Something really slammed home for me not 2 minutes ago, and it needed to be blogged about.

In church music circles, there is a great idea floating around that really makes sense. When we play our music, we want to not distract people. We want them to be in a totally unobtrusive, safe environment where they can connect with the living God. Pretty pure motive, right?

Except, it totally isn’t. I, all of a sudden, have a major problem with this philosophy. It isn’t that it is a bad goal, it is that it is a goal period. Here’s why – it sounds suspiciously like the following:

We don’t want to offend anybody.
We don’t want to hurt anybody.
We don’t want to exclude anybody.
We don’t want to force somebody to do something they don’t like.
We don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

That list is the embodiment of a church that is going precisely nowhere. It is a church full of people that wouldn’t even make good followers, let alone leaders. If you looked at that list and were shouting (in your heart, of course) with joy that someone finally understands your desires, here is a reality check. Those things, by themselves, are not bad. We don’t strive to offend anyone, we don’t try to hurt people, exclude them, or make them uncomfortable. We never TRY to do those things. But they happen as a natural part of being a mission and vision driven entity. Let me break it down.

The things that God calls His people to do are always extraordinary. A living God reconciling the filthy, rotten, irredeemable and unworthy despot that is humanity is always extraordinary. Especially when He predestines the death of the only innocent man, concurrently His own Son, to do so. Our God is one of all-out, unrelenting desire to see people redeemed. Jesus went to pretty ridiculous lengths to show people the glory of his Daddy. He was more concerned about doing what God wanted him to do than with making sure other people were secure and feeling safe.

Really, this isn’t about trashing good manners and tact in church. It is a shift of priorities. Don’t you dare hold back what God is doing in you for the sake of comfort, convenience or preference.

Advertisement