A Paradigm For The Church Music Of The Future

This chapter has presented a variety of ideas and ideals about music for use in worship. This article describes one approach for synthesizing many of these ideas, an approach especially suited for charismatic churches. Based on Paul's references to "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs," this article argues for a balanced and visionary approach to the use of music in worship. All of us have personal preferences. Some prefer blue over green. Some prefer a trip to the beach over a trip to the mountains. Some favor grits over hash browns, country music over rock. And almost everyone favors the home team over the visitors. But while we smile at some of our preferences, our religious preferences are often quite a different matter. For some reason, our own particular religious traditions and experiences tend to color our ideas of what God's preferences are and aren't. Nowhere is this more true than in the area of worship styles. How quickly our preferences become biases. And how easily our…