What comedy would befall the traditionalists and contemporaneists if they only knew their quibble over musical genre put them in the same camp when the scope of history is extended beyond their current generation! Perhaps they would choose to lay down their arms, forge a ceasefire to the great Worship War that has raged for nearly fifty years, and focus their attention on a common enemy. This may happen if they recognized that there are only three Biblically defined genres of music that are to be used in the church. Those being the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs Paul references in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians…
Individualism vs. Corporeality
As the pendulum of praise continues to swing, let us look at it from another angle. That being the degree of individuality or corporeality.
As we approach the swinging instrument, careful to not get knocked over by the immense weight of the very object we seek to study, we find ourselves standing on the highest arc of two contrasting sides. On one side, we discover ourselves upon a platform of solitude. The silence is deafening here. But in the silence, we hope to hear what some call the “still, small voice of God.”…
The Pendulum of Praise: Emotionalism vs. Intellectualism
When generations that exist after we have long passed away recount our current age, what shall they conclude concerning our worship? Will it be considered a doxological dark age or an age of doxological enlightenment?
As I study the ministry of praise throughout the church age, it appears the pendulum has swung back and forth rarely finding equilibrium. And if it has managed to settle somewhere between the two extremes of the trajectory this doxological pendulum swings upon, it has settled only for a moment. For in short time, some outward force has grabbed hold of the theology of worship and, being unsatisfied with a balanced position, aggressively given the pendulum a swing in one directional extreme or another…