I've been fortunate, in my ministry, to be at churches where the worship wars have rarely been more than scuffles. Yes, there is the usual amount of muttering, griping and fretting when people feel that a particular service did not meet their expectations, hopes, or musical tastes, and yes, there have been small but vocal minorities that regularly let me know that they do not like the general direction of worship and music leadership (and, sometimes, I have agreed with them), but "war" is never the word I would use.
But the worship wars will always find you, and now they have found us at our family table.
My oldest has always resisted bedtime prayers, for no reason I've ever been able to discern, but table prayers have been part of our life from early on. It started with "Hands, Hands, Hands," the sung grace we adopted from our Montana cousins. Katie would insist on it even if Will or I wanted a spoken prayer or another song as well. When Johann came along, he developed a liking for "Day" (This is the Day the Lord has Made), and so we became a two-grace family, every meal.
Now, however, things have gotten contentious in almost all matters of sibling life, and in this one as well. Now Johann insists on a "payer" -- meaning a spoken prayer. Katie still wants a song, and if we do one song, then one child will insist on the other song. We tried the "you each get to pick one grace" method, but now the order in which we do them leads to yelling. All of this during the witching hour when everyone is hungry and tired anyway. Grace has led to time-outs twice in the past week, which seems particularly contrary to the point. The family that prays together. . .
Someone is praying hard during these worship wars, and it isn't the kids.
