Sunday, August 23, 2009

Singing the Blues for Christ

This morning at church Cliff Vanase, one of our members, shared two songs with us as special music. With our Praise team playing back up, he sang the Christian blues tunes, "A Change is Gonna' Come" and "Guess Who." It isn't our usual style but it was great and it spoke to the heart in such a way that I felt moved to change the order of service around and jump right into my sermon which spoke about making a decision to follow the God who loves us.

A lot of church experts say that "blended worship" doesn't work. Blended worship is where you try to have a choir and organ music with a praise team and chorus in the same service. The gurus say that it leaves everyone dissatisfied. I disagree especially when you are doing it with a traditional congregation. Our church loves the choir. They wouldn't give it up for anything. They also have come to appreciate the praise team because they understand how much the young people love it and how much it appeals to folks who haven't grown up in the church.

They used to talk about the music wars in churches. I just don't get it. Maybe I've been lucky. I think the more variety you have in music the wider the appeal you have to those coming to worship God. I think the apostle Paul would understand this since he wrote the book on the variety of gifts in the church used to glorify God and build up the body.

I thank God for the music Cliff offered today. It blessed us and even if you don't usually listen to the blues, it certainly spoke to those who were in our church today.

I've included it here for those who weren't there. Enjoy it and I pray God will bless you as you listen to it.

Cal


No comments: