SCL

I have an idea for another topic- “sowing a seed” charismatic and pentecostal preachers seem to always be talking about it.

So I guess you could do a coffee mix name of blended worship like hymnrappraisenroll… maybe

Grab bag: the thought of pringles and bubble gum together is so revolting I would almost rather have a bag of bits of wire and old wigs. Go on – imagine a mouthful of sour cream pringles and juicy fruit bubble gum – and while you’re at it, imagine washing it all down with some generic orange drink (arm stirred of course) to add to the flavour…bleuuggghhhh.

My husband is in IT and the thought of a cougar running around in their department was pretty sweet. A really sick part of me would like to see the survival instincts of computer nerds kick in. But I’m sure somehow my husband would trap it and bring it home because he has always, always wanted an exotic feline. And then we’d have to bring the cougar to church with us because the neighbors would complain about it “eating their dogs” if we left it at home. Then we could all worship cougar style, which would be worship using all John Mellencamp songs with the lyrics redone. “Jesus was born in a smalltown…..”

Nice one beth! The survival instincts of nerds kicking in would certainly be interesting to see!

Beth, you rock!! “The survival instincts of computer nerds”??? Hahahahahahaha!!!

As for blended worship, really, just call it “pick something you like and we won’t do it”.

WOW……a cougar in an IT department. I almost powersprayed tea all over my keyboard.

Let me know when you start that church; awesome and wicked awesome sound totally rad.

Things are looking up for iGracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate – you certainly have your logo all done! Let the cougars roar!

My church doesn’t sing hymns often, except for I’ll Fly Away which we sing far more than is healthy. And I refuse to sing that song without a southern accent (which, I’m pretty sure drives the people in front of our aisle mad). Wait, is I’ll Fly Away even a hymn?

We tried blended worship, but then we decided to just go with wicked awesome all the time.

This post reminds me of the first time my “home church” (does anybody else say that?) decided to do a blended worship. If you closed your eyes, it was like someone had taken a Casio keyboard, hit preset #36 (Bluegrass Funktacity), pumped up the beat to 168 BPM, and then mashed GO. (In the South, you “mash” buttons instead of “press” them.)

This is quite honestly the funniest thing I have read in a long long time! Thanks for the goog thought this morning!

Some really good lines in this one:

“Lasers and liturgy”
“Cougar inside an IT department”
“The road to whoa”

By the way, I’m sitting in a cube farm of IT people right now and I’m imagining a cougar in here. Pretty funny.

Wow, I thought blended worship was a term that a previous pastor of ours made up.

We have a lightly attended 3rd service that was labeled “blended” for a while because it did not have a dominate style. The new pastor dropped the descriptor “blended” so now it has no label, thus no restrictions. The people that attend get to determine how they will worship.

What a concept!

YES! Yes to all of it. We try to make everyone happy and then … MISS GOD ALL TOGETHER.

I love your “righteous” sarcasim.

Here is a topic…

If only one gets saved it will all be worth it. I’m not dogging the “if one gets saved” – that is AWESOME if one gets saved. I know it is not about numbers. BUT, the point to examin is when we use that phrase when we know the event or service or whatever is really lame and we are just giving ourselves false encouragement. Especially when we know… it’s not likely to happen.

Oh YES!! The dreaded label of a sucky event? “If ONE gets saved”. I feel the flames of hell licking my computer keys, but REALLY, that is the worst thing to say at the end of a poorly attended event.

“Well Marva, I think the barbeque outreach for unsaved Russian vegan supermodels went well, don’t you?”

Great topic! My church in the 90′s did blended worship with hymns and songs like Majesty, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and other 70′s hits. They have probably upgraded now to Lord, I Lift Your Name on High, and have possibly introduced a tune playing on all the totally radical radio stations, Shout to the Lord.

A blend of awesome and wicked awesome. I love it.

Kind of random, but has anyone ever heard of Mary Rice Hopkins. She did wonderful kids music like “Hip, Hip, Hip, Hippopotomus”. Oh the good old days when we could sing silly songs and do nifty handmotions.

Oh man! “pieces of old wigs” – has to be the best line!

So here is an example of something blended – on my local Christian radio station last night I heard a Christian remix of “Baby I’m Amazed” – but instead of “baby”, it was changed to “maybe” – which now makes it ambiguously Christian – you wouldn’t call God “baby”, right? The blending came in at the end with a gospel choir bringing it all home by singing “amazing” instead of “amazed” which led into “amazing grace”. The whole thing left me shaking my head. It made the techno version of “Lord Reign In Me” I heard last week seem not quite so bad…well, maybe not.

I think it’s maybe time to dig out another Sonseed tune.

My goal for the day is to work the Cougar/IT analogy into my staff meeting this afternoon. Hilarious.

The church I attend is current battling this problem. Since I play drums there…I get really confused at times.

Great post.

Wow, this is one of the funniest posts ever on SCL, and that’s saying something.

Also, Jeff Smith, I completely agree about the “if only one is saved” concept… that’s been one of my pet peeves for a LONG time.

What if only one person was saved, but if you’d used your resources a little more wisely, 50 could have been saved? Do not justify your half-hearted efforts and/or lack of marketing! Gah!

Sorry, I am a graphic designer and this stuff hits home.

Reminds me of a game for Youth. Happy meal shake. You take a Happy Meal, which is good, then blend it into a shake, which is bad.

I’m not sure why french fries, soda, and a cheeseburger can taste good individually but nasty when combined into one smoothie, but it works that way.

Of course that is kind of the point. You can take plenty of stuff and throw it into a blender and get garbage, but if you plan ahead what you are doing you can get some of the best stuff ever. Every week or two I hit the Tropical Smoothie Cafe. I get lots of different stuff from them, mostly healthy. Certain things go well together so they make good smoothies. Somethings not so much.

You have to do the same thing with worship. Pick your songs so they flow instead of causing halting jarring changes that leave everyone with worship whiplash.

What this means is, that a blended service is not a time saver for your worship leader. He (or she) is going to have to stop shopping for new Pumas long enough to think about the music they will be playing and the varied effects that will be used so the whole service flows.

For some reason I have been to churches all over the country and I have noticed the cross is being covered but what I call the “Screen god”. I suppose churches put up the “Screen god” in an attempt to make there service seem “contemporary”. I’m talkin’ gothic cathedrals to old warehouses displaying this phenomenon. I agree it does make it easier to sing and do the wavin’ the hands thing but I do miss the cross.

How about calling it “Thorn Worship”? –enough variety for everyone to have at least one thorn in their flesh at some point before the worship ends.

I guess blended worship makes more sense than mixed worship… which is what I’ve seen at some churches… where they do modern praise songs in a lighter style than they already are and make them more “old people friendly”.

That is terrible, because it pleases absolutely nobody EVER, maybe even including God.

So, you don’t play the “choruses” authentically, and your not playing Hymns either… you’re playing Hymneses… and they suck.

Have you ever written about the phenomenon where just because a band is a Christian band, they’re allowed to lower the standard of excellence because “they’re doing it for the right reasons”? That always bugged me. Shouldn’t it be just the opposite? They need to raise the bar because they’re playing for a greater purpose? What’s so wrong with telling a Christian band that they should strive to be better rather than just saying “you guys are so good”, even though you don’t believe that…. ok, ranting. Sorry.

You crack me up! How do you keep coming up with this stuff? I think I have visited all three of the aforementioned blended worship services. You know, blended worship is like a box of chocolates, you never…never mind. Or maybe we could just call blended worship The Great Adventure…saddle up your horses, we got a trail to blaze.

I’m hoping iGracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate will be like Vineyard and we can start one here. Awesome and wicked awesome…dude!

Great Adventure, yes please!

“Blended Worship” simply sounds like they’re serving an assortment of coffees in Fellowship Hall, which you’re permitted to take into the service with you.

And since it’s generally “old people friendly”… what makes old people so against new sounds? How many times does the Bible say “Sing to the Lord a NEW song”?

First, I am a firm believer that it doesn’t matter if it is hymns or praise songs, as long as it ROCKS YOUR FACE OFF.

“I’ll Fly Away” on electric guitar with a substantial bit of crunch distortion is one of my favorites.

I passed by one of my wingmate’s rooms and she was listening to a sermon. But what threw me off is that there was pretty music playing in the background and then as soon as the pastor said “sin” the music changed and was all minors and spooky. Why do worship eagles do that? Do the pastors and worship eagles plan it out ahead of time?
Like-
Pastor: “Dude, can you throw some convicting tunes in when I talk about sin?”

Worship Eagle: “Sure, no prob.” *combs faux hawk*

Disclaimer 1: I love many of the old hymns.

Disclaimer 2: I’m part of a worship team with a young leader who isn’t David Crowder, but he’s getting closer week by week.

My take: Blended worship = a sucktacular attempt to appease folks who think “hymns and spiritual songs” is a Biblical reference to only those hymns in their hymnal combined with a botoxed version of contemporary worship songs.

Angry worship describes it alright. And it just doesn’t work.

I’m blessed to go to a church that has Traditional and a Contemporary Worship services held in differnent ends of the building. Praise God for a pastoral staff who celebrates and values both preferences!

This was so funny…a much needed laugh. We are dealing with people that just aren’t happy either way (a few A2). Seems most people think that worship is about THEM and their own preferences and not HIM that we should focus on. We need to come back to the heart of worship (I think that could be a song).

Speaking of SNL, “Anger Sqaured” services always reminds me of the skit where Will Ferrell played the keyboard and sang cover songs with his “wife”. The tempo was off; the keyboard was…well, not a guitar; and there was no heart in the song. Sad really.

Jeff Smith–I had that EXACT SAME idea for a topic months ago! So if only one person gets credit . . . oh. Wait. That doesn’t seem right.

Jon–loved the Sbux beverage. I’m sure it will feature in an upcoming retail “roll-out.” It might be appropriate for “Holiday” season. Since those are blended, too.

OK, 2 things…Nick the Geek, your “worship whiplash” reference made me pee my pants a little. (Was that over-sharing?)
Second…not all blended worship is sucktacular. I lead worship at our church (which is mostly younger people), and when I introduced a few hymns (along with our David Crowder and Chris Tomlin, of course!) I surprisingly had the most positive response from the younger people, not the old folks that I thought wanted it. I think some of the lyrics to the old hymns are so incredible!
Anyway, I DO think it’s possible to truly have “blended worship” (dang, now I want a nonfat soy venti macchiato no whip) and not piss everyone off.

As someone who is involved in leading worship in a “blended worship” setting, I can identify with the frustrations behind the new names, especially A2. I have long been searching for a way to get people to realize that worship is NOT ABOUT THEM. Is it me, or are we not here to glorify our Savior, not entertain ourselves?

Anon at 9:34– YES! I have heard of Hip Hip Hip Hippopotomus! But I didn’t have the pleasure of singing it as a child, but rather the kids at my old job (a daycare) sang that at Christmas time (or was it Easter?). It’s fun the first, oh, 25 times or so, but it’s so catchy that anything beyond that is torture. It was replaying in my head for weeks.

“The road to woah” made me laugh so hard!!!

Love the “grab bag” references. I am totally hymns in my worship service but Toby Mac on my iPod at the gym. It’s like marshmallows and ketchup – both great but not together.

We keep our services homogeneous. Wicked awesome is the early service, and traditional (read: Baptist hymns sung to piano accompaniment only) is the later service. Occasionally, our praise band from the early service (in which I play guitar) is asked to perform a “special” song at the traditional service. That means rocking out in a traditional service. If you’ve never seen the deer-in-headlights look on 70+ people at once diected at you, it’s a very unique experience.

Of course, there is always the one 90-year old lady in the front pew just clapping and singing and gettin’ down. The rest of the congregation then kind of scoots away from he in their pews, perhaps for fear of catching whatever she has… a sense of worship beyond musical style maybe, or perhaps a sense of rhythm?

HA. I love it.

“Praise Malaise”

The best thing about blended worship? Rockin’ the hymns with the full band!

I think maybe I would like to see instead of just someone doing a guitar solo and another reading from a scroll..
All the chord charts etc actually inscribed on scrolls.. So instead of the little music stand.. someone is reading the music from a scroll. If a pianist can flip those music books while in the midst of a crazy piece.. then a guitarist can scroll a scrool.

My church has a traditional service. We also have a “contemporary” service. And never the twain shall meet.

Except when the day comes that I get my way. The traditional service will do their liturgies and their hymns: “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, “All Creatures of Our God and King”, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”, “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace”.

And then the contemporary service will do the liturgy and sing the same songs…in their contemporary settings! “When I Survey” becomes “The Wonderful Cross”; “All Creatures” becomes David Crowder’s setting “All Creatures #2″; “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” becomes another David Crowder great with the chorus “Let our anthem grow loud! / There is one great love!”; “How Great Thou Art” becomes “How Great is Our God” with the Passion-esque interpolation of the hymn…”Amazing Grace” probably becomes “Grace Like Rain” because Chris Tomlin’s “Amazing Grace” is terrible.

And it will be epic. The church will be ONE in practice as well as spirit, a great outwardly visible sign of our unity in Christ in our shared service, yea, even in different styles at different times…

our “contemporary” worship band is called A1.
coincidence?
i think not.

Our church has two Sunday services. A blended service at 8:15 am and a contemporary service at 10:00. The blended service was started for people who wanted to support a 'new' church in town, but might prefer a 'calmer' service. I lead the blended service, although I have never been crazy about the term 'blended'. I prefer 'classic'

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