When there is another revival, bringing another large group of people into the church, the music of that generation will also be brought in, once again offending older generations. These cycles of change and reaction have occurred throughout history, but they do seem to have occurred more often in recent times. To younger generations, it represents an increase in intelligibility, but to older generations, it may represent a loss. Some complaints of the older generations may be petty, creating unnecessary conflict over matters of musical taste, but generally their complaints are more serious than that. One's hymnody is his language of worship; it is the language of his heart's conversation with God. To lose the hymns one has grown up singing is, therefore, no small thing. The younger generation should learn to sympathize with this sense of loss and to accommodate their desires to the spiritual needs of their fathers and mothers in Christ. But the opposite is also true ...if the older do not bend somewhat, the younger will be deprived of their own language of worship - those forms of God's Word intelligible to them, by which they can best grow in Christ. In this respect, both sides should defer to one another in love, in the Spirit of Christ (Matthew 20:20-26). It is interesting that the music of younger generations always tends to be criticized by older generations as irreverent, while the music of the older generations tends to be criticized by younger generations as lacking joy and vitality." Quote by Frame
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Posted by tomglass at February 20, 2006 03:26 PM