{"id":1911,"date":"2012-03-30T09:47:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T14:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2012-05-09T14:37:31","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T19:37:31","slug":"innovation-vs-comfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/2012\/03\/innovation-vs-comfort\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovation vs. Comfort"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Today\u2019s post comes to us from Kim Aliczi, a worship leader and member at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinitycovenantchurch.org\/\">Trinity Covenant Church<\/a> in Manchester, CT.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ten years ago, during the adoption of our youngest son, my husband and I ended up spending Easter in Russia \u2013 without our other two children, away from our church, our family, our friends \u2013 but with a young Baptist missionary couple. We had been in the country for over 2 weeks, I was homesick and heartsick, and thankfully they invited us to worship in their small apartment that Easter morning. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the music I wanted to sing was not Darlene Zschech or Chris Tomlin \u2013 or whoever else was \u201ccool\u201d in worship circles at that time. All I wanted to hear played, all I wanted to sing at the top of my lungs were the old hymns \u2013 and as I tearfully choked my way through \u201cChrist the Lord is Risen Today,\u201d which was accompanied on their little, out of tune spinet, I experienced one of the most beautiful and memorable Easter Sunday services I\u2019ve ever been a part of.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I share this story not because I\u2019m nostalgic during this, and every, Easter season (well, OK, maybe a little), but because I need constant reminding that my desire as a worship leader to heap on the creativity during these high and holy times in the Christian faith is sometimes in need of a little reining in. Now hear me out \u2013 there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting innovation and creativity to work. I\u2019m <del>a rebel<\/del> an <em>innovator <\/em>by nature. However, sometimes it\u2019s the tried and true, the comfortable and familiar, the old stand-bys; it\u2019s these songs that not only point people to Christ, they have the power to bring people back to the faith.<\/p>\n<p>For those of us who lead worship week in and week out \u2013 more often than not it is WE who crave something different, not necessarily those in the congregation. When I began leading worship in my late 20\u2019s, I believed only the old-fashioned loved the old hymns. Now that I\u2019m in my late 40\u2019s, I\u2019m discovering that despite my love of the innovative, I\u2019m also the one who sometimes craves the security of the familiar.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So \u2013 my question to you is twofold\u2026 who out there resonates with this, and if so, how do you create a balance in your churches between comfort and innovation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-report-this\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc?moderation_action=report_form&#038;object_type=post&#038;object_id=1911&#038;width=250&#038;height=300\" class=\"thickbox\" title=\"Report This Post\">Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s post comes to us from Kim Aliczi, a worship leader and member at Trinity Covenant Church in Manchester, CT. Ten years ago, during the adoption of our youngest son, my husband and I ended up spending Easter in Russia \u2013 without our other two children, away from our church, our family, our friends \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8,16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intergenerational","category-leadership","category-music","category-style-of-worship"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Innovation vs. Comfort - Worship Connect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/2012\/03\/innovation-vs-comfort\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Innovation vs. Comfort - Worship Connect\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today\u2019s post comes to us from Kim Aliczi, a worship leader and member at Trinity Covenant Church in Manchester, CT. 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