A short time ago, a well- respected church leader wrote an article about worship and how it is handled in many of today’s churches. And he mainly doesn’t very much like it. These are some of the things he didn’t like, and how he would fix everything were he given the opportunity, and other practices he misses that we rarely do any more. Several of us then commented on this, and I intend here to look a bit into my 88 years, and reflect on this subject.
He doesn’t approve of large screens in churches. He doesn’t like the words of the worship songs portrayed on the screens; he longs for the old hymns, and for hymnals held in our hands, where we can read the music. He remembers fondly how people dressed respectfully in their “Sunday best” to come to church. This was not just an expression of what he preferred; he felt strongly that in times past we focused more strongly on God than we do now. I disagree, but I think I now understand a little better. So this was my experience over the years.
My earliest church was in Vincentown, where the name of my great-great-grandfather, William Branin, is part of the stained glass window in the little Baptist church. I suppose he paid for it. There were hymnals and an organ and a choir. I was sometimes embarrassed by my dearly loved grandmother, because she often shed tears when she sang those old hymns. I was young and clueless. Our church at home in Philadelphia was larger, but much the same. It was that time, the 30’s and early 40’s.
Big change came in the 70’s, with the Jesus movement, which was when I was really saved, and I loved it! All my teen-aged children were saved then too, and I loved the songs and the guitars and the Bible and everything that was different from the stiff way things had been. Of course I now realize that my attitude was really fed by my new relationship with Jesus. Nevertheless, I loved the new music and took loads of children to the first Creation festival and even slept in a tent for the first time (and the last!).
By then we had built a house on LBI; my husband was then a ‘head-hunter’; I had loved the island all my life, and he could work anywhere, so we picked Ship Bottom, where my parents had our summer home. Heaven on earth. When I was young, we had to search for our shoes in September to go back to school. And I never again could really feel at home in a strictly traditional church.
When I read the aforementioned article, my first reaction was that it was just an example of legalism. The idea of dressing up for church; the need to go back to what someone sees as the old tried and true ways of worship: with hymnals and no large screens.
Even though I was in my 50’s, my Christianity was truly born in a Bible study I was invited to attend on LBI in the early Jesus movement of the 60’s. I flourished in this new life; I loved the whole atmosphere. But now I wonder if some of what I see as legalism might not have simply originated in what was common in the time of THEIR life when THEY first met Jesus, when life was more structured, and when their Christian honeymoon period was very different from mine. Who can blame them for thinking that we might be doing it all wrong?
When God opens my mind to a new idea, there’s ALWAYS a lesson! In this case, does God want me to remember that He dearly loves ALL of us? Does He want me to be slower to judge?
I suspect that He does.
—Norma Stockton
