Yes. There comes a point when the ladders must go. There are situations that come up here at home where I need to go up one or two steps on a step-stool or short ladder, but the days of dragging out the podium ladder and climbing it to reach things 15 feet up in a fellowship hall are long gone. I can't even lift anything like that any more. (And I never, ever climbed up onto the podium itself -- I just held on to the rail.)
By the way, I did hint at what "the other concern" is, above, so maybe I can say a little more about it. Choirs are "Old Testament", not "New Testament". Singing in a choir is active participation for the singers, director, and accompanists, but passive for the congregation. They just listen, and it is a very different, muted experience. I am not drawn to passivity.
Congregational singing is a little better, but it is scripted and directed by the leaders, with only indirect input from the congregation, and not during the service. In our contemporary service, the music often is so loud that people can't even hear each other sing, a cultural contribution. This is the latest version of church tradition of 1700 years, and this is how it must be done. Neither the leaders nor the congregations are free to change it.
That is the heart of the problem, and it extends to so much more than just music. I don't know of a good solution, and enough said for now.
I'm discovering that a number of my "likes" hadn't gone through, including this one. If I am running VPN, that is more understandable but when I'm not, I suspect it is a symptom of shaky Substack infrastructure. They make use of quite a few external libraries and services, which creates more ways for things to break.
"Church" as it is done today, and has been done for centuries, has little in common with what is revealed in the New Testament epistles. The particulars of how things were done in the first century must be derived from these letters, which tend to focus on what is improper, and what was not being done. There was significant drift toward the end of the first century, growing in the second and third. And then the fourth century happened, and that is our model to this day, with "enhancements".
I will be praying for your health sister.
find myself evaluating whether I am up to the task too … especially ladders… at least I think about it
Yes. There comes a point when the ladders must go. There are situations that come up here at home where I need to go up one or two steps on a step-stool or short ladder, but the days of dragging out the podium ladder and climbing it to reach things 15 feet up in a fellowship hall are long gone. I can't even lift anything like that any more. (And I never, ever climbed up onto the podium itself -- I just held on to the rail.)
By the way, I did hint at what "the other concern" is, above, so maybe I can say a little more about it. Choirs are "Old Testament", not "New Testament". Singing in a choir is active participation for the singers, director, and accompanists, but passive for the congregation. They just listen, and it is a very different, muted experience. I am not drawn to passivity.
Congregational singing is a little better, but it is scripted and directed by the leaders, with only indirect input from the congregation, and not during the service. In our contemporary service, the music often is so loud that people can't even hear each other sing, a cultural contribution. This is the latest version of church tradition of 1700 years, and this is how it must be done. Neither the leaders nor the congregations are free to change it.
That is the heart of the problem, and it extends to so much more than just music. I don't know of a good solution, and enough said for now.
very interesting
I'm discovering that a number of my "likes" hadn't gone through, including this one. If I am running VPN, that is more understandable but when I'm not, I suspect it is a symptom of shaky Substack infrastructure. They make use of quite a few external libraries and services, which creates more ways for things to break.
"Church" as it is done today, and has been done for centuries, has little in common with what is revealed in the New Testament epistles. The particulars of how things were done in the first century must be derived from these letters, which tend to focus on what is improper, and what was not being done. There was significant drift toward the end of the first century, growing in the second and third. And then the fourth century happened, and that is our model to this day, with "enhancements".