So how then shall we sing? The practical application of Christian worship through song is often a tricky problem to sort out. There is nothing that splits a church faster than the music wars of the modern church. Any pastor can tell you how much he dreads these fights. Everyone has an opinion; everyone has different tastes. “It’s the way we’ve always done it.” “Fix everything but change nothing.” “The old hymns are better than this new stuff.” “We need to branch out and sing more contemporary music for the young people!” “I like music that makes me feel closer to God; it helps me to worship!” With all these competing voices, is there any biblical guidance for these questions? Is music really just a matter of taste? Must the loudest, most obnoxious, and perpetually offended church member always win?
The first and easiest thing we can conclude from Scripture is that we should be “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” (Eph. 5:19) When we sing in worship we sing to each other, together, as a whole congregation. We shouldn’t all sit back and watch while a few musically gifted people sing for us; the command is to all of us. Whether or not you are tone deaf or classically trained makes no difference. There is no musical instrument more beautiful than the joyful noise of an entire sanctuary singing heartily unto the Lord with all thankfulness.
Secondly, in order for us all to sing, regardless of musical skill, our music must be accessible to the common man. Would most of us be able to follow along with a classical oratorio? No! Of course not! Alternatively, can most of us sing along to all the songs on Christian radio that have come out in the last two years? This is not to say that a congregation should never learn anything new, but there should be a gracious understanding of how many new songs a congregation can feasibly learn within a short period of time. As with all things, patience and moderation win the day, in addition to unselfishly bearing with one another’s quirks. “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” (Rom. 12:18)
Thirdly, we are to sing to the Lord with all thankfulness in our hearts towards God. (Col. 3:16) There has been a popular trend in modern “worship music” to sing almost exclusively about ourselves, how we feel, and our own personal experiences. While this is occasionally appropriate, singing about ourselves and only ourselves tends to result in a kind of spiritual naval gazing, and it unfortunately diverts our affections away from our Savior. It’s hard to cultivate thankfulness towards our Lord when he’s not the subject of our attention. We gather on the Lord’s Day each week to worship the living God, but our hearts are idol factories (to paraphrase John Calvin), and we have a sinful proclivity to worship ourselves—the creations rather than the Creator. The Lord did not instruct us to assemble together so that we could all gather in one room, and yet each of us have our own little individual worship “experience” with Jesus. The people of God have always come before his presence together. “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!” (Ps. 34:3) We should sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs which give appropriate praise and attention to God, his church, his statues, and his wonderous and mighty works.
Another tricky area to navigate, especially in the American church, is the emotional experience that music invokes for so many people. You’ve heard it before: “I go to such-and-such church for the music.” “This music makes me feel closer to God.” “I love when they play such-and-such song—I feel more like worshipping.” Jonathan Dickenson, an eighteenth century American Presbyterian minister active during the Great Awakening, once observed “that there has been the least of the power of godliness, where there has been the greatest attachment to human inventions, to external pomp and ceremony in the worship of God.” I think it’s high time for the Western church to ask itself if we’re equating feelings with worship. Let’s think seriously about this for a few minutes. Do we go to church to have an emotional experience? Or do we go to church to worship? Are the two necessarily exclusive of each other? Of course not! But are certain emotions a requirement for worship? These are hard questions, and if you’re reading this and starting to get a little irritated with me, it’s okay. Actually, that’s great! I really want to make us dig down deep! Should we go to church expecting to come back feeling a certain way? What if we don’t—does that mean we didn’t worship? What does the Bible say about feelings? Hmmm . . . actually, not much. And that’s an encouragement for us. God doesn’t command us to feel certain things, he simply asks us to obey.
So should worship be devoid of feelings? Absolutely not! But should we try to manufacture those feelings; emotionally manipulate ourselves with music that hypes us up and sends us into a frenzy? Also, no. Music cannot and should not be the tail that wags the dog. Meaning, as we read and sing and pray and recite God’s promises, our affections will be naturally stirred towards the Lord. Just as we can’t manufacture a spiritual revival, we can’t manufacture spiritual affections. We must trust the Holy Spirit to produce true and godly affections within us. He has raised us from the dead and has given us new life; he can handle our stubborn emotions too. If we go to church for the musical experiences, we will often be disappointed. It is a plastic enjoyment of God which dissipates and fluctuates with our notoriously capricious feelings. “Not what I feel or do, can give me peace with God, not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin, thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.”
Alternatively, there are those Christians who seem to worship stoicism. I once heard a man say that he wouldn’t sing a particular hymn because it made him emotional, and worship should be devoid of emotion. It took a good deal of restraint not to smack him over the head. When I was in college, we used to joke that some segments of the church were on the lookout, fastidiously keeping watch, horrified that somebody somewhere might be having fun. My dear reader, holiness is not dour, piety should not be separated from mirth, and joy and soberness of heart go hand in hand. As to how this pertains to music, it doesn’t mean that we are constrained to sing only the wretched funeral dirges of old. There are beautiful minor tunes which pair well with psalms of lament, and there are joyfully exuberant tunes that perfectly accompany shouts of praise. Music should complement the text in such a way that the tenor of the text is reflected in the music. For example, it’s hard to take poignant hymn lyrics about sin and repentance seriously if we’re singing them to a tune that sounds a bit like the Friends theme song from TV. Also, music should assist us in worship, but it should never distract us from it. I am our church’s pianist, and if I accompany our psalms and hymns in such a way that it draws attention to me and away from the worship of God, then I have failed egregiously. Music is a precious gift from our creator; let us not celebrate the gift at the expense of the Giver, but let us use it to enable God’s people to obey his commands to sing to him together.
Finally, there is a common concern with our hymnody that bothers the consciences of many well-intentioned Christians. Why is it that most of our hymnals are filled with the compositions of primarily sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century European authors? Shouldn’t we be singing hymns from the early church? What about the global church? Aren’t there musical traditions from many different nations which we should be incorporating? In order to answer these questions, we must review a few important facts about church history.
We know very little about the early church’s hymnody, mostly due to the fact that prior to the fourteenth century, music didn’t exist in notated form. Music was passed down orally rather than sight-read from paper. A few of the early church fathers mention different hymns by name, so we know that they sang, we just don’t know exactly what it sounded like. Around the seventh century, the beginnings of organ music started making its way into the church, and by the ninth century, Gregorian chant was underway. The church sadly moved into a direction during the Middle Ages where trained choirs did most of the singing, while the lay members would sit in silence and listen.
It wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that the entire congregation would start to sing as one again. Consequently, it’s no surprise that the Reformation produced a burst of hymnody. And remember where the Protestant Reformation took place—Europe. The prolific hymn writing that sprung out of western Europe also happened simultaneously alongside one of the greatest eras of musical composition. The greats such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms were all composing some of the greatest music ever written at the same time that hymn writers were putting biblical truths to pen. It is no wonder, then, that our hymnals are chock-full of European authors and tunes—it is where, in the mysterious providence of God, modern hymnody began!
Before you protest, let me assure you that while your hymnals may have many hymns of European ancestry (of which Christians have no reason to be ashamed), they also hold treasures from many other nationalities. “Shepherd of Tender Youth” was written by Clement of Alexandria (Egypt) around the year 200. “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” is adapted from the fourth century Liturgy of St. James of the eastern church of Constantinople in the Byzantine empire. “O Light That Knew No Dawn” was written in the mid-300’s by one of the Cappadocian fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus. In case your geography is rusty, Cappadocia would be present day Turkey. John Damascus was Syrian and penned the familiar, “Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain” hymn around the year 700. One of my favorite hymns, “God of Abraham Praise,” was adapted from Daniel ben Judah’s “Yigdal Elohim Hai,” a musical summation composed in the mid-fourteenth century of the thirteen articles of the Jewish faith drawn up by the Maimonides. Quite a few African American spirituals such as, “Were You There,” “There is a Balm in Gilead,” and “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” as well as many others are sprinkled throughout our hymnals.
Good music stands the test of time. Some of the above-mentioned hymns have been around for almost two thousand years! While some of today’s contemporary hymn writers have a long way to go in terms of musical longevity, we have to remember that at some point, all music was once new music. Should we fill our worship services with music exclusively from the past 10 years? Ehhh…probably not. But should we jettison music just because it is new? No. The church should continue to produce new songs of thanksgiving in every age to be sung alongside the great hymns of old.
In “10 Songs to Sing as a Family,” I had to excruciatingly whittle my favorite psalms and hymns down to a mere ten to highlight. These songs range from the familiar to the more obscure, but all of them are more than worth your time to learn and study. Singing doesn’t just happen in church, but it naturally flows in and out of a Christian’s day-to-day activities and routines. My children love to grab the family hymnal or psalter off the shelf and plop themselves down in the middle of our living room at the most random of occasions and belt out their favorites. The songs I’ve chosen, I have chosen specifically with you and your sweet families in mind; to treasure, to consider, to meditate upon, and to teach to your children. These are my cherished favorites, and I hope that in passing them along, some of these will become your family’s favorites too.
