Right now what the form that contemprory has taken is a once a month service where we attempt to source all hymns from 1980 and later (which is not exactly contemporary, but for the church positively rebellious), but it is placed within an orderly litugical framework. That is actually a pretty tough task sorting out suitable songs that a congregation can actually sing. The other part of this tension is that we as the church are called to engage with the culture we are place in. In that sense we are always exiles in this world. Have we the modern church failed to give space to the creative people in our midst. Those creative people often define the culture that we live in. When was the last time that a congregation we were a part of sang a hymn composed by a member? Essentially when people say contemporary I’ve always taken that to mean a cultural expression that they can relate too. The church stopped setting the larger cultural expression somewhere in the 20th century. Relevance definitely isn’t everything, especially at the expense of the Word, but the challenge for the church in every generation is to engage the World with the Word in a way that some might hear – a creative tension. Getting very long. I might turn this into a longer post/thread is Ethan goes along, but thanks for the good comment.