One of our summer blessings is to hear a melodious
chorus of songbirds from a nearby forest through the cool morning air. Have you ever wondered how songbirds learn the
distinct song of their species?
Bird scientists (ornithologists) who have studied finches tell us that each baby
finch learns its song in part through tutorial lessons from the parents (often
the father bird).
The baby hears its
parent sing and learns to mimic back the tune until it is perfected.
Even isolated finches will still produce
innate (or “isolate”) songs, suggesting that their instinct to sing is powerfully
“hard-wired” into the brain.
Apparently, each bird species learns its unique song by the combination of both
experience (environment) and inherited genes.
If you’d like to learn how genes (DNA) code for the hard wiring of
precise “song circuits” during brain development, check out the video “How
Do Birds Learn to Sing?” by
clicking HERE.
What’s even more amazing is to realize how many different species of the Animal
Kingdom can produce meaningful sounds, communication, and music. For us as humans, our language, literature,
and music are all important means of defining and maintaining our identity, our
heritage, and our profession of what is important to us, especially our religious
faith.
We Are Wired for Music
and Worship
According to God’s revelation in Scripture, humans began crafting of
instruments to make music within only a few generations from Adam and Eve
(Genesis 4: 21-22). Keith and Kristyn
Getty, authors of the book, Sing! (2017, B&H Publishing) write,
“Throughout Scripture and through history, we see God’s people using the gift
of song to praise Him, the Giver of it.”
The central core of every Bible contains 150 psalms representing songs
that have inspired worshipers ever since they were penned by David and other song
writers. For example, Psalm 66 begins with
an exclamation that illustrates how the human heart and mind are wired to worship
God through joyful musical expression:
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth;
Sing the glory of His name;
Make His praise glorious.
Say to God, “How awesome are Your works!Based on what we learn from science
about God’s creation (His natural revelation); and what we read in God’s
special revelation in Scripture, we can conclude that humans are “wired
for worship,” and “wired to sing.” Music
is a very important part of both our individual and congregational worship. Like each bird species that uses its unique
music to affirm its identity and social connections, so music of the Christian
faith has served to call sinners to repentance and to unite Christ-followers under
His banner of love to worship and serve their Savior.
Although both birds and humans can produce beautiful choruses of music, humans
can outdo God’s animal creatures in being
disharmonious and contentious. For many evangelical
churches today, the choice of congregational music can be controversial. Why is there tension and contention about
music when it can serve so well to unite people of faith? To begin to answer this question, let’s
review what all believers in Christ have in common.
Does the Bible Prescribe
Church Music?
The Bible reveals that every person is born under the curse of sin and cannot
please God apart from repentance and a “new birth” through faith in Christ
(John 1: 10-14; Romans 8: 5-8). “Born
again” believers are set free from the bondage to sin and death through faith
in Jesus Christ. As Christ-followers, we
can fulfill God’s purposes of loving, worshiping, and serving Him. God has given us minds, emotions, lips, and
voices to declare His praises individually and corporately (e.g. Psalm 63: 1-5). Indeed, a wonderful result of our being
created in God’s image is that we can enjoy both our music and the act of
creating it.
When we combine our
creativity with our appreciation of the beauty and message of music, the depth
to which music helps us identify and rehearse what we believe and how it stirs
our imaginations, we can understand why we tend to defend our music preferences.
1 But can we objectively defend our worship
music preferences from the Scriptures?
Neither the Scriptures nor church history precisely endorse acceptable music
styles, sounds, progressions of notes, or musical instruments.
George W. Forell writes:
The customs of the church have all been
established by men. There are no God-given liturgical rubrics or directives for
church architecture. None of the hymns
we sing are in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit did not compose “The Old Rugged
Cross.” (From:
The Augsburg Confession: A Contemporary Commentary)
According to the Old Testament, God gave His “chosen people,” the Israelites,
very precise instructions for every aspect of the tabernacle, and later, temple
and synagogue worship.
However, the New
Testament, the foundation of the Christian Church, specifies almost nothing
about the architecture for worship space, order of worship, number and
frequency of church services, frequency of church ordinances, or types of
musical instruments and style of music.
It’s
as if God ushered in His age of grace through the Body of Christ and entrusted
His blood-bought, Spirit-filled worshipers to use sound judgment and inspired
creativity to compose and use the music that would most honor Him and edify His
people.
In the absence of a clear “biblical mandate,” we believe the choice of music
for worship falls under “personal preference” and Christian liberty.
But Christian liberty does not lessen
responsibility of church leaders and musicians to choose worship music that
accurately and beautifully presents God’s redemptive plan and purpose for His
church.
Because God intends that worship
should be an integral part of our work and our recreation, we should be asking
what music among all the offerings these days best undergirds our faith and
service to God.
To answer this question, it may help if we review God’s intended purpose for His
Church as outlined in Acts 2: 37-47 (See Table below; click to enlarge)
.
From these and other Scriptures, it is clear that in order for
Christ-followers to worship and serve in a way that pleases God, the Holy
Spirit must be welcomed among them.
When
our hearts are submitted to God and bound together by the love of Christ,
the Holy Spirit is free to do His work of
teaching, convicting of sin, transforming lives, and bringing unity within the
Body.
The fruit of the Spirit’s work in our
hearts is wonderfully described in Colossians 3: 12-17; namely, holiness,
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance of each
other, and beyond all of these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond
of unity. Within this context of
praiseworthy qualities, the Apostle Paul provides a general description of
acceptable worship music in the context of the ministry of God’s Word through
His Spirit: Let the word of Christ
richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another
with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your
hearts to God (v. 16).
Theologians believe psalms refer to songs of the Old Testament Psalter,
or those derived later from the Psalms; whereas, hymns are “songs that
set forth the truth about God. Spiritual
songs are neither psalms nor hymns, but provide a biblically-solid,
spiritual message. What is clear
from Paul's comment and from the rest of Scripture is that we must balance our
worship between the subjective expression of our thoughts to God (Psalm
18: 1-2) and the objective revelation of God to us (Exodus 15:1;
Deuteronomy 31:22, 30; 32:44; Revelation 15:3; 1 Corinthians 14:15)” (From: Trinity Bible Church-Dallas).
Beyond the general Scriptural principles cited above, there appears to be no
specific prescriptions from God for the style of music, instrumentation,
volume, or lighting for congregational worship.
But God has given us His Holy Spirit who is our Comforter and Counselor.
The Spirit of God is also the inspiration behind the abundant lyrics already
provided for us in the Psalms and from noted vocalists like Moses (Exodus 15:
1-18; Deuteronomy 32:1–43), Miriam (Exodus 15: 20-21), Hannah when God allowed
her to conceive (1 Samuel 2: 1-10), Mary the mother of Jesus (Luke 1: 36-55),
some of the Apostle Paul’s writing (e.g. Philippians 2:5-11, Colossians 1:15-20),
and choruses the Apostle John heard from Heaven (Revelation 4: 8-11; 5: 9-14).
From our brief survey of music in Scripture, we can see the important part it
plays in both individual and corporate worship. In order to bring our points together, we
should now refer to what we have written earlier about worship.
Hearts and Minds to
Worship
In Part 1, the first of three articles on the subject
of worship, we considered how true worship ought to be an integral part of our daily
lives. Part 2 discussed how we ought to prepare for and
conduct ourselves as a member of a “spiritual family” in congregational worship. Finally, we considered how we can deal with
inevitable tensions and contentions that arise (Part 3). Our
discussion from here on hinges greatly on these three articles.
“Family Reunion”-- Hosts and Guests
In Part 2, “Value of
Corporate Worship,” we compared a
congregation gathered for worship to a joyous family gathering for a
reunion. Our main point was that family
reunions are great if everyone does their part.
The hosts take responsibility to provide comfortable space and delicious
food for the main course; food they believe will be pleasing to the most guests. Meanwhile, each guest has the responsibility
to bring a tasty covered side-dish and other assigned necessities, engage in conversation
to encourage fellow guests, and express their thankfulness to the hosts.
In the same way, God-honoring congregational worship requires thoughtful “hosts”
and polite “guests.” With respect to the
worship music, the worship and song leaders serve as the “hosts” in partnership
with the pastoral staff. The “guests”
are those who have come to worship, hopefully with hearts prepared beforehand
to honor God, encourage the brethren, and “to preserve the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4: 2-4).
Responsibilities of “Guests”/Worshipers
Let us consider first how we as “guests” ought to respond to the music and worship
setting provided by the “hosts.” First,
we ought to pray that God will keep us from ever taking for granted the privilege
of gathering with either our biological family or our spiritual family! After all, we owe our physical lives to our
family elders. And, we owe our spiritual
lives to Christ and His Spirit who called us out of spiritual darkness into the
Light to be “born again” spiritually into “New Life” (2 Corinthians 4: 6;
Ephesians 5: 8). Every time we gather to
worship, may our lives be sprinkled clean with Christ’s blood from known sin (Hebrews
10: 22) and ready to join with God’s people in singing and making melody with our
hearts to the Lord (Ephesians 5: 19).”
When Spirit-filled lives congregate and sing together songs and hymns of praise
to God, individual personalities, life stories, ethnicities, and music
preferences ought to be laid down at the feet of our Savior. Individual preferences should give way to a
unity of mind and spirit, all focused on God who alone is worthy of glory and
honor and praise. Even if we are not
professional singers, when we join our voices to the “congregational choir” of
praise, we are professing our faith,
love, and devotion in word and song to one another and to God. The following call to worship from Keith and
Kristyn Getty is very convicting:
Our motivation to sing comes from so much
more than ourselves-- our likes, our comfort levels, our musical tastes and
preferences. Intrinsically, it's driven by the one who died and was raised. It
is driven by a heartfelt desire to convey gospel truth to those of us who
already know it and need to be refreshed and renewed by it--and to communicate
it to those who don't yet know, but who might be drawn to Christ through seeing
and hearing people who clearly mean it because of the way that they sing about
it (Keith and Kristyn Getty, Sing! p. 22).
The text box below offers suggestions we have
used to help prepare our minds and hearts before and during congregational
worship. We hope these will help you as
we each strive make our worship more intentional, fulfilling, and God-
pleasing. Click on text box to enlarge.
One concern that we often hear voiced in opposition to contemporary songs is
that they fall short of traditional hymns in providing a rich store of biblical
truth and edification. We believe this
concern is justified with regard to some contemporary songs. But the same might be said of some
traditional hymns. Nevertheless, in keeping
with the suggestions above, we have asked ourselves, “Do we concentrate on the
lyrics of the song in question to find Scriptural truth and respond to it?” After all, if we were “guests” at a family
reunion, wouldn’t we want to taste the “host’s” food before being critical?
May we each try harder to give careful attention to “new songs.” Allow God’s
Spirit to help us find Scriptural Truth that is contained in the lyrics. To illustrate what has been helpful to us, we are sharing below the results of our meditation on
the lyrics of one of our favorite contemporary songs, “King of Kings” (Hillsong
Worship). Click on table to enlarge.
We imagine that if you were to meditate on these same lyrics, the Spirit might
bring other Scripture verses and truths to mind. Indeed, well written songs and hymns are marked by both the beauty of the musical score and the richness of Scriptural
truths evident in the lyrics. Why not try meditating on and finding
Scripture in one of your favorite contemporary praise songs or traditional
hymns? Or, you may want to continue what
we started above by meditating on the lyrics of verses 3 and 4 of “King of
Kings.” We’d love to read your insights,
so please send them though “Comments” below, or by e-mail.
Before we venture to discuss responsibilities of the “hosts” (pastoral staff
and worship leaders), we should remember that the Scriptures command us to obey
(Romans 13: 1-10; Hebrews 13: 17), submit (1 Peter 2:13-25), appreciate
(1 Thessalonians 5: 12), highly esteem (1 Thessalonians
5: 13), and pray for (1 Timothy 2: 1-3) those in authority over
you. Hebrews 13: 17 states clearly
our responsibility to pastoral leadership:
Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch
for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy,
and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.
The Apostle Paul elaborates on this command in Romans 15: 5-7 using a vocal music
metaphor. He encourages us to be of
the same mind toward one another…and with one voice, glorify the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ…accept one another, just as Christ accepted us to the glory
of God. What better way for a
congregation to express the unity of Spirit and submission to God and to His
under-shepherds than when we, “with one voice, glorify the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?”
Responsibilities of “Hosts”/Worship Leadership
We begin this final section with a reminder, if it is not obvious, that we
are not experts in music, or theology, or church leadership. So, it is with even greater fear and
trembling that we conclude this article by considering the responsibilities of
song and worship leaders, the “hosts” in our “family reunion.” We do not have “all the answers.” Nor do we want to cause disunity, but rather
to promote constructive dialog that God could use to bring understanding and
unity in our worship.
To begin, we should note that Hebrews 13: 17 as quoted above addresses responsibilities of both
the church and its pastoral leadership. This important Scripture provides both commands and benefits as follows:
(a) Command to the church: obey them that have authority over you,
and submit yourselves.
(b) Benefit to the church: for (your pastors)
watch for your souls, as they that must give account….
(c) Command (implied) to pastors: watch for [their] souls, as [you
who] must give account….
(d) Benefit to pastors (from an obedient
flock): so that you may do it with joy, and not with grief…. How much more tightly could God have interwoven
the responsibilities of members of the Body of Christ to their pastors and the pastors
to members? As Christ-followers, we are to submit to God
and to our pastors, and pastors are to give account to God for the quality of their
shepherding of our souls.
Within the above framework of accountability, what are the responsibilities of
the pastor as relates particularly to the song/worship leader or to an
assistant pastor who leads worship? Obviously,
congregational music must honor God and His character and His plan of
redemption through Christ as we have outlined above, in “Does the Bible
Prescribe Church Music?” Music must also
honor Christ, His sacrifice, death, resurrection, and promised return. Choice of songs and hymns to accomplish these
goals, coordination of themes with the message from the Scriptures, and coordination
with any closing challenge or invitation will require prior communication and
coordination.1
In view of the above considerations, it is crucial that both the leadership and
the church bathe the planning and execution of each worship service in prayer. This need is obvious when we consider the
wide range of musical choices available and the varied needs and preferences
within the congregation. We believe that
our analogy of the “hosts” at a family reunion is helpful as pastors or worship
leaders seek to discern how best to minister to their congregation as “guests.”
Below, you will find a few questions to highlight some of the considerations
that many pastors and worship leaders address as part of their ministry as
shepherds to “watch over the souls” of those who have chosen to worship and
serve Christ as part of their flock:1
Congregational Preferences: As we constitute the worship service, will we consider input from the congregation in order to understand their preferences
among music styles, worship formats, and instrumentation?
Generational Consideration: Should choice of songs, instrumentation,
and worship format be considerate of the varied needs and preferences of a multi-generational
congregation; for example, including praise songs that stir the hearts of many younger worshipers while including timeless hymns to reinforce the faith commitments of older members?
Historical Scope: How important is it for our worship to occasionally
stretch worshipers beyond the focus of "what God is doing at the moment for me" to what God has done in past church history and what He promises to do in the future,
all of this through great lyrics and music?
Worship Venue: How does choice of content, music style, tune, instrumental
accompaniment, volume, and lighting contribute to the worship environment and complement
the pastor’s message?
Variety and Congregational Involvement: How much priority
should be given to using varied formats to enhance the purposes of worship
services and provide opportunities for more and varied congregational
involvement in worship—e.g. occasional special music by soloists, choral groups, choir; or, occasionally, the congregation singing acapella?
Worship Leader(s): How can the participation of song or worship
leader(s) promote active participation of the congregation in worship and
focus the worshipers’ attention on Christ while discouraging the congregation from becoming passive observers who focus on the worship leader(s) and their musical skills?
New Songs: To improve congregational singing, is
it worthwhile to invest time during worshipto teach new songs, explain the importance of their
message, and reinforce learning with frequent repetition?
Conclusion
As we conclude our discussion of music for worship by God’s people, we should remember the reference of Proverbs 6: 6-8 to the lowly ant which (emphasis ours),
Without a commander,
without an overseer or ruler,
it prepares its provisions in summer;
it gathers its food at harvest.
We might also say, “Consider each songbird species which, without even having a song leader
or worship pastor, they consistently and harmoniously sing the unique song that
declares who they are (e.g. song sparrow, robin) while they offer up praises to God their Creator.” Likewise, may we as the
people whom God has called out of darkness into His marvelous light realize what great debtors we are to God's grace. In light of who we are, how can we help but
sing praises to God our Savior?
As part of our worship, may we submit ourselves respectfully to our pastor and worship leaders as those who watch out for
our souls and who themselves must give account to God. And may our regular “church family”
gatherings here on Earth become more and more like a pleasing prelude to our worship
and ministry in the New Heaven and New Earth. There, many of us will sing to our Great God and Savior, maybe for the first time “on key.” Until then, each of us ought to do our part in making our church gatherings for worship to be among the most harmonious places on this fallen Earth--both by our musical harmony and by our expressed love toward one another.
Care to
Comment?
How has
this article affected your thinking about music in congregational worship? Hopefully, it is evident that we have written in a spirit of
humility and with a desire for harmony--both musical and spiritual. Because we are neither musicians nor theologians, we can use your help. Please
take time to use the “Comment” link below where in the past readers have added
much to the value of an article. Or, if you’d like to comment
privately, just email to silviusj@gmail.com Thank you
for reading.
Sources:
1 Some of the
thoughts within this sentence were inspired from Sing! by
Keith and Kristyn Getty. 2017, B&H Publishing.
2 Song Sparrow
photo used by permission, Mike Lentz Nature Photography, https://www.facebook.com/MikeLentzNaturePhotography
