Worship Music Meltdown

We had a worship music meltdown in the narthex this morning, a person complaining about "praise songs" (they aren't praise songs - that was 40 years ago) and only one hymn when the use of the Doxology was pointed out she angrily yelled "That doesn't count!" The accusation was that "No one is listening!"

That accusation usually means "People aren't doing what I think they should," or even "People aren't doing what I tell them to." I intervened to keep her from yelling at the worship pastor in the narthex during the sermon.

What I should have said was "If you've ever been in a church plant that was slowly dying over six years, you would find that this doesn't matter much."  I am 71, and have never had a church that had the music that I would choose for myself. That is not entirely fair of me.  I don't love any of the major worship styles (though I like individual pieces of all of them), but I like all of them 50-70%.  I can get by with most styles.  More importantly, I have learned that it is possible to worship even with music you don't like.  I would have communion every week at the kneeler if I could.

But it's never going to happen.  I am never going to have the service or the music that I want.  Never. One adjusts.

A story, related to the dying church plant one above.  At our first church together starting in 1976 there was a woman with a six-year old daughter. Susan had been raised a good Lutheran, and when Jennifer was an infant a week came that was a tough week, and Susan was eager, even desperate to take the sacrament that week.  Gethsemane Lutheran was on monthly communion at that point, so it was going to be a bit of a wait if she missed it. 

She had grown up under the watch of strict church ladies who could freeze the blood of a child who misbehaved during church with a single glance. I learned as an adult that Florence Anderson was a lovely person, but when I was nine, I feared Florence and all of her ilk, so that even as an adult I worried what they might think. But Jennifer's tough week continued into Sunday morning, and she was screaming and inconsolable. Young mothers are sensitive to criticism for keeping a disruptive baby in service even now, but it was worse then, much worse.

Yet the sacrament was there and was going away, and Susan decided to tough it out, going up to the rail and kneeling, screamer and all.  I wasn't there.  Perhaps Jennifer was only that bad in her mother's memory. But mother and daughter made it through. After the service all the nice Swedish ladies gathered round, deeply moved.  "It's been so long since we heard a baby cry in this church."  And it was true.

It matters.