C is For Contemporary Worship...

I was searching through a book called ' A is for Abductive: The Languge of the Emerging Church' by Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren and Jerry Haselmayer and came upon an entry C is for Contemporary Worship. which I thought was worth passing on... so here are some quotes.

"Contemporary worship is... another name for 1970's worship ie worship that is 30 years  behind the times instead of 150 to 300 years..." (me here) I have always maintained that which church you attend has often more to do with which time warp you are willing to step through than most other things.

"even restricting ourselves to the musical dimension of worship, we are missing the point."

" In the emerging culture we would be better to drop the term 'contemporary' and move this entry to 'F' for fresh Worship or "I" for Intentional worship. Fresh and intentional worship beyond modernity can easily draw on the most ancient of resources. In fact we expect that it will increasingly do so. The real attraction of contemporary worship wasn't it trendiness, it was its freshness-different, new- and its powerfulness and purposefulness. "

"Being in contemporary style does not stop them from becoming stake contemporary songs."

and a plea that I can amen to... "Give us songs that are meaningful (which requires that they be understandable), and we will sing with Joy. Give us songs that are fresh, and we sing with sustained enthusiasm"

...and can I add give us some songs with depth and meaning and we will sing our souls and our hearts out to God.

yes there are classics that have stood the test of time and new songs that will do so but as this entry in a primer for new words from the emerging church says... there are few that actually make it into that category.