My wife and I care little for most contemporary Christian music. But, once in a while a song comes out that we love. Such a thing happened about 5 months ago. Oh Come to The Altar was released. It is a beautiful song, and our Worship Team sang it for the first time two Sundays ago.
However, the Worship Leader chose to eliminate references to Jesus' flowing blood, and substitute, instead, some milder wording about Jesus' love.
I asked the preacher about this, and he seemed to know nothing about the changes.
I won't go into a lot of detail about this, but suffice it to say that my wife, not knowing I had spoken with the preacher, went on facebook, and asked the worship team what was up with this change. Suffice it to say that it soon raised a bit of dust in our congregation, and the preacher ended up having a pretty enlightening and productive "teaching opportunity" with the Worship leader who had almost no idea that "blood" might be an important theme in the Bible.
I have since found out that several team members thought singing about "blood" was a gross thing, and they wanted to leave that part out. I later talked with the preacher's wife about this facet of things, and found out that she had not let her children (now in college) see the "Passion" because of the graphic nature of the movie.
We spoke for about 20 minutes, and she ended up saying, through a flood of tears, that she was going to make sure her children saw the DVD before they returned to college after the Holidays.
It seems many people in my own congregation had really never put much emphasis on the shed blood of Jesus, and were against seeing the Passion because they didn't want to think of Christ enduring that for us.
So, I thought I would ask here, to see what the feel was for the movie.
Hi Willie,
I can understand people being squeamish about the shedding of blood
although personally I think it is important to understand the reality of the
cross. Also the theme of the blood, how it represents life and therefore how it
was necessary for the blood of Jesus to be shed, He is our sacrificial lamb. It is
impossible to read the bible without coming across the blood sacrifice it travels
through the bible right from Genesis through to Revelations.
Also his broken body, He took our punishment on himself with all the implications
involved.
Maybe you can turn this into an opportunity to do a bible study or an Easter service
into the sacrifice of Jesus, why all the elements are important, why it is significant for us.
A couple of years ago (when I was in the worship team), the team planned and led the
Good Friday service. Someone built a 10 foot wooden cross for us and we draped blood
red silk satin material over it and set it on a plinth making it the focal point in the
church.
It really looked spectacular and got the point across very effectively.
Towards the end of the service we had a time of prayer and contemplation and
invited the congregation to write up small notes of thanksgiving and pin them onto the
silk as people felt led to do so. The cross was lit up with the red lighting and the rest of
the lights dimmed.
The atmosphere was electric, you could feel the presence of God in such a tangable way
you could almost reach out and touch it.
People started to come forward in small groups, by the time many had got to the cross they
were weeping, men and women alike.
It was just an amazing Christ centred evening.