My Thoughts on the Elimination of the Contemporary Service

I was sad to read in this month's newsletter that the contemporary service will be eliminated from the Sunday schedule of services after the start of the new year. On the other hand, I am aware of the split it had created in the church and the fact that attendance had been waning over the last few months. Although I supported the existence of the contemporary service I hadn't been able to attend because of my involvement with Sunday School.

It should be noted that the contemporary service was an effective recruiting tool. After all, it worked on me! Two years ago when the kids and I attended our first service at the Shepherd United Methodist Church I came because I was curious to find out what Son-day Morning Live! was all about. Unfortunately for us the church had just gone through a schedule change leading us to miss the contemporary service, so we sat in on the traditional service instead.

I had attended church semi-regularly as a youth, so a large part of the traditional service felt very familiar to me. We returned for another Sunday to attend a contemporary service. I enjoyed being able to read the words for the hymns we sang off of the projector screen. I had found during my time with the Church of Christ Men's Fellowship group that I could project my voice farther if I was looking straight ahead instead of looking down into a hymnal. The words on the projector relieved me of another hassle I had never liked: flipping through the pages quickly to find the next song. It may seem silly, but when I was younger it was a bit of a pet peeve. Surrounded by all of this technology, I felt comfortable reading bible passages off of my PDA.

Over the last year I've had numerous conversations with my brother-in-law, Jerry, about the value of using projectors and multimedia equipment during church services. He's a Lutheran minister so he spoke with a great deal of authority on this subject. He's not against their use, but warned against relying on them too much. After all, we are in church to worship god but not to watch movies.

I know that there were similar discussions within our church which were never really resolved. The end of the contemporary service shouldn't be looked at as a sign that it was always an idea doomed to fail or that it should never be attempted again. It just didn't fit in with the church's current direction.

Although I'm going to miss some parts of the contemporary service I'm really looking forward to the change in January and some of their benefits. For starters, I'm going to be able to teach Sunday School starting at 9:30 a.m. and still attend the worship service at 11 a.m. As I mentioned above, this is something that I haven't been able to do since the summer months. The change in schedule will also hopefully make more church members available to help out with the Living Out Loud Sunday School program. This benefits everyone, starting of course with the kids. And, no matter how much I liked attending a service with a projection system or listening to sermons with a multimedia touch, there will always be a part of me that will find comfort in the style of a traditional service.

And, the convenience of being able to quickly lookup bible passages on my PDA.