What Worship Style Attracts the Millennials?


  • I expressed sincerely what is important to me (above). I stand by those comments without retraction.

  • I’m happy at my church (and as you noted I gave my own church good grades)

  • My church is a self-identified fundamentalist church

  • I no longer self-identify as a fundamentalist because I view the term has lost precise meaning and does not effectively communicate my own belief system (this is old news)

  • My church is happy with me

  • My church is not perfect nor am I

  • I sometimes offer suggestions to my church’s leadership and they seem to not mind

  • I am big on financial transparency (probably because of: having a degree in finance … working for a financial institution … having served as a treasurer for a church … having served as a treasurer for a non-profit … having served as a treasurer for a state association of churches). I’ve seen enough in our circles (eg the very well documented closure and financial obfuscation of Evangelical Baptist Missions to just cite one example) to know we could do better.

  • I don’t really wish to cross swords with anyone (read Mark Smith) … so disengaging


From the response of Jim and Jay it is obvious that I have offended people here at Shaper Iron to the point where Jim says he wouldn’t worship with me and Jay chimed in to ignore whatever I say and he has said that more than once and I have never known why. My intent at S/I was to learn and to have discussions.Obviously I failed. For that I genuinely apologize and I move on. I will no longer post here at S/I.

I am commenting on the general thrust of Thom Rainer’s philosophy. It seems to me (my perception, my opinion) that he advocates identifying the wants of the market and catering to the wants. That is not a biblical model of church ministry, in my opinion.

As to the desires of Christians for “being authentic”, “being real”, etc. … well, that’s a very subjective method of evaluation. Who gets to decide what is “real” or “authentic”? Usually the person doing the seeking, evaluating. So it ends up to be very much “what seems good to me” (reminds me of the closing chapters of Judges, doing what is right in their own eyes). We’d be better off avoiding the buzz words, looking for churches that are faithful to the Bible, and a place to serve God, rather than to meet some kind of need I supposedly have. I need to serve God, not to feel good.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Maybe there is a history behind the previous exchanges, but Jim I am not sure where you are coming from. I am glad you love your church, but why are you so quick to judge all other fundamental churches. And then you get upset when you are called on it. If you have a problem with certain fundamental churches than deal with them specifically and do not broad stroke all the others. You posted the grades, not Mark. I do not know any of you personally, but if you cannon ball into the pool, do not be surprised if someone splashes back.

Don,

I have found that Rainer’s gift is one of analyzing the current church (used in broad terms) situation. His book, Surprising Insights of the Unchurched and How to Reach Them affirms what I believe every Bible believing pastor ought to do.

In this article on Millenials, Rainer is not advocating a worship style, Rainer is making observations. In fact, his conclusion about the worship style preferred by Millenials is rather surprising. NO PREFERENCE! Hmmm. Let that sink in for just a moment.

I would encourage everyone on SI t read Rainer. He is a godly man who makes good observations.

I’ve read some of Rainer and have his book, Surprising Insights. I think he relies too much on humanistic methodology and is church-growth oriented. That’s just an opinion, but it is not formed without having read him and considered what he has to say.

Personally, while I think we should consider feedback from people to some extent, I think it is far more important to get our marching orders from the Bible, pursue sinners with the gospel, and build churches full of regenerated members who want to serve God. I’m really not interested in whether that’s popular or not.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

As a 66 year old elder-elder in a church full of millenials, I appreciate this. Content over style is a phrase often repeated. A service will often include “In Christ Alone” as well as “How Sweet and Awesome is the Place”. The Acts 29 people who come think we’re conservative while the conservative folks think we’re very contemporary. Piano and guitars, a violin, and maybe an occasional djembe but you can hear the singing over the instruments. The preaching is good, sound Biblical exposition and everyone understands what we’re doing.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

Ron, How Sweet and Awesome is the Place is one of the all time great hymns and I never hear it anymore. It isn’t in our churches hymn book. In Christ Alone is great to.

[josh p]

Ron, How Sweet and Awesome is the Place is one of the all time great hymns and I never hear it anymore. It isn’t in our churches hymn book. In Christ Alone is great to.

I’ve always loved great hymnody. I knew of this hymn for years but was never in a church that sang it regularly until recently. It was millenials who re-discovered it.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

I found a youtube video recently of the song being sang at a local Presbyterian church. The only time I have heard it in church was during our recent attendance at a PCA church.

Why ignore me? What have I posted in the last year that is so wrong as to make me a pariah? Obviously there is something here since Jim says my posting history would cause him to not worship with me…now Jay says to ignore me.

From the response of Jim and Jay it is obvious that I have offended people here at Shaper Iron to the point where Jim says he wouldn’t worship with me and Jay chimed in to ignore whatever I say and he has said that more than once and I have never known why. My intent at S/I was to learn and to have discussions.Obviously I failed. For that I genuinely apologize and I move on. I will no longer post here at S/I.

Mark,

I encouraged Jim to ignore you because of the way you have conducted yourself on the SI forums in the past, but I appreciate and accept your apology. I also encouraged Jim not to get into it with you because of the teachings in Proverbs 17:14, Proverbs 20:3, and Galatians 5:25-26. I’m not a perfect example of godly behavior myself in this area (you can check my own posting history if you want for proof :) ), but I have been trying to follow those principles instead of being a quarrelsome man, which I can be by nature.
I’m not going to agitate for you to be thrown off of SI or to quit. I’m just a member of the site, so I have no power to do anything about you or what you say or do. You have the right to get online and say whatever you want, as long as the moderators find that your conduct is not a violation of the CP or DS. But I do (or maybe I should say I did) skip your posts because I just didn’t find them helpful. I hope that changes in the future.

I also hope that you take this in the right way - I’m trying to approach you as an older man and fellow brother in the Lord (I Timothy 5:1). I’m not out to get you or to shame you - just to explain where I was coming from and (more importantly) why; I regret that it took me so long to get back to you on this, but time did not allow me to do so any earlier. If you have more questions, you should probably PM me so we don’t clog up the thread.

Your brother in Christ and fellow servant,

Jay

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

As I’ve said before, my wife and I are in a church full of millenials. Before we joined (we’re strong believers in that meaningful, sometimes messy relationship called membership), I wanted to find out the “why” behind what they were doing. I am well aware of the temptation of some to label anything outside of traditional worship as seeker sensitive or something similar. I’ll admit that we continually remind ourselves that the people who attend our church need to be able to understand what we’re saying and doing. We also understand that we have people attending from various cultures and religious backgrounds. (One Sunday we had a brewer, a barista, and a BJU board member–-there’s a joke there somewhere…). We have people who were raised on the campus of Bob Jones and people who were raised on the streets. We have classical musicians, people who like country music, and some whose musical taste is more eclectic than mine. Knowing the variety that exists and the transient nature of life in our area, our determiner for what we do is not the culture that we are in but the knowledgeable worship of God. We explain why and what we pray in corporate worship, why and what we sing, and that “God wrote a Book!’ and that that book is our guideline. They sing joyfully and with understanding. The new music we sing is not repetitive or shallow and the old music we sing is understandable by those who haven’t grown up in church. If you ask our people why they’re there you’ll hear many reasons. Most come for the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. Some because they had grown tired of preaching that was shallow and full of stories and the same few subjects. Some because they love hearing what the Bible says in a manner they can grasp. Some because they appreciate the emphasis on meaningful, spiritual relationships with other Christians. Nobody is there for the music.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

Mark, please don’t leave SI. I appreciate your thoughts and most often I agree with them.

I also enjoy reading Jim’s posts as well. I like his humour and perspective. That said, B Toothman’s comment above is correct.

Jay, not sure why you are commenting towards Mark. I didn’t think he did anything wrong. I’ve seen enough other exchanges on SI that were far worse. If there is anything I’ve learned on SI on these forums is that if you say something on SI you need to be able to back it up. Comments by anyone are routinely nit-picked, hyper-analyzed, and extrapolated in directions the original author had no thought of whatsoever.

Yes, Mark may have some strong opinions, but I’m OK with that. I don’t see him doing anything wrong.

What he did was just par for the SI course.

Jay, not sure why you are commenting towards Mark. I didn’t think he did anything wrong. I’ve seen enough other exchanges on SI that were far worse.

He asked a question of me, and then asked publicly why I felt the way I do. I answered his question publicly, as the situation required. I’m not going to deal with this issue publicly anymore because I’m hijacking the thread and wasting time. Mark has PM‘d me, and I’ll reply to him privately when I have time.

There’s nothing to see here…move along.

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells