So let me guess: Someone recently complained about the music at your church. It doesn’t matter what style of music your church features or how traditional or edgy your music is; complaining about music is almost a universal phenomenon in the church today. You know: worship wars.
Some of that is generated by church shoppers (I outlined 5 characteristics of church shoppers here), but the problem is more pervasive than hearing from a few church shoppers.
It’s endemic to human nature and to our consumer-driven culture that basically says everything revolves around me. While I think consumer Christianity will die in the future (here’s why), we’re not there yet.
Before we get started, please know this isn’t a slam against any particular style of music in the church.
In fact, I admire all churches that are innovating to become more effective in their mission. But here’s the challenge. Many leaders have almost spilled blood getting their church to change in the area of music (or making sure their church doesn’t change). And yet, despite the worship wars, many churches are still not much further ahead in reaching people because of it. Why is that?
5 Signs You Are Stuck in the Never-Ending Worship Wars
There are five problems I see church leaders struggle with when navigating the worship wars in your church.
1. You Become So Focused on Pleasing the People You Have That You Lose Sight of the People You’re Trying to Reach
Whatever your music style, many church leaders are overly worried about how ‘their people’ will handle the change.
Being aware of the concerns of the congregation is healthy. Leaders who don’t care how their congregation thinks eventually end up leading nobody.
But it’s also a trap. When people’s reactions become an overriding fear, the mission shifts away from reaching new people to keeping the people you have happy.
As a result, leaders:
—Abandon change to keep people happy.
—Compromise vision to try to satisfy the discontent.
—Stop innovating to try to placate people.
These attempts at making people happy virtually never work (I wrote about the problems people-pleasing leaders face here).
What to Do
So what do you do to combat your people-pleasing focus?
Focus on whom you’re trying to reach rather than on whom you’re trying to keep.
And when you’re communicating a change to your congregation, focus on why you’re making the change (to reach people) and far more people will accept what you’re trying to do (changing the style of worship).
If you want more on this subject, I’ve written more on leading change here.
2. You Define ‘Contemporary’ Relative to How You Used to Worship
Let me name the elephant in the room. Most of what passes for ‘contemporary’ worship isn’t that contemporary at all.
Sure, the church has changed. And there may have been some battles over the change.
But walk into many self-described ‘contemporary’ churches and it feels like 2004, or 1994, or even 1984. The church isn’t actually ‘contemporary’ (contemporary means ‘occurring in the present’).
Tony Morgan makes a great point in The New Traditional Church:
But most church leaders don’t like that style of music or are afraid their church wouldn’t.
What to Do
Be honest. Don’t call yourself contemporary if you’re some paler version of it. Self-awareness and honestly actually matter if you’re trying to reach unchurched people.
Sadly, well-meaning self-deception runs rampant in church leadership today.
Be truthful about what you’re doing. If you are, it might just make you frustrated enough to make you change again.
In the meantime, realize that despite all the change, you might still be miles away from being relevant to the people living around you.
