Differences in Strokes and Folks

At IHC this year, I heard a young boy's high, clear voice singing, "The old ledger is clear!"

I don't know if I've ever seen an actual ledger. I guess a spreadsheet would be the modern equivalent.

I wondered if he knew what an old ledger was.

There were people listening to him sing who were blessed by the song. I can figure out what the image means--ledgers are where debts are recorded, and one way you can think about sins is as unpayable debts against God, so for your ledger to be clear means your unpayable debts have been paid by Jesus' death.

But the image of a ledger doesn't connect with me. It doesn't bless me. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with the image. If I had grown up in a time when actual physical ledgers were used for the recording of debts, that image would probably connect with me. Maybe that has something to do with why it blessed some people at IHC.

For someone who grew up going to camp meetings, camp meeting-style worship (which can include shouting, running, jumping, etc.) may be a blessing. It does not represent a meaningful worship experience to me, I think primarily because I'm not wired that way. I didn't have a lot of good experiences around that sort of worship growing up, so it doesn't connect with me.

The church services when I played cello with the GBS Symphonic Wind and String Ensemble were some of the most meaningful worship experiences I've ever had. For me, worship at its best is order that produces beauty.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with less orderly worship, and there are people for whom unpredictable demonstrations indicate God's work in worship.

There's a spectrum of worship styles here, and it runs from order (sheet music and a conductor) to unpredictability (unprompted, unexpected shouting).

It is dangerous to associate either end of that spectrum with "real" spirituality. That can lead someone like me to feel pressure to do something weird to look "spiritual" in a camp meeting-style environment. A Methodist pastor in the early 1800s, Nathan Bangs, reports (p. 183-184) that sort of thing happening in his church back then. It's not a new tendency to try to fit in and look "spiritual," however that is defined.

Don't define spiritual by what works for you.

Don't scold people if they're not responding to your sermon like you would be in their shoes. Their shoes might actually be different than yours.

Of course there are boundaries to the spectrum--1 Cor. 14 on one hand, 1 Thess. 5:19-21 on the other. But in between those boundaries, people differ, and that's okay.