Timothy's Thoughts

I t seems like we spend a lot of time talking about what to do about the music in church. When I did my stint as music director at a small church, I’ll say that I thought it was hugely important. I aimed for newer songs and always put a slower song right before the sermon, so people would be ready to listen. I had this idea that we could change our music and our attendance would increase. Well, our attendance did increase during that time, but it had nothing to do with the music. If anything, the people who came would’ve liked different music than the stuff I was giving them. Our thinking can get really messed up. We start saying things like, “If it will draw in more people, we can put up with music we don’t really care for.” It isn’t that there’s anything wrong with having newer music, or older music, or whatever kind of music. We run into a problem when we start making assumptions about what other people want. “If we want young people, we’ll have to have contemporary music,” we say....

T he other day, I posted a link to a Wikipedia page as a comment to a post that showed up on my news feed. The person who had shared the post saw the link as disagreeing with the post he’d shared. He sent me a message saying as much and “I’m removing you from my friends list.” For the most part, I don’t care if someone removes me from their friends list or not. But this is a person that I see frequently. He isn’t someone I’ve spent a lot of time talking to, but our paths cross in Christian ministry. We exchanged several messages, with me saying I didn’t see why he thought it was such a big deal and him saying that he was concerned what his non-Christian friends would think. Personally, I think non-Christians seeing that Christians can disagree with each other and still get along has a greater impact than seeing them pat each other on the back and say, “Good job, brother.” But neither of us seemed to be persuading the other. What really got me, when I thought about it, was the words in ...