Thursday, October 19, 2006

worship, perspective, and friends, but mostly friends.

Had a good time at small group last night, looks like Velvet Elvis is going to give us lots to talk about and explore.


We ended up talking about different styles and approaches to worship. It was fun, but it reminded me of a similar conversation I had the other day with someone, from another church. It was their opinion that their worship was kind of lame, and that other churches worship was great and awesome!


“Our perception.”? That"s always the kicker eh?


I will often keep a record of what songs we sing and one reason I do that is so that when someone says we don"t sing enough “Praise God, Hallelujah Choruses,”? I can look back and see where we are at.


Couple of days ago someone (different person than above) mentioned in passing that we were doing a lot of “Old Dusty Hymns”? lately, and no real cutting edge “Praise God, Hallelujah Choruses.”? So I took a look and out of 18 different songs sung, only four of then were “Old Dusty Hymns.”? And of the remaining 14 songs sung, ten of them were in the top fifteen songs sung in churches all across North America. (Check the hot 100 worship tunes in your country, here.)


Obviously the person"s perception was different than ours. But this is a perfect illustration of how differently we perceive things, be it worship or our job or even our spouse.


There are a lot of things that effect our perception. We have a fight with the kids or we are tired or we are sick and on meds, or we"ve just gotten a huge raise or the government has just sent us a cheque for $400. Those events all effect how we see things.


I"ve been thinking again lately that maybe a part of maturing is the ability to see and know that our perception isn"t always trustworthy. And that"s why we need others to whom we give the room to speak into our lives. People with a different perspective than our own. They help us see things well and clearly, even when we can"t trust our own motives and perspectives.


Hmm. Another reason we need friends.

4 comments:

  1. One of the best things I did when I got to university (besides meeting Marc) was checking out a bunch of different denominations. Granted they were all in the evangelical circle, but still they were different than my background. And these different SUnday morning experiences changed my perspective on worship to help me rethink my ingrained thoughts on what it should be and what I had experienced. I saw myself, my church and other churches very differently after getting out and seeing things for myself.

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  2. Yup, friends are VERY important in one's perspective.

    And a little Hymn goes a long way.

    ;)

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  3. I tried to leave you an e-mail but failed, so I'll do this instead. I wanted to make sure you guys in the worship team didn't think I was complaining AT ALL about Sunday a.m. I love music, just not public singing. I have always appreciated anyone who has the guts to get up front and do anything, and you guys do it well.

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  4. Tammy, I didn't hear you complaining at all the other night, in fact I didn't hear anyone there complaining.

    I know you love the music, and I know your heart.

    Don't sweat it!

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