rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "The American Spectator : Can Liturgical Music Be S...":
The author makes some very good points. The issue here is more than just the music. First of all, the lack of reverence during these so called worship services can be rather appalling. Everything falls like a house of cards. The church year calendar is abandoned, along with the lectionary. The worship services become thematic, reflecting the latest trends. Typically, the service becomes a self help session. The pastor does not select or approve the music. This is the job for the worship leader.
The use of the "argument ender" is a common tactic used by those who cannot make their case because they have none. As pointed out here on Ichabod, the CG adherents often use the argument ender when they talk about saving souls.
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GJ - Yes, readers, when the audience walks into the church performance with a soda in one hand and popcorn in the other, a carnival atmosphere is already established. WELS and Missouri are leaders in this blasphemous exercise. As our guest writer observed before, Luther brought the layman back into the worship service, but the entertainment services make him passive once again.
A mod wedding will have secular music performed, but a traditional wedding uses Christian hymns sung by those worshiping with the couple. The new mode weddings have a church setting - very pretty - and no more religious content than a Las Vegas wedding performed by an Elvis.
Basic adult education teaches that participating makes the lesson stick better. What is wrong with having two or three appropriate hymns during a wedding? Doc Martin was going to have "Praise My Soul the King of Heaven" and "O Perfect Love" during his first attempt (British TV). I expect that most couples remember those moments, the words sung, and the reverence of the occasion.
The wedding reception offers plenty of opportunity to play secular music, if the families crave that.
The new mode wedding has become the template for the Lutheran Sunday service - a stage (not a chancel or altar), communion furniture absent, pipe organ removed, praise band crowding the stage. Pipe organs are now so devalued by their owners than a congregation can obtain one for the cost of moving and installing it.
One congregation is out zero dollars for a restored organ worth $100,000.
Oh, but the Boomers want their rinky-tinky praise music. Play on - it is the swan song of Lutherdom. Their children and grandchildren are being taught even less than they were.
