Teen repellent

If you walk down the 16th Street Mall in Denver, you may hear some strains of Vivaldi or Mozart floating through the air.

Where is the source of this chamber music? The upscale dress shops? The art galleries? The theaters? No. It's coming from McDonalds and Taco Bell.

These fast-food joints have discovered that music can be used to selectively repel specific groups of people—in this case, teens who would otherwise be hanging out and impeding paying customers. Research studies have shown this technique to be remarkably effective. This illustrates how music is used as a marker of group identity, including those who are in a group and excluding those who are outside the group.

Leaders contemplating a change of musical style must realize that any choice they make will exclude some people from the congregation. As I've written before, implementing a "blended" service often is less a matter of satisfying multiple constituencies in the church, than of chasing away those who strongly identify with particular styles and attracting those who pride themselves in their eclectic taste.