Ronald W. Scates

"Why sing songs written by fallen mortals when Almighty God has inspired 150 of his own hymns?" That kind of thinking made choosing music for worship a moot point for many of our Reformed forebears. You sang the psalms. No wrestling over hymns versus praise choruses. How things have changed over the centuries!

I've misplaced the survey . . . and it's driving me crazy! It was just one among the umpteen-dozen surveys we post-modern pastors are continually bombarded with—but it got my attention. And now I can't find it. Was it in The Christian Century or Christianity Today? Last year or three years ago? I can't remember, and that embarrasses me.

What is it that makes senior pastors, youths, and worship mix like oil and water? Having recently moved from a ten-year sojourn as youth minister into the senior pastorate, I wonder if I too will be a victim of what all pastors and youth workers fear when it comes to worship— the dreaded Eutychus Syndrome, described in Acts 20:7-12.