Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

Ramblin' Jack wrote:As for printing the order of the service in the bulletin, I had forgotten that that used to considered taboo. As far as I know, it's standard practice among most mainline CoC congregations these days, at least in my neck of the woods.

GuitarHero wrote:It will have to be caffeine free Coca-Cola. We don't want to cause former coffee addicts to stumble.

Ramblin' Jack wrote:

Last week I was looking at the website of another C o C in Brentwood. The first page of its weekly bulletin was dedicated to bashing Otter Creek for adding an instrumental service.

Hey musiscman, any chance you could send me a link to that, if it's still available? You could send it in a PM if you want.

I'm curious to know what the CoC folks are saying about all this.

March 8, 2015 Volume 9
“NASHVILLE-AREA CHURCH’S RADICAL STEP:
ADDING INSTRUMENTS”
I’m sure plenty of you saw this headline in Thursday’s Tennessean: “Nashville-Area Church’s Radical Step: Adding Instruments.” The article reported how an area “Church of Christ” is finally pulling the trigger and planning to permanently add instrumental praise to one of its two Sunday services by September.
While it really is a sad decision, frankly it doesn’t come as a shock to those familiar with the situation. After all, for quite some time that congregation, to quote the article, “already has experimented with instrumental music with a Wednesday Vespers service; young adult, children's ministry, and student ministry gatherings; and special worship for Good Friday, Christmas and other holidays.”

And, of course, they aren’t the first congregation claiming to be a “Church of Christ” which has moved away from a cappella-only praise in recent years. The article rightly notes that they’ve joined about twenty other congregations nationwide who have made that move. And, I might add, they won’t be the last; others in this area and across the nation will choose to follow the same path in the months and years ahead.

There are two particular things in the article that I think are important to point out. First, after the article briefly mentions the “Scriptural citations backing a cappella tradition,” it then quoted the congregation’s “preaching and teaching minister” who said, “church history is a stronger influence.” Let me say that again—their preacher said, “church history is a stronger influence.” What exactly did he mean by that? He meant that “church history is a stronger influence” than Scripture. Folks, that statement is a sad, sad commentary on how some church leaders make decisions—they subordinate Scripture to other considerations. Hear me well—nothing must have a stronger influence in our decision making process than Scripture. Scripture must always take precedence over everything else, both in our individual decisions and our congregational decisions. The day we start letting anything have a stronger influence than Scripture is the day we stop letting Jesus be the head of His church.

The second thing I want to point out also relates to that statement about church history. That statement—“church history is a stronger influence”—implies that history supports instrumental praise in Christian worship. Nothing, however, could further from the truth. The fact of the matter is, instrumental praise in wor-ship completely ignores church history. Every objective church historian will acknowledge that a cappella praise has been the practice of the vast majority of Christians for most of church history. In fact, as most of you probably know, the word “a cappella” testifies to that fact—it’s an Italian word that literally means “as in the chapel” or “in chapel style.” So, every time someone says “a cappella” it’s an acknowledgement that the music historically heard in Christian houses of worship was vocal only.

Ramblin' Jack wrote:Yeah, Brentwood Church of Christ is a NI church as I recall.

Although their website is surprisingly modern, I have to say.