As you’ve no doubt picked up from my previous updates, I live in a complex city. Though if you take a look around, you may see that your community is more complex than you previously thought. Addressing the evangelical flight from cities to suburbs, Ray Bakke describes his personal struggle in urban ministry. ‘The greatest crisis I faced was theological. I didn’t have a theology that addressed the world I was experiencing. My theology was not adequate for the issues I was facing in ministry or in my family.’ (A Theology as Big as the City, page 22) Many churches are struggling to relate to the neighborhoods around them. Some find it easier to leave than change. Personally, my own previously held beliefs have been challenged as I seek to minister in a religiously, culturally and morally pluralistic city.
But while our communities are increasingly fragmented and complex, the past few years I have also been struck by the complexity of the human heart. In my last email I mentioned how contemporary worship choruses reflect the desire of many for healthy relationships. Sitting in coffee shops and pubs, I have many opportunities to listen to the stories of brokenness and shame. Not only do people find it difficult to live with each other, but they can’t even live with themselves. There are few things worse than this.
If you can forgive my endless quoting from popular music (the Bible of postmodern people), how can the church respond to the following songs by the Goo Goo Dolls and Johnny Cash’s remake of a Nine Inch Nails song?
I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
(Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls)
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
(Hurt sung by Johnny Cash)
What does God want to do in the cultural, ethnic, and theological diversity of a city like Nicosia? What does He want to do in the hearts of men and women feel no sense of guilt and yet live paralyzed by chronic shame? How will the story of Jesus shape the stories of those that I meet? How will their stories shape mine? Where are we going, and what will our hearts look like when we get there? What will our churches look like?
These are just some of the questions that are going through my mind today as I’ve been praying and reflecting on the past week’s conversations.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
More to choruses
A few days ago I received an email from a young, European woman who had become a part of our church through the Friday night group that ministers to European college students. Prior to coming to Cyprus about six months ago, she had had only minimal contact with the traditional church in her village. But through our Friday night small group and worship on Sunday mornings, she had begun a personal journey of experiencing God in her own life.
After returning to her home country, she started to attend the church in her village. But in her email she said that she really missed the contemporary choruses that we sing in church. She said that it is hard for her to relate to the hymns.
As I thought about this and her involvement in our church, it dawned on me that it wasn’t necessarily the style of music that made a difference to her. While she was in Cyprus, she often commented that the worship at the Nicosia International Church was so ‘powerful.’ As a typical postmodern European, her primary search was not for ‘truth’ in the sense of correct dogma, but rather she was searching for meaningful and functional relationships with God and others.
Contemporary choruses are often criticized as being ‘shallow.’ Sometimes – and I would agree with this – you can’t tell if a person is singing about God or her boyfriend. And yet for people who are coming to believe that life is just a series of betrayals and fragmented relationships, the search for healthy relationships is more important than the search for objective truth. Into this brokenness and relational dysfunctionality, God comes as the perfect Friend, Lover, and Father.
When postmoderns at NIC sing ‘Today … we’re going all the way’ or ‘Let my heart be Your home’ they are not singing trite choruses that simply appeal to pop culture. Instead, they are celebrating that God has brought meaning into their relationships on both the horizontal and vertical levels. For many postmoderns, these worship choruses are deep and meaningful interaction with the God who is transforming their hearts and making meaningful relationships possible. This may be difficult for those who have been trained to think of their faith in terms of propositional truth statements, but for relationally starving postmoderns, these choruses can be just as ‘powerful’ as some of the great hymns.
I realize that there is more to this discussion than what I’m presenting here, but maybe this will encourage us to be more understanding of those who truly worship through contemporary choruses.
After returning to her home country, she started to attend the church in her village. But in her email she said that she really missed the contemporary choruses that we sing in church. She said that it is hard for her to relate to the hymns.
As I thought about this and her involvement in our church, it dawned on me that it wasn’t necessarily the style of music that made a difference to her. While she was in Cyprus, she often commented that the worship at the Nicosia International Church was so ‘powerful.’ As a typical postmodern European, her primary search was not for ‘truth’ in the sense of correct dogma, but rather she was searching for meaningful and functional relationships with God and others.
Contemporary choruses are often criticized as being ‘shallow.’ Sometimes – and I would agree with this – you can’t tell if a person is singing about God or her boyfriend. And yet for people who are coming to believe that life is just a series of betrayals and fragmented relationships, the search for healthy relationships is more important than the search for objective truth. Into this brokenness and relational dysfunctionality, God comes as the perfect Friend, Lover, and Father.
When postmoderns at NIC sing ‘Today … we’re going all the way’ or ‘Let my heart be Your home’ they are not singing trite choruses that simply appeal to pop culture. Instead, they are celebrating that God has brought meaning into their relationships on both the horizontal and vertical levels. For many postmoderns, these worship choruses are deep and meaningful interaction with the God who is transforming their hearts and making meaningful relationships possible. This may be difficult for those who have been trained to think of their faith in terms of propositional truth statements, but for relationally starving postmoderns, these choruses can be just as ‘powerful’ as some of the great hymns.
I realize that there is more to this discussion than what I’m presenting here, but maybe this will encourage us to be more understanding of those who truly worship through contemporary choruses.
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