3. “You don’t love the Lord.”
After reading and reflecting on hundreds of comments this week, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. The blog was about “why they don’t sing.” The singers made lots of speculations about the hearts of the non-singers. But the singers’ speculations bore no resemblance to the non-singers’ actual reasons for not singing.
The singers’ predominant speculation/judgment is that those who don’t sing are not spiritual enough. In essence, “If you loved God (as much as we do) you’d sing.”
In our book Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore, we document this tendency of those on the inside to presume to know the minds of those on the outside. This judgmental tendency is one of the major reasons why most people avoid church.
A reader sent me this message this week: “Shame on you for placing yourself at the centre of your worship. It’s not about you, pal.” Does this shaming approach work—with anyone? I don’t believe so. It only perpetuates the public’s view that churchgoers are judgmental and hypocritical. And, assigning all blame to the silent pew-sitters sends the message that leaders believe they have no room for improvement.
4. Fearless conversation.
Finally, the unprecedented reaction to last week’s article shows me there’s a lot of pent-up, unresolved emotion on this issue of music and singing in church. And, as much as I appreciate the blog traffic and comments, we really need to be engaging in face-to-face civil conversations in our congregations about this stuff.
Rather than speculating about one another, we need to sit down with one another, listen to one another, understand one another and explore together what it means to worship.
We are the Body of Christ. We represent different parts of the Body, with different perspectives. But the Father desires to see his children work with each other, to accept each other, to love each other.
And worship him together.
