Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Why WOULD Anyone Sing in Church These Days?

by Jonathan Aigner

Why don’t people sing in church anymore? 

A quick trip down Google’s memory lane reveals that the internet has been talking about this regularly since at least 2012. And everyone seems to know why.

Nobody knows the songs.

Singing makes men uncomfortable.

It’s just a performance.

We don’t love Jesus enough.

There is truth to some of these points, but the longer I think about this problem, the more I’m convinced we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of figuring out why people aren’t singing, we need to turn around, look at ourselves, and ask, “Why would they sing?”

See, when it comes to our sacred discipline of congregational singing, a lot has changed in our recent history. Read more ...

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Reaching the World with the Gospel – Let’s Get On with It!

If missions are not careful, they may become like the old empty cathedrals in Europe. Sidetracked, our main activities could become: building retirement homes, increasing allotments, upgrading insurance, and obtaining nicer offices instead of taking the Gospel to the masses.

 If we get sidetracked with the baby buster, seeker or warfare seminar mentality instead of taking the message of the Gospel to the lost, missions in the future may be nothing more than a shell, possibly with lots of activity but with no spiritual life.

 As we approach 2017, our purpose should be to “Proclaim Him [Christ], admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).

All evangelical missions and churches need to plan to evangelize and disciple the millions in India, in lost Europe, Muslim Africa, and the Middle East, as well as the world’s 150 million street children, the 100 thousand children and 400 thousand estimated to be in the sex trade in the Philippines, as well as the major unreached cities of the world. There are over 400 unchurched slum areas of Manila and the over nine million poor of Calcutta. This will take more than “supporting a national worker or needy child” (each of us should do both!).

Churches and missions need to recapture the word “sacrifice” for the sake of the lost. Let’s not wait for the future. Let’s reach our generation now with the Gospel.

Charles Spurgeon said from his bed of sickness, “If you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can. If you desire to make a sickbed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time when you were in health and strength!”

Why don’t some of us older pastors and missionaries forget about retirement, break out of the “we deserve a break” mold, and give all we have before death for the Gospel’s sake and God’s glory?

We shouldn’t just talk about our heroes such as Paul, C.T. Studd, Hudson Taylor, George Whitefield, David Livingstone, L.E. Maxwell, William Booth, and Amy Carmichael; let’s emulate them!


Missionaries, pastors, and Christian workers today can recommit ourselves to die in the battle if need be with our backs bent under the Gospel plow and our bodies worn out in ministry for the masses who need the Gospel of salvation in Christ. “And for this purpose [we] labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29).

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Why They Don’t Sing on Sunday Anymore

by Thom Schultz

Looking around the church 
last Sunday I noticed that the majority weren’t singing. And most of those who were singing barely moved their lips. The only voices I actually heard were those on stage with microphones.

That’s been the case for years now–in churches large and small. What used to be congregational singing has become congregational staring.

Even when the chipper “worship leader” in contemporary churches bounds on stage and predictably beckons everyone to “stand and worship,” the people compliantly obey the stand command, but then they turn into mute mannequins.

What’s behind this phenomenon?  Read more ...


Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Can a Non-Christian Play in a Worship Band?

Churches want the best players to play the drums, guitars, keyboard in the worship band. Is it therefore okay to enlist a tattooed, longhaired, rough new believer, shallow Christian or a non- Christian to the band because they are the better musicians?

So often in churches I speak, the members of the band stand apart from the hungry listeners to the Word. They lounge around, take smoke breaks, seeming to disregard the things of God and His Word.

But they are enlisted and hired because they are the best; but are they?

Can you really play to the glory and praise and worship of God if you do not know Him through the Gospel?


Read more in an article, The Tone Deaf Singer… What do you think?