Verbatim: Dumbing down worship music?

I think this dumbing-down is a result of the American Christian community’s forgetting its high calling. We have become seduced by the television mentality of pleasing the multitudes and worrying about ratings. We want to have people in the pews and are willing to conform to this world rather than be transformed by the renewing of our minds and hearts.

I don’t mean to imply that a pipe organ and a great choir are better than a guitar and a praise leader. It goes far deeper than that. To mature both our minds and our hearts, we need more meat than milk. But in too many of our churches the world has crept in to the extent that one cannot tell the difference between a church and a conference center, between an altar and a stage, between sacred and secular music—all in the interest of attracting rather than challenging.

• John Nelson, Founder and Artistic Director, Soli Deo Gloria,  quoted from Christian Ce ntury.