I grew up in the church in the 80s and 90s. For those of you who weren’t in the church during those years, it was a bit of a tumultuous time as the shift from hymns to contemporary worship music was splitting churches everywhere.
My church was no exception.
As a teenager during this time, I was going to Christian camps and Conferences where the worship was led by a band, and the concerts were all “Christian Rock.” Even though my church was smaller and in the middle of nowhere Ohio, we had a couple of individuals who were committed to shifting our worship from hymns to a mix of hymns and “choruses.”
Not only was there a shift in churches from hymns to “choruses,” but guitars were being added to worship along with, or even replacing, traditional piano/organ music.
It was such a contentious time in churches that churches were either splitting because of the music choices or offering two services on Sundays: a traditional service and a contemporary service.
Some of you who lived through this shift are probably experiencing PTSD right now because you’ve spent decades trying to recover from the chaos that ensued from this transition.
I remember these years partly because I was a teenager who didn’t deal well with traditional thinking and also because my church wasn’t just transitioning to “choruses,” we were in the middle of a building campaign because we had outgrown our building.
Knowing what I know now about change in the church, I can see how these two giant changes happening at the same time were all the kindling needed to turn the church into a massive dumpster fire, but, at the time, I was young and dumb and had no idea how destructive the church and people in the church could be.
We thought we had successfully transitioned to praise teams and instruments and moved into our new building when the coup happened.
I can’t say it was completely unexpected because the undercurrent was rippling through the congregation right under our noses, but it still came as a shock when my dad got voted out of leadership and my family essentially blackballed from our church.
There was a faction of people inside our fundamentalist, high-control church community who were not fans of change and who were so convinced that the old ways, the traditional ways, were better than the progress we were making that they even wanted to abandon the new building to move back into the old one–the one with the pews instead of the cushy chairs.
What they didn’t realize was that the pews were gone, and, even worse in their eyes, they had been sold to a woman pastor. That’s a story for another day and another blog, but suffice it to say, that didn’t go over well either.
This faction had rallied against those in leadership who were focused on moving forward instead of staying stuck in the past. They secretly campaigned against us by going to church folks’ houses and spreading hate, lies, and deceit until they convinced enough people in the church to vote out all the leadership they didn’t agree with.
It was heartbreaking at the time, but now I recognize it as one of the best things that happened to me and my family in our spiritual journeys. It allowed me to understand what happens when we confuse our traditions with the “truth” and when we think our theology is the only true theology.
It’s what happens when we live by the letter of the law instead of living in the Spirit.
The Letter of the Law vs. the Spirit
If you didn’t get a chance to check out my post last week about why the Pharisees would have had beef with Jesus’s disciples, you might want to check that out to get a bit of context. You can find that post here:
https://kristenneighbarger.com/2024/03/27/paradigms/
This is the story Luke tells at the beginning of chapter 6 right after the Pharisees criticize the disciples at the end of chapter 5.
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Luke 6:1-5 TPT
I can picture how this went down. Jesus and his rag-tag bunch of disciples are walking through this field. I can see them messing around as the Pharisees get more and more irritated. Then, I can see them picking a few kernels of grain because they were hungry and not thinking about the law that forbid working on the Sabbath. They rubbed them in their hands, and the Pharisees thought, “We’ve got you now” because that was technically “harvesting” the grain, thus working on the Sabbath.
I love Jesus’s response here. He points the Pharisees back to a story they would have known well from I Samuel 21. It’s the story of when David was on the run from Saul and had no food. He went to Nob and asked the priest, Ahimelech for food. The only food available was the consecrated bread that the law forbade anyone but the Levites to eat. Ahimelech gave the consecrated bread to David and his men anyway.
Why would Ahimelech have done this?
Because caring for human needs is more important than maintaining the letter of the law.
This law regarding working on the Sabbath was meant to allow people a day of rest not to deny them of their human needs. While the letter of the law said not to work on the Sabbath, the spirit of the law was to meet the needs of the people.
Jesus understood that.
The Pharisees, though, were more concerned with the letter of the law than they were with the spirit behind the law. They were so blinded by the letter of the law that they couldn’t see anything else, including the people who were right in front of them who were simply popping a few pieces of grain into their mouths as they were walking through a field.
If we aren’t conscious of this tendency, we can easily find ourselves mirroring this behavior of the Pharisees and becoming hypercritical of people who don’t do things the same way we do, who don’t think the same way we do, and who don’t talk the same way we do.
We can get caught up in the letter of the law, the tradition, the long-held theology and we can forget the spirit that was behind that law, that tradition, and that theology. When that happens, when we forget WHY we are doing what we are doing and only focus on WHAT we are doing, we’ve lost our way, friends.
Spirit-Led Change
I spent years in a faith community that was more concerned with the letter of the law than it was the spirit behind the law. I still see so many churches and faith communities falling into this trap and missing the big picture because they are so concerned with the details. It’s not just the argument between hymns and contemporary worship music. There are so many other areas where we can fall prey to believing our traditions and theologies are the gospel truth, essentially the law, and missing the spirit altogether. I see it with the debates over:
Women in ministry and leadership
How often we should take communion
The role of baptism in the church
How the children’s ministry is organized
What we should wear to church
Whether we should stand during worship
We have to be so careful with how we approach these topics that are dividing churches and make sure we’re letting the spirit lead us instead of the law, and we have to recognize when the old way is no longer working and the spirit is nudging us toward something new.
That’s what Jesus was doing. He was nudging the Pharisees to think about the law differently–like David had when his men were hungry and only had consecrated bread to eat–and then he was encouraging them toward something completely new, and they didn’t like it.
Have you ever experienced this in your own life?
Your own church?
It’s so easy to take our eyes off Christ and the big picture and get caught up in all the details of our traditions, checklists, and theologies, isn’t it?
I know I’ve been there before too, and while it can be scary to let go of some of those traditions and theologies that once served us well, if the Spirit is nudging us to something new, that’s surely a nudge we need to listen to.
Friends, I know change is hard. I know traditions are difficult to break. I know theology is hard to change, but I also know that the Spirit often nudges us to get out of our comfort zones to create new traditions and to think critically about our theology. That’s how change happens. And, Jesus was all about change.
Reflections:
Where are the areas of your life where you get caught up in the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law?
What are the places where the Spirit is nudging you to look at things differently?
What is the hardest part of progress for you?
I like old hymns and more contemporary music. It doesn't have to be dull or over the top.
This is a great topic because we can all get stuck in our ways, even if we don't think we're legalistic! I'm reflecting on all of this and asking the Lord to shine his light into my heart today, friend. Thank you!