by a particular type of improvisational piano we called “evangelistic style.” I admired Tedd Smith who used to play for the Billy Graham Crusades. My CD, Impromptu Piano Praise<\/a>, captures some of that. Now I like to say that I have a skill for which there is no demand. “Contemporary worship” or “praise music” has taken over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know people who won’t attend a church that doesn’t play “traditional” music–whatever their tradition is. I could have fall<\/g>en into that mode or at least attended reluctantly until I heard a wonderful story from Randy Pope, pastor of Perimeter Presbyterian in Atlanta. As I recall, the story went like this. Randy said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the music portion of one of our services, the band was leading a song that I thought was the absolute worst song I’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s the only time in my ministry that I almost went up on stage and stopped the song before it was finished. I didn’t stop the song, and right after it was over, someone standing next to me said, “That’s why I come to this church: because the music is so good!”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy went on to say,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I have an idea: when you’re singing in a worship service, instead of asking yourself whether you like a song or not, why don’t you look around and see if anyone else likes the song. Then you can be glad that they’re singing songs that people like, even if you’re not one of them.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is fabulous advice! I’ve been in an auditorium with 7,000 of my closest friends and 6,999 of them were really into the music. I was the only one I could see who wasn’t. But it’s OK! It doesn’t have to be about me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2.3, 4, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that some of us prefer some styles of church music over others. I was raised with hymns accompanied by a particular type of improvisational piano we called “evangelistic style.” I admired Tedd Smith who used to play for the Billy Graham Crusades. My CD, Impromptu Piano Praise, captures some of that. Now … Continue reading Don’t Like the Music?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-aA","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}