Last Sunday I'm told that a guest got up from her seat and left one of our services after the second song. She didn't even stay for the offering! (Just kidding.) I heard this evening from someone who knows her that she left because "It wasn't what I was used to".
It's not unusual for our worship style to get criticism - sometimes even from our members who should understand our vision and direction. But because it "isn't what they're used to" (read that: what they were brought up on) it's either "wrong" or somehow prevents them from connecting with God.
On page 51 of "The Present Future", Reggie McNeal hits the nerve on the head.
Witness the worship wars. They are the result of club members [McNeal's term for institutionalized Christians] discussing their worship style preferences as stockholders and stakeholders, not missionaries. The usual goal is to find something that club members like.
He continues a bit farther, Missionaries understand that being culturally relevant is critical to an evangelism strategy.
Then he swings the hammer. Only people without a missiology disdain attempts at being culturally relevant."
Ed and Edith would give testimony that their theology [what they believe about God] is orthodox. But until they develop a missiology [the doctrine of reaching the world with the Gospel] they haven't discovered His heart for saving those outside "the club".
It just isn't what they're used to.
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I find, so often, that Ed and Edith are completely blind to what the church is missing. It's almost like "what I grew up with" is synonymous with "what's godly" in their mind, and they just can't get past a blockade that has clouded their vision (eye sight for God and vision for the church). Anything on the other side of that blockade, no matter how godly it may be, is offensive to them, "not the way God would have us do it". Some are still kinder and gentler when things are over their blockade, as you said, "[it] somehow prevents them from connecting with God" but that still produces the same problem for the church. Ed and Edith are spiritually blind.
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