SUNDAY NIGHT FELLOWSHIP

Summer Playlist 

This week at Sunday Night Fellowship we continued our discussion on a Summer Playlist.  

Last week, we talked about algorithms.  With our social media platforms, our reels, our music, our shorts, if we watch something or listen to something and give it attention, they will automatically give us something else that is similar.  Since you liked this, you will probably like this.  Since you listened to this song, you will probably like this artist.  

And then we probably give THAT some of our attention.  And what we give our attention to, are the things that we worship.  

What if some of the items we give our attention to are good Godly things, though? What if we were to put all of those great times on a summer playlist, like we do with music of all of the things that God did over the summer. Then we put it on repeat.  

How can we put positive God moments into our algorithms so that we begin to see, again and again, how God moves? 

The Big question: If \what we give our attention to is a picture of who we are, do we like the picture of the person we are becoming to what we give our attention to? 

We focused on what we allow our ears to hear.  What are we listening to and how is it shaping us?   

An easy way to see how music is shaping us, is to look at how our mood is changed based off of what we are listening to.  If you notice that your mood is different, we can see that mentally, we are affected by what we allow our ears to hear.  

A couple of scripture that we looked at: 

“Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Phil 4:8 NIV) 

 Is what we are listening to true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy.  

Or are the lyrics degrading of people, discussing activities that we as Christians should refrain from, or the worship of idols.  

Colossians 3:2, another letter from Paul, says,  "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." (Colossians 3:2 NIV)

The music that we listen to directs our mind towards a certain way of life. When we listen to that song, where is it directing our mind?  What are our thoughts as we listen to it? 

Are we able to do as 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us: "...and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV). 

Or is the music moving so fast into our ears, into our minds that we can’t see to grasp a hold of it in order to stop if from causing us to sin.  

We know that there is spiritual warfare all around us.  Are we guarding our heart?  What are we allowing in that will begin to shape us into people that we don't necessarily want to be?  

Should you go through and delete everything that you listen to?  As a parent, we can all do a better job of monitoring what our kids are allowing into his or her ears.  We can also work towards discernment.  How can we go through and start to teach what is good to hear and what is not.  How can we let the Holy Spirit help us to discern good or bad in the music that we listen to.  

I shared personally some of the times that I have failed as a dad in wanting to show my kids the "cool" songs that I listened to at their age.  I realized just how wildly inappropriate the music was that I listened to.  We have to be careful with what we allow our students to hear.  They may not fully understand why that song is inappropriate yet.  We have been given the job to raise these students; what are we doing with what goes into their ears?  

Game 

I wanted to make a quick note about the game we played this last Sunday. We played a game called "Finish the Lyric."  It was indeed an experiement to see if the students would say a lyric that was slightly inappropriate if they had to "finish the lyric."  None of the songs were wildly inapproriate, but just slightly mentioned alcohol and drugs.  So often, students will say that they don't listen to inappropriate music or they will tell me that they don't know the lyrics and just listen to the beat.  However, songs have a way of getting under our skin and in our muscle memory.  In Small Groups, we pointed this out. All songs were used in order to show that some of the music we think is safe has subtle mentions of inappropriate activities. If they weren't paying that much attention to the lyrics, how did they know how to finish the lyric or sing along.  My reasoning behind playing this game was to dispel the idea that students don't have the lyrics in their muscle memory.  For many of them, they sing the lyric whether they want to or not; it was just there. You'd be really surprised how many sang right along through the awkward parts and felt slightly embarrassed by it.  This was intentional.  If you are embarrasssed by it in church, you should probably be embarrassed by it when you are alone.  This experiment was my attempt to do just that.  What was done on Sunday was done with hopes that the message could be comprehended better about these songs we allow our ears to hear are inside of us, whether we want to admit it or not. We need to work towards discernment of hearing that it's wrong and then not adding that song to our playlists.

You get two songs this week to tell you about what we learned in Sunday Night Fellowship.  Give them a listen and see what you think. There are two different types of genres for whatever kind of music you like: