The Winds of Change

Whenever I hear that term, "The Winds of Change", I will forever think of that icky monster Randall on "Monsters, Inc." when he's talking to Mike Wizowski saying, "Ya hear that Mikey? That's the winds of change." Anyway......onto the subject at hand.

I go to a Nazarene church. I was born and raised in a Nazarene church and come from a very long line of Nazarenes. A lot has changed over the years in the Nazarene church. When I was growing up as a child in this demonination, I struggled with some of the rules. I did not understand why we did some of the things we did. For instance, we weren't allowed to go to movies in the theater. Don't attempt to get an explanation from me as to the logic of this, because I still don't know why. We were allowed to rent movies. So to me, the question was always, "why is it OK to rent a movie and watch it in a VCR, but it's not OK to go to the actual theater and watch it?" Is the building itself evil? I don't know. As the years have gone by, that particular rule seems to have gone by the wayside because to date, there is not a single Nazarene I know that doesn't visit the theater on occasion.

When I was a child, and well into my teens and even younger adulthood, the music portion of the service was composed of a couple of hymns, the choir special and another special by a soloist, or quartet, etc...Several years ago, a "contemporary" chorus or two were thrown in there for good measure. Eventually, our church decided to split into two services. The growth was substantial enough to warrant doing this, and they decided it might not be a bad idea to appeal to the younger crowd and make the 2nd service a "contemporary" service. After visiting the second service a couple of times, I determined that our church's idea of a contemporary service, and my idea of a contemporary service were two different things. Really the only difference was that there was no choir and rather than singing hymns, chorus after chorus after chorus were sang. They were not sung in an "upbeat" fashion with a band behind them that made me want to stand up and sing, tap my feet and dance in the aisles (no, we don't dance in the aisles....just teasing). The choruses they sang were contemporary enough, but accompanied by the piano and the drums and were at least 2 or 3 beats slower than they should be. Suffice it to say, I was not overly impressed with our church's idea of a "contemporary service". And apparently, not too many other people were either because the 1st service, the traditional service, still got twice the amount of people to it at 8:30 a.m. than the later 11:00 service. And the younger crowd that the contemporary service was supposed to appeal to? They were also still attending the 1st service.

A few months ago, our Sunday School teachers (we go to the young married's class which at that time was taught by a couple in their 40s who have attended our church for years) came to us as a class with concerns about the ministry to young families and young couples in our church. They asked for our opinions and what we thought in terms of how our church ministered to people such as ourselves. That opened a whole huge whoppin' can of worms and the next two Sundays during Sunday School was spent discussing what changes could be made to bring in more young families and couples from our community and to keep those young families and couples currently attending to stay put. Many ideas were discussed, brought to the church board, and our Pastor even came in and sat with us in Sunday School one week to hear our ideas. Some ideas were passed over, some were met with a, "Hmmm....we'll have to think about that" and one idea was accepted and put into motion. And that idea was to re-vamp the "contemporary service" and make it live up to its name. Our Sunday School teachers (who I'll just refer to as P & S) took it upon themselves to head up and create a new praise band. This, unfortunately meant that they could no longer be our Sunday School teachers; but I suppose you have to give and take to get what you want, right? The new praise band was to consist of drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and bass guitar, as well as 2 or 3 singers to lead the songs. They asked me to be one of the singers, and my husband to play the drums. Hubby avoided an answer for as long as he could, avoiding calls from P, not returning calls to P, I guess in hopes that they would forget he existed and wouldn't have to do it. My husband has a real issue with commiting to things. He'll say he'll do something, then won't end up doing it, but I think he knew that if he said yes to this, that he would be stuck because other than P & S's son (who is going away to college in three weeks), there are no other drummers that we know of in our church. And if he said yes and ended up flaking out, he would single-handedly be responsible for the demise of the praise band.

Shockingly, he came to me one evening and told me that he had decided to go ahead and agree to do the drums for the praise band. I was thrilled and P&S were thrilled and extremely relieved.

We began practice last week and had our BIG DEBUT this past Sunday. We got in on it the 3rd week; the prior weeks P&S's son had been playing drums and they had been rotating singers. So far, it has been very successful. The numbers for the second service have about doubled, and we have seen several new couples in the audience. The music is very much so contemporary and "toe-tapping" worthy. What's the best, though, is seeing my husband enjoy himself doing this kind of thing. He's not much of a people person; rather shy and likes to keep to himself. He hasn't been involved much in church at all, and to have him agree to do this and actually enjoy it is amazing!

The winds of change....they are a comin'!