P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

TWO HEAVENS #1

THROWING ROCKS AT ROCK CHURCH

There's a very nice church in Birmingham, Alabama, that I'm going to pick on a bit today. Now, on the one hand I'm a bit envious of the fact that Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church has 5,000 members and a thriving program. That beats any church I've ever pastored, unless you count our radio audience here on this Monday as a congregation. But on any given Sunday, from what I read in the magazine Christianity Today, Vestavia Hills has ended up being SPLIT into a total of SIX separate, distinct congregations.

Now, what caused these divisions? Why'd the pie get sliced up six ways? Was there a doctrinal debate, and the secret-rapture premillennialists all decided to meet at 8:00 in the morning? Did gay marriage or some other "(quote) liberal" issue divide the Body of Christ?

No, actually it's worked out this way. Every Sunday morning at 8:30 there's a worship service provided in what we would call a traditional style. The Old Rugged Cross. Abide With Me. Songs like those, written by legends like Fannie Crosby or Charles Wesley, accompanied by the organ and a small choir. An hour later, the church quickly empties out, and a new group comes in. They're more casually dressed, a bit younger. They use a piano and sometimes a guitar, and do what we might call a mild "praise-and-worship" service, flavored with some Southern gospel songs like I'll Fly Away. And — hold onto your cowboy hat here — they project song lyrics onto the screen with an overhead projector.

Now, Congregation #2 only gets one hour in the sanctuary too, because at 11:00 the ushers push folks out, and pull new people in . . . this time for some more traditional music — hymns — with the organ and a bigger church choir. However, at the same time, 11:00 a.m., in another part of the building, a 300-seat fellowship hall is filling up with young adults and kids; they're getting ready for the "Son Shine" service . . . that's S - O - N, of course. "Son Shine" church. Some members at Vestavia Hills call this particular service, either with an approving smile or a tight grimace, the "Rock & Roll Church." And it really is; according to Christianity Today writer Michael S. Hamilton, the song list ranges from new contemporary favorite I Will Call Upon the Lord to an old top-40 hit entitled Jesus Is Just Alright With Me by none other than the Doobie Brothers.

Well, we're only up to four pie slices so far, and it's not even time for the Sunday potluck. At 5:00 p.m., about 60 retirement-age people gather for Vespers; remember that cobweb-covered word? I Come to the Garden Alone; songs like that, from the good old Methodist Cokesbury Hymnal, and just a piano for accompaniment. Then at 7:00 p.m. the amplifiers REALLY get plugged in as Youth Worship cranks into full volume. Nothing but teenagers, doing all the latest CCM favorites — that's "Contemporary Christian Music — along with doctored songs from Billboard's hottest hits, where the lyrics are tweaked to have a bit of Christianity to them. The music is "(quote) amplified, raucous, and very loud." According to church member Lee Benson,
it's a service "not for the faint of heart."

And there we have it. One church, but SIX completely different, completely distinct congregations holding forth there in praise to God. Is this all right? Is it according to heaven's blueprint? Of course, when you have a 5,000-member church in a sanctuary that only seats 700 at a time, you're going to HAVE to cut up the pie according to SOME guidelines. But is music the way to do it?

Well, friend, we pose the question this week because all over America, and even around the world, music has become the great dividing line. Dr. Hamilton, who did this article for CT, and who writes from his vantage point, professor of history at Notre Dame University, concludes:

"Vestavia Hills is living evidence that American churchgoers no longer sort themselves out by denomination so much as by musical preference."

In other words, more and more people aren't deciding: "I'll go to this church because it's a Baptist church and I'm a Baptist." Or, "I'll go to this Seventh-day Adventist church" — to use my own faith community — "because in my own Bible studies I find validity in the teachings and the doctrinal perspectives of the Adventist religion." No. People are now saying: "I'll go to that white church on the corner — never mind WHO'S running it — because they have synthesizers, drums, and the song lyrics on a 60-inch TV using Microsoft PowerPoint visuals." Or: "I'll go to that OTHER white church on the OTHER corner because they DON'T have all that stuff; they're still singing the good old songs I knew as a kid — songs with names like Isaac Watts at the top."

In fact, if you leaf through the Yellow Pages, you'll see at the very top of some of the display ads for churches: "Lively contemporary music." Or: "We sing the traditional favorites." Or, probably most common of all, the Vestavia Hills approach: "Traditional services at THESE hours, and all the heavy-metal music provided at these OTHER hours." In that same Christianity Today article — and this was the COVER article, by the way, in the July 12, 1999 issue — Dr. Hamilton observes:

"Some large churches, like Vestavia Hills, are able to hold the new sects together under one roof. Churches that are too small to sustain separate congregations with separate worship styles are either trying to mix musical styles (‘blended worship'), or they are fighting and dividing over which music to use."

And those two words, "fighting" and "dividing" are where we want to spend some time together this week. "Fighting" and "dividing." That's what's happening in literally thousands of Christian churches right now; they're fighting and dividing over the issue of music. Churches are splitting right down the middle. Congregations are yelling at their pastors and at each other. Young Christians and old Christians are angry — each with the other. Some believers simply leave; they look in the Yellow Pages and they find a church offering the kind of music they like. Others don't even do that; they go home and play the kind of music they like on their own CD players at the house, and they just don't GO to church any longer.

In my own Adventist church family, the editor of our church paper, the Adventist Review, just wrote an exceptional editorial on this very topic. Pastor Bill Johnsson is an incredibly gifted writer and theologian — a great, Spirit-filled man with decades of service and experience. And he led into his editorial with this insight:

"If there's a topic guaranteed to make young saints angry and old saints apoplectic, it's this one — contemporary Christian music."

And boy, that is absolutely THE truth, isn't it?
We've taken as our radio title for the week: TWO HEAVENS. Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church has split into separate groups over music style. Just about 15 miles from our radio studios, the Thousand Oaks Seventh-day Adventist Church now operates a somewhat traditional service at 11:15 a.m. Saturday mornings, while over in a separate building you can hear the insistent beat from "The Place." All the kids go there to hear Praise Place, the worship band. Parents in the main sanctuary; kids at The Place. Two separate churches. One of these days, in the sweet by and by, will there be TWO HEAVENS? Will those who want stained glass and a pipe organ enter the building on the right, while those halo-wearing saints who want to play their electric guitars on the sea of glass look for a plug and a PA jack over on the left?

It's maybe helpful to notice a couple of points from probably the most musical book there is in our Bibles. In Psalm 147, King David has this to say . . . and who could argue?

"How good it is to sing praises to our God, how PLEASANT and fitting to praise Him!"

We could get a whole sermon right there, but please mark down with me that our music in the sanctuary is meant to give praise to God. Music, whether it's by Fanny Crosby or Jars of Clay, is for the purpose of saying to God: "We love You. We worship You. We adore You. We want to live lives of obedience to You, Jesus." AND . . . it should be PLEASANT to praise God in that way. Music in church should give us joy and happiness; it should satisfy our souls and give us a spirit of heaven.

"How pleasant AND FITTING to praise Him!", David writes.

So it is appropriate and good and necessary that we should go to the churches of our choosing and sing songs there. It's FITTING to do that. It should be PLEASANT to do that. If the music at church is making you mad, friend, then something is seriously wrong.

In our closing moment, though, let's hold our finger on that word "pleasant" and go back just 14 verses to another psalm, also by David. This is #133, and he opens with this observation:

"How good AND PLEASANT it is when brothers live together IN UNITY!"

What do you think of that? "In unity"? A church may prayerfully decide to split itself up six ways and allow some different praise styles and musical genres in those six new mini-congregations . . . but that decision, that vote, should be made in a spirit of happy, cheerful UNITY. It's good and pleasant, David writes, to be in unity.

What to do, then, when the drums on the platform and the Roland synthesizers in the youth chapel lead to DISunity? Stay tuned.