The problem, as far as I could tell, is that the church was hopelessly out of date. They couldn’t hope to reach a new generation with that music and with those traditions.
I set about revamping as much as I could. We modernized the music. I spoke to current issues. I innovated.
I soon realized that I had misdiagnosed the problem. The problem was not an outdated church, and the solution wasn’t to modernize it. That, actually, was part of the problem itself. The problem is that we had to re-anchor to what’s old and unchanging, not to keep up with ever-changing styles.
Years later, I see the same solution being offered to the church.
Every generation, we announce that things have changed, and that what worked before is now outdated. We peddle new solutions in books and online courses. If you don’t adapt, you’re going to be left behind, we’re told.
The problem is that you can never keep up. “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months,” quipped Oscar Wilde. Change your church to what’s new now, and you’ll have to change it again soon after. The surest way to fade into irrelevance is to try to stay relevant.
What we need most are churches that don’t try to keep up, but that stay deeply rooted to what the church has done in every age and culture. We need to believe that the gospel doesn’t need updating, that Scripture speaks to every generation, that human beings haven’t really changed, and that God’s truth will never become irrelevant. We must stake our lives and ministries on a source of power that hasn’t changed in millennia, and that will meet the needs of people today just as it will until the day that Jesus returns.
It may sound like I’m insisting on a certain style of music, or that churches should all look the same. Actually, I’m arguing for the opposite. The forms matter less than we think. The style of music, the lighting and technology, and the propensity to seem up to date or traditional — none of these matter as much as we think. Pay as little attention to them as you can, because they’re probably a distraction from the real issues.
The real issues are your confidence in the gospel, your willingness to open Scripture and say what it says, and the humility to say the same things that the church has said for hundreds of years now. The good news is old news; the truths we preach never go out of style; what matters most is not whether modern audiences approve of what we say, but if God approves of what we say. We need pastors and churches that major in the old and unchanging, and that look sideways at those who encourage us to innovate and change.
We need more of the same old. Stop innovating. Go back to the basics. Refuse to budge from the timeless. Trust that what’s changeless matters more than keeping up with the ever-changing fashions and preferences of the world.