Image Source: Surviving Church

Nothing unites people better than music (well maybe food or love of sports), but in the church— worship is important. Entire books of the Bible have been written for the purpose of recording Psalms. Within the church different segments have emerged, each with their own music preference. Throughout church history such divisions have always emerged and various solutions have presented themselves. God is a God of innovation and newness, so a solution for varying tastes must be close at hand.

In the Bible there are different genres of Psalms and some songs are parodies written to the tune of secular songs! Just as there are many songs in the Bible, today there are more options than ever before. One solution that has been proposed and acted upon is the installment of different church services. Normally an early morning service would host older hymns and later services would bring in the band. This approach certainly has many practical and logistical advantages. Movement of instruments, mics, and lighting is much more manageable when consolidated into different segments.

The most apparent downside to different service times is it can deplete the unity of the church. Worship is intended to be a corporate act in which all members involved are united to praise God. Different services can separate individuals who are a part of the church but only attend once a week from fully engaging with different members of the church. It is possible that attendance balancing would occur if a variety of music were voted upon (i.e. early service would gain more members and later services would be less crowded).

There is a twofold solution that I would like to set forward. The first could be an introduction of an app that allows for music previews for the week, as well as a voting system for what music is to be played. A healthy balance of both traditional and modern would be accounted for. The second part would be the integration of Grove City College’s ‘Warriors’ program into churches. By choosing special worship nights during the week, passionate congregants can get their fill of their preferred style of music. A happy church body is a united church body, following after Christ. Extra worship services and a song voting app could be a solution to bridging the gap between the churched and the highly opinionated once churched who have fallen out because of the music division.