Vintage Faith Community

Our desire is for authenticity before each other and the Lord.  When we worship, whether during a Sunday service or in a small group or in our private times of prayer, we want to genuinely respond with fascination, adoration, and admiration to God’s word, grace, love, and majesty.

But the more specific question to be addressed here is this: how do we allow for and create authentic worship music for use when we are gathered on Sundays?  Well, the hard part is that there is no magic formula, no “Worship Music for Idiots” book, and no list of church music rules detailed out in Scripture. But perhaps this is a good thing: the last thing we want is to pass out all the new Vineyard, Passion, and David Crowder CDs and say that this is how we should do worship.  Don’t get me wrong; none of this music is necessarily bad, and in fact a lot if it is very good and can be used for God’s glory in corporate worship gatherings. So while we may use this music, along with hymns and songs from other eras, we also want music that expresses what God is doing here and now in our own community.  King David throughout Psalms exclaims, “Sing unto Him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise,” and that is exactly what we are going to do.

“Sing Unto Him A New Song”

If you are interested in playing music at Vintage then you must share God’s heart to seek and save the lost. We gather so that we can know Him and make Him known, and for that reason we believe that the context of Spokane matters. We are on mission in Spokane and we must stay relevant to and aware of our changing culture. For example, if we were planning on moving our church to Mexico, we would not go down there and sing “Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord;” rather, we would sing “Abre Mis Ojos Senor.”  Missiologist and pastor Dr. Ed Stetzer says, “The how of ministry is directly affected by the who, the where and the when,” and for this reason our vision is to have a grassroots style of worship music in line with David’s command to “sing a new song.” We want to create, write, and sing God’s new songs in and for our culture, and this can only happen if we have a heart for the people in the city of Spokane.  I would love to see our church sing all original music on a Sunday. I would love to have visitors come and ask, “Hey, how come I don’t hear any of these songs on Christian radio?”  The purpose is not, as some people have wondered, that we can be puffed up with pride because our church has really cool music! Our single goal is this: if these things are happening, we will be hitting our target of being on mission with God to seek and save the lost in our city of Spokane.

“Play Skillfully”

There is great confusion on the church concerning the issue of skill, so this line needs to be carefully clarified. Skillful musicianship does not equal authentic worship. For this reason, someone who is extremely talented but does not have a heart for the Lord would not be asked to play during a Sunday gathering.  On the other hand, someone who has a devoted life to Jesus and isn’t at all musically talented probably wouldn’t find the Sunday gathering to be the best place to share their music. The great thing is that pretty much everyone who falls somewhere in between these two extremes is who we want. In what capacity one would serve would be left up to the appropriate church elder(s).  The same rules apply to any artistic expression that one wishes to share with the church. The simple reality is that God is pleased with each of us using the gifts he has given us in the appropriate times and places with all the skill he has given us.  For this reason, musical and artistic excellence is not optional.

“With A Loud Noise”

There are times when we need to be contemplative and solemn, and there are times when we need to get on our feet, raise holy hands, sing from our guts and shake the foundations of our church building. Why? Because God created us to worship Him, and he loves it when we do. So, the question is, “how loud should we play?”  Simply, sometimes we play quietly and reflectively, and sometimes we stop altogether and wait in silence.  But the rest of the time we play just one decibel below the volume that causes permanent ear damage!

Making It Practical

So, how does this work out in a practical sense at Vintage Faith?  For now, here is the vision, which is always open to change and input from those who are involved.  Our hope is for the musicians in our community to form completely separate and completely cooperative worship ensembles. By completely separate we mean that each ensemble would consist of a core group of musicians, including a song leader and a sound tech. Each ensemble would be unique in the fact that they have complete creative control over what style of music they play and what type of instrumentation they use. They also would work together crafting original worship music both lyrically and musically.  New lyrics that are created for worship gatherings must be approved by the church elder(s) before they are played.

These ensembles are not limited to writing just worship music for Vintage Faith. If our goal is reach the city of Spokane, then it is sensible to say that not every song created must be a worship song to be used in the corporate worship gathering. We want there to be freedom to go and perform music at a “secular” venue. We want to record music to distribute to people outside of the church. We must be careful, however, to make sure that we remain on mission with God to seek and save the lost no matter what our cultural context is.