Many Coming into the Church Without Connection to the Riches of the Church's Worship and Song
The long-standing controversy about contemporary worship, especially within more conservative traditional church bodies, seems to have largely died down. It feels more or less like a 'live and let live' detente. In some denominations, such as the Episcopal or Lutheran ones, you can find the full spectrum of evangelical performance to high church, with blended variations in between. But it appears that some are living in one realm or the other without any crossover. It's like multiple churches coexisting within one large group but rarely interacting. When I grew up most everyone I knew in the church had some substantial exposure to the traditional liturgical forms and hymns. People knew the words and had familiarity with the music. That time has now long since passed. Now you can meet people within a denomination once known for traditional liturgical forms that have no working knowledge of these. The hymns sound foreign to them and the worship like something out of