Needed, A New Way to Meet #3: The Body of Christ: A New Way to Experience Church Life

I think we are wasting one of the greatest opportunities by not taking music that is part of our culture and setting wonderful, glorious songs to it that are truly 100% American. We don’t do that, and I don’t know why. Do you? You take the words and put them to another tune? That’s wonderful. Somebody gave us, you know, the commercial, when we say lord, you’ve said a lot of things. You know what else? I learned that one just recently. When you say Lord, you’ve said a lot of things nobody else can say. When you say Lord Jesus, you’ve said it all. I accept that tune. I accept that. That’s fine. That came out of the soul of this country. I recognize it. Something in me says that’s okay.

When I hear the screaming bloody murder stuff, it sounds like it was written in the bottom basement of hell…honestly, but it’s got Christian words to it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But I don’t want to get too much…if you like acid rock Christian music, have at it, friend. Just do it. I’ve made my point; at least we are seeing that there is an American culture. You know, it’s very hard to understand your own culture. You can with other people. I could not believe the Japanese singing songs like… I don’t know how they did that; I can’t imitate it. It sounds unbelievable, but they sang beautiful old favorites. Watch a birthday party. Watch a basketball game. What other cultural things do we do that we’re hardly even aware of? Watch a picnic. For goodness sakes, watch a picnic. I don’t know what else to say, but I can tell you this world is filled with beautiful American music waiting to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, which I believe will outdo these crazy tunes kids pick out on their guitars that I cannot find a rhyme for. I cannot…it takes me weeks to catch it on. They’re singing; they’re just singing up a storm, but I find it almost impossible to handle.

Now, I would like to, I would like to make a suggestion: that we have song books and that we do away with song books. Let me see if I can reconcile this through statements. I think I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to sit down on the floor, learn how to know the Lord, and take one song a week and learn it. We’re going to learn them, and I’m going to ask you to memorize the words. Let me tell you; I’ll give you a couple of tips here. I know you’re not writing this down, so I won’t do it now.  If you have a large meeting, then I would say, do a few things. Leave your songbook at home or put it down when the music starts. You can usually sing it; you can usually carry it, but if necessary, get a projector in your large meetings. You will ruin a meeting if everybody’s looking at a songbook. I think we have to pull free of songbooks. That’s one of the first practical pointers I would give you as far as meetings go.

Now, I haven’t even begun to speak of meetings, but since we’re talking about them, I would like us to approach everything with a sense of newness. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good songbook. I think there’s only such a thing as a growing songbook, and after it grows a while, I’m not sure, but it should be laid aside for a few years. By the way, there are songs you have never heard before, and I know Christians who won’t sing them anymore because they’ve worn them out; they are precious to some of us and not to others.

You Pentecostals and Charismatics, I can still meet you. Episcopalians, I can still meet you. Hey, Baptists, I can still meet you. We share a common culture, and that culture runs much deeper than you realize. But this becomes important to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Japanese don’t meet like us; the Chinese can’t meet the way we meet. The Eskimos can’t meet the way we meet. The Latins perhaps should not meet the way somebody from Great Britain meets and expresses themselves, but you and I have a common culture. If we use that culture, we can meet one another and have a meeting we all enjoy.

I am prepared to take all the great old hymns. I am prepared to take anything that sticks. Sometimes you can know when a song is going to stay. I heard “Majesty” less than a year ago, and the moment I heard it, I said, “That’s going to be with us forever.” And that which lasts, you ought to really emphasize, and that which has lasted in the past, we can use again. We can rewrite words of great old hymns. You have been touched, I know, even in church, when we all stood and sang what? “How Great Thou Art.” “Blessed Assurance.” “To God Be the Glory,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name,” and there are about five different ways to sing that thing. That will not take away any chorus you sing; it won’t take away all that dumb stuff we’re all singing and generally love.

If we’re going to meet, let’s realize we have a place to meet, and that’s in our culture. We can express, if we can concentrate on this a little bit, we can express our culture. Now, when you go and sit down in a crowded living room at a birthday party, don’t just watch the candles being blown out; watch how people sit around in the living room when there’s not enough furniture to go around. Watch that and observe it, and you will see the embryo of an American Christian meeting. We can have this kind of meeting. Well, my whole thought is, no heathen in America, no unbeliever, should ever come into our meetings and be terrified, or say, “I don’t understand this; these people are a bunch of foreigners.” That is in our music and our worship, and please, in the way we talk. The standard for a meeting is that nothing will be there to frighten people who share the same culture that you and I have.