There’s a baby in that bathwater, people … and both sides are in the process of throwing it out!

There’s a world in need of Christ watching; and when they see followers of Christ in turmoil and infighting, it drives them away rather than beckons them near.

However, to read it primarily as a commentary on worship style and music is incorrect and misinformed. That’s all I say in public forum.

I know it’s so–Wikipedia mentions it under the society’s entry. And I get it quarterly. (Have you remained “active,” also getting the junk insurance and credit card mail?)

(I’ve never heard of the “Chord e-zine” that WikiWacky mentions, so call me ignorant!)

BTW, Pi Kappa Lambda never bothers one, so that’s good!

I got the pin, the car decal, and the gold cords that I wore with my graduation robe. There’s a JOURNAL?

It’s puzzling, however, that people were, perhaps, a more tolerant and cooperative audience for the art music of the Church just 35 years ago, 55 years ago (extrapolation, I ain’t that old). Tolerance, at the very least, is the key.

There has been an intellectual shift, also. Over the years, for example, I have found the articles on music in the Phi Kappa Phi Journal to be rather irksome. They tend to come from some useless, outwith-the-field perspective extolling such anti-elitism or populism as Garth Brooks being more meaningful than Beethoven (I remember that one from around 1990–the year of dizzying heights for low places).

If memory serves, somebody had enough and wrote an opinion letter to the Journal to the effect that he was tired of music being the scapegoat of anti-elitism when his colleagues would not accept the equivalent in their fields (and that they were so ignorant as not to know how silly they sounded to trained musicians).

Anyhoo, none of this excuses lack of wisdom (meaning blatant stupidity–there, I said it) and lack of stewardship in regard to a thriving music ministry dedicated to artistic excellence.

Guess you know what Mohler did to Southern Seminary’s music program. I’m glad that SU’s AW is musically inclined!

Regarding your comments on worship practice shaping our theology: I’ve said a number of times to my congregation (and I’m quoting someone, but I don’t remember who): “We’ll sing ourselves into heresy long before it comes from the pulpit.”

(More comments later, I’d like to read what others chime in with first.)

The press is spinning this as a bunch of people who miss all the right-wing politics in the pulpit. I hope no one who reads this will think that’s what I would like: it’s not. But I seriously doubt that is the case with the choir members. I suspect they were unhappy with the drastic change in the worship service that was going on. If the new pastor had come in, respected the worship culture of the church, and removed the politics from the pulpit, I would have seen that as a very positive move.

The press is spinning this as “style over substance,” but that’s never the case. We are talking about the content of worship. How that content is “packaged” inevitably conditions, even changes, how it is received and understood. Again, lex orandi, lex credendi.