What Is the Glue That Holds Your Church Together?

Every church has a musical center. No music ensemble, no matter how talented, can do every type of music equally well. Even if they could, we would drive our church's crazy without a canon of familiar songs and some predictability in style. It's hard to have vibrant worship without a musical center.

But on the flip side, it's all to easy for a center to become the glue. There are boomer churches where the glue that holds people together is a soft rock, easy listening, "contemporary" sound. There are new churches with plenty of young people where the thing that holds everyone together is an identifiably hip look, hip taste, and hip sound. And there are, no doubt, traditional churches with graying membership where the adhesive is a uniform appreciation for Fanny Crosby played methodically on a Hammond organ. There's nothing wrong with having a discernible style to your worship. Most churches do. But the glue ought to be the gospel. Read more