Monday Soup: What Are You Cheering For?

We finished our Big Questions series this weekend with a live panel Q&A at both Waterloo and Cedar Falls.  I'd love to share a story with you.

We did this live panel for 2 out of the four weekends of this series.  At Cedar Falls, that meant that we've had 6 different services at which we took live questions.  But it wasn't until the very last service - the 11:00 a.m. - that we received this question:

"Why don't we play more real piano worship music?"

Phrased just like that.

It was my decision whether or not to have the panel answer it live.  After seeing it in the cue and prayerfully considering whether it would be beneficial to answer the question (vs. the hundreds of other questions in the cue), I decided to throw it up on the screens and have the panel (myself included) answer it.

Fuller did a great job of fielding it.  I followed it up with a few brief thoughts of my own.

But our answers are not really the part of the story that I want to share with you.

Here's the part that sets up the rest of the story: right after I asked that question, we had a handful of people in the audience loudly clap and even cheer their approval in support of that style.  

I responded by recognizing them and trying to draw our attention to how loaded this topic can be.  And then we proceeded to answer the question.

Although I didn't think much it at the time, I thought about it later.  As I did, it started to bother me a little bit.

Here's why it bothered me:

Of all the things that we talked about that day - from:

how to share your faith with one of your friends who seems curious but isn't quite ready to make a faith decision, to 

how to really keep in step with the Spirit, to 

how one can study and know the Bible, to 

how to come alongside those who have gone through a tragedy in which they've lost two of their little kids and maybe their wife, to 

the picture and significance of baptism, to 

the difficulty but call to be transparent and confess your sins to one another...

...some folks cheered only for a preferred music style.

Now, if you've been to any of our All Team meetings these past few months, you know that this isn't an insignificant issue.  In fact, we've spent a lot of time, prayer, and wrestling in determining what style we should choose, and why we should choose it.  Bottom line: when it comes to our church's personality (mission, vision, values, culture), our church's spiritual direction, and our arts ministry's personality, we think that the contemporary rock style is the one that best suits us, our mission, and what the Spirit is up to right now.  Period.

But I'm not really thinking about that.  Rather, here's what I'm thinking about:

I want to be a part of a church that knows what to cheer for.

And artists, hear me clearly: this most certainly is not a dig at the handful of people who clapped for the piano style music.  I didn't see who they were.  Some may have had pure motives for their approval, and others not.  Who knows.  It's not like knowing would change anything anyways.

But here's what I do know:

It's our sacred duty to help our people to know what to cheer for.

This duty starts with us.  And it starts way before the weekend is upon us.  Way before we hit the stage, and way before we look at a service order.  Way before we turn it on, set it up, lock it down, or dial it in.

Here's the deal:

It's impossible to help others authentically cheer for God if you can't first authentically cheer for what he's doing in your own life.

Yeah.  There it is.  Read it over, again and again, until that truth sinks in.

We have to ask ourselves:

In our lives before God, are we cheering for him?  Are we cheering for what he's doing in us as we read his word, as we pray, as we fast, as we care for our own souls in silence, solitude, community, and worship?

Are we?

Are you?

Too often we come, we serve, we work hard, we produce, and then we just hope and pray that people either get it or like it or tolerate it or respond to it or affirm it or whatever.

Forget people for a moment.  Forget those who clapped for a different style.  Forget those who you wish would have clapped more loudly after the song, or after the lights, or after the video shot.  Forget those who said the music was too loud, or too soft, or too whatever.  Just focus on you.

Are you cheering right now for what God is up to in your life?

P.S.

I left that 11:00 a.m. unbelievably encouraged.  I had a chance to talk with a woman who was in the thick of it - I'm talking the kind of story that is at a life or death crossroads/I've made an incredible change/but I don't know if my past is still gonna rear its ugly head and take me down/and I don't know what my future holds for me or my marriage/I just know that I can't ever go back/and oh my gosh I could tell you story after story of how God has protected me/would you just pray for me... kind of an encounter.

I left cheering for her... for what God is up to in her life.

Because God is up to the same thing in mine.