Introduction⤒🔗

Last year I set out to prepare a youth group study on singing, specifically singing in worship. The target audience grew from just our youth group to anyone who wished to come, and so the project sprouted from the smallest mustard seed and became a large tree. It was an evening of learning and music, of discussion, and of carrot soup.

A few weeks later, three persons (indeed, ministers of the Word!) attacked me at night and forced me to write for Faith in Focus a summary of it all. The problem with this, I said, was that the presentation loses half of its impact without the musical excerpts I played during the evening. But then I heard the chilling sound of a knife being sharpened, and soon gave in to their wish. And that’s the history, true and exact.

I write this as an amateur musician and a layman, with no qualification but the usual: a Bachelor in Hating Piano Practice as a Child (BHPPC). Nevertheless, some research has gone into it, so it might hold together even without all the music.

First up, the obvious: God commands us to sing as we worship Him, so singing is hugely important. We’ll be looking here at both why we sing and what to sing (the original also touched on how to sing, but space said no). These topics are fun, but they can also be controversial, so I’m going to try to be careful as well as honest. I don’t have all the answers by any means, but I’m hoping to provide some overall direction. Besides, the idea is not that you’ll agree with every jot and tittle; rather I want to encourage serious thought.

Why do we Sing?←⤒🔗

We already know one reason: we sing to worship God. The Psalms are full of worship, petitions, and praise for God.

But singing is more than just worship. We’ll be using Colossians 3:16 quite a bit, so I quote:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Teaching and admonishing one another! We usually totally miss that point and think our singing is “just to God.” It’s for each other too – teaching and even rebuking when we need it; all so the word of Christ dwells in us richly. The Psalms are very worshipful, but they are also full of teaching content: about God, His world, His creation, His people, et cetera.

Another interesting thing I’d never seen before is in Psalm 60 – it has an introduction which says:

To the Chief Musician. Set to (the tune of) “Lily of the Testimony.” Of David. For teaching. When he fought against Mesopotamia...

Once again, for teaching. This Psalm is a prayer to God and full of content. If we’re going to sing in worship at all, we must follow the examples of the songs in Scripture. And if we have church musicians, they must be well-schooled in the Bible’s teaching. (In our discussion after the talk, someone rightly said that worship music is easily important enough to have paid musicians who help lead. Our pastors are paid for teaching; why muzzle the oxen who teach through music?)

Martin Luther, a great pastor and a fine musician, said, “A minister who knows nothing about music is worthless to me.” Luther was an artistic hymn writer who knew the Scriptures, and as a result, his words have real, Biblical teaching content. The Church needs more men like that today: musicians who know how to teach the Word, and elders and ministers who have studied and practiced music. (Aside: It is often said that Luther stole all his melodies from the pub songs of the day. As fun as this might be, it is nothing more than a very distorted Chinese whisper. For some good information, see http://www.cuis.edu/ftp/wittenberg/luther_and_bar_tunes.9608).

So why do we sing? Two main reasons: to worship God, and to teach each other.

What should we Sing?←⤒🔗

Here I’ll try to apply the “why”s stated above. Each sub-section ends with a question that can be used to test a song’s quality on that point.

Wrong-headed Singing←⤒🔗

First we must get rid of two wrong extremes. One is the “new music is evil” camp. These are the people who hold that anything newer than World War II is automatically bad. But new is not wrong: God calls us to work hard and to create art, and this involves making new things. But “new” in the Bible never means totally new and different. Think about the New Testament versus the Old. It’s new material, but it builds on the old. As we create new songs, we build on the past, on musical history.

Then there are those who say that “old music is evil.” But neither is old wrong. If it were, then your grandfather would be wrong. Besides, did you know that all our rock and pop music is based on a musical system that’s about 500 years old? (Thanks to modern education, Westlife are just now learning the chords that Mozart had figured out by the time he was three.) The Bible even goes so far as to suggest that youth can be foolish, and that wisdom comes with age. Hard words for us 80’s kids.

It’s simplifying, of course, but I think we’ve got both camps in the Church today. I also believe the “old music is evil” camp is probably the more harmful. But old versus new is not really the issue: we must head in a totally different direction.

Appropriate Music←⤒🔗

Our music is worship, and worship to God. He is no tame toy God: He’s our Father, the Saviour, and the King of Kings. A good starting point is to think about kings and queens here on earth. A king is majestic, awe-inspiring, wise. Music may be fitting for this, or it may not.

Let’s have a look at what I mean. We’ve all enjoyed Scripture in Song, and worshipped God with it, too. Turn to number 46, Surely Goodness and Mercy. Sing it to the words “Haylah Shaylah, haylah shaylah, ya da day do-o dah, all the days, all the days of my life...” It fits, right? The music says, “I’m an Australian campfire song!” while the words try to worship God. Compare this with Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is our God. Even brave men can sing that one.

That’s just one example, but unfortunately SinS has more than enough. A lot of it is 70’s and 80’s pop music re-hashed, then there’s a bit of Christianized cowboy music from the 40’s, and most of the rest is Sunday School music. SinS is already very retro, mainly because it was built on a foundation of quicksand. Why do we fall in love with such as this? It’s bad music, not because it’s evil and sinful, but because it’s inappropriate and trite. Jehovah is not trite.

Music has Meaning←⤒🔗

Way before words coming along, music, by itself, has meaning. That’s why movie music is so effective: the music is saying what the movie is saying. So The Matrix has that hard-core, heavy music during the fight scenes. It says “violent!” all the way through, and it fits so well you don’t even notice it’s there. Our worship music should be the same: so good, so meaningful, that we hardly notice it. It has to support our singing instead of sticking out. (Star Wars, The Mission, and The Lord of the Rings are other examples of movies with music that speaks.)

Drums are brilliant, and used often in meaningful music (check out any of the above). But we’ve forgotten how to use them. Now, instead of adding, they subtract – they’ve become meaningless repetition. Loud beats may be cool, but often they mean that the music is so boring you need a beat to hold it together. Take any one of Britney Spears’ beats (it’s not hard – there are only about two). Even when she’s not singing, the beat says “I luv U 4eva baby!” And when you try to say that and “Christ is King!” at the same time, you fail. So instead we try to say, “I just luv U like, 4eva, Jesus!” and then wonder why the world laughs at us.

The loud and clashing cymbals of the Psalms must have been impressive. Not impressive in the sense of glitter, stage lights, and Neil Diamond – maybe it was more like a great anthem.

If music has meaning, then some music has better meaning than other music. In other words, there are absolutes in music, just like in everything else. Denny’s is better than MacDonald’s, and U2 is better than Britney Spears. But a wedding feast is far superior to Denny’s, and Beethoven far superior to U2. We must never lose sight of a person’s taste, but these tastes must not be an excuse for poor quality or shallow music. Imagine someone who thought baked beans on toast was the greatest food ever. It would be right and good to help him acquire a taste for barbequed chicken and other Real Foods, but you’d want to do it carefully, lest he think you were some elitist trying to push your tastes on him. Taste can be learnt.

Also remember that some music is so complex that it sounds bad the first time, weird the second, okay the third, great the fourth, and just keeps getting better and better. Much popular music is so shallow that it sounds awesome the first time, dull the second, bad the third, and just keeps getting worse. Musical good things take time, too.

What about modern art? Modern art is not shallow, but instead it’s often deep in a bad way. Take some insane painting with blobs all over it. On the surface it’s fine: no nudes, no swear-words, really not much at all. But if you study it, you discover that the black blob in the middle means “I hate God,” or something. Seriously! And you can do the same thing with music. For my presentation, I composed a simple piano theme called Fate-Chaos. With no words at all it said, “Fate, ominous motion, destiny” with the left hand, and “Chaos, randomness, absurdity” with the right. No words, yet in a way it was in high rebellion against God.

I believe it’s one of the Church’s jobs to create good music with good meaning. But if we’re to learn how to do this, it would pay to go to music school and study, not turn on Hits FM.

Beauty and Quality←⤒🔗

The obvious fact is that our music is for God, so it must be good. Philippians 4:8 will help:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.

This is the Bible’s way of looking at art. Pure, excellent, praiseworthy. And Psalm 33:3 says to “play skillfully with a shout of joy.” In Old Testament times the skills were learnt by a special group of Levites. They would come to the feasts, twice a year, and play and sing with the people before God. That’s two weeks of the year, but what about the other fifty? They would create new music. Teach people the Psalms. Learn and practise! For better or worse, the God we serve calls us to sweat.

One reasonable test of music quality is how long it takes to make. If someone can do piano or guitar for a year and then jam away for twenty minutes to create a masterpiece, then it probably isn’t one. A friend and I (both of us untrained song-writers) threw together a lovely chorus called He Died on the Cross For Me. Ad-libbing all the way, man! But what is it worth? Fifteen minutes for two guys, or about ten bucks: not good money for a Holy God. And was it the best? No – it used the same old chords, same old trite patterns as most other praise choruses in the book. Including some Secret Recipe Chords (TM) that will make any good Charismatic raise his hands. It’s the spiritual equivalent of boy-band music.

There is some pretty good Contemporary Christian Music out there – I rate Michael Card. But CCM, unfortunately, has swallowed the business model hook, line, and sinker. All the songs are copyright, and when your church buys the overheads you get a free CD with a lovely cover picture of Michael W. Smith. In reality, church music should not be an industry, but a ministry.

Just a note about Art. All art, music most of all, uses repetition. Christian art must not have vain repetition, but meaningful repetition. Every note must mean something. About every phrase we compose we should be able to say, “that’s beautiful; it took skill to create.”

Congregational Music←⤒🔗

Remember that our music must teach us, and for this reason it must be congregational – each singing to the other, and all singing to God. That’s why hymns can be so powerful: they have harmony, the rhythms aren’t too bad, and you can get 200 people singing them all together. Rock music today is very much about solo singers and bands. Nothing wrong with that, but when we copy it in church, we get music very good for the pretty girl singer up the front, but terribly hard for hundreds of people to sing together.

I went to City New Life in Christchurch recently, and they have good music. Well, loud anyway, and to be fair, within their own style they do a great job. But the band is doing all the work. If the singer up the front is good, everything’s okay, because she’s got a microphone. The other people are trying to clap to the beat, or maybe singing, or chatting away and laughing in the back. It might be fun, it might be worship, but it’s not congregational worship. Whatever music we choose, the whole church needs to be able to sing it, together, in any kind of weather.

And apart from our music, I believe we need more congregational response throughout the worship. I don’t mean everyone doing his own “Yes, Lord”s, but I do mean an ordered dialogue. We have to start simple: the whole church thundering a unison Amen at the end of the congregational prayer or the Scripture readings. Or a “congregational response” version of Psalm 136 (it’s intended that way).

The Church today should worship in song, but do not forget that both the Church through the ages and the angels in heaven are singing with us. This means we must sing the songs of the Church of all ages (there are some beautiful ancient hymns in our book: 327, 331, 355, 444, 464). We may throw out the bad ones, of course (459), but if we do away with them all, we are Sinning. I’d like to think that’s not too strong a word.

Great Lyrics←⤒🔗

Words are important for two reasons. First, we have to teach each other, so the words must actually say something. Second, they must say enough so that “the word of Christ will dwell in us richly.”

Whenever in doubt about lyrics, compare them to the Psalms. Do they speak in the same kind of way about God? Do they give “praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation”? Do the words, just, like, wanna make you just praise Jesus, man? Beware praise choruses in this regard:

some of them may as well be straight from Ricky Martin. “I just wanna dance!” is the title of a praise chorus, as well as a Whitney Houston album – the 101^st way to get teenyboppers to worship God.

We also need to sing the whole counsel of God. Praise is good, but we must not forget to confess, to pray, to thank, to mourn, to trust.

And is it just sentimental? There’s a difference between emotion and sentimentality. Emotion is joy, praise, love, power, and even hate. Sentimental stuff is romantic slush, honey-sweet, and shallow. It’s easy to find slush today, but even easier in some 19th century hymns. Austin Miles’ song, “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses...”, both music and words, could be straight from a kissy scene in The Sound of Music. If you were a bit effeminate you might sing it to your lover, but not to the King of the world! Here’s a good test: when you see in our Psalter Hymnal the words “raptured soul,” “blissful state,” “sweet voice,” or “precious fountain”, you know you’ve found a “slovely swaltz with 19th-centurys-poetry.”

The Scriptures are full of emotion, but not warm fuzzies. Most of the Psalms, for example, were written by David: a strong man, a leader and warrior, yet a servant who loved God. When we create or look for lyrics, we should follow his example.

With lyrics, and this applies to all music, we must go deeper than a swear-word count. Too many Christians think that if a song doesn’t have any swear words or blasphemy, it’s okay. Or the reverse – just because a song has some dubious bits may not mean we must never listen to it. I am not usually a lover of rock, but Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is my favourite in the genre. Some throw out the song as soon as it mentions Beelzebub (Satan), but by that reasoning, you’d have to throw out the Bible. The lyrics are worth serious thought, and you have to analyse the words in context. They’re weird and dark, but no one knows quite what they mean, and Freddie Mercury wouldn’t give much away. As for musical interest, the song is fair: I’d rate it at a “Mozart when he was 11” level.

Words and music should be married together. If the lyrics are joyful, the music must be joyful. If they are crying out, the music must cry, too. There are some classics in our Psalter Hymnal, both good and bad. Number 50 says, O Lord, to Thee I Cry, and the music does cry! But number 195 is unfitting, particularly the ending – it’s hard to “rejoice” on an A-minor plagal cadence, even if it can be done. It’s great music, but it tries to have an affair with the words instead of being their husband ... and affairs always end in minor.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

To conclude, I want to put down a few important thoughts, remembering the title of the article.

We must sing heartily to God – both to worship Him and to teach each other. Because it’s to Him, it must be the best, and it must be beautiful. And because it’s also to help us, it must have real content and meat.

In the days of Bach, basically all music was produced by the Church, and usually the secular world tried to copy that. The Church was a huge influence on the culture – a real salt and light. Today we’ve lost that, and we’re doing almost the opposite. Instead of the Church changing the world with Christ, we baptise what the world does and then take it on board. That’s letting them be a salt and light to us! We need to get back to setting godly, cultural standards for the whole world to see. That takes a lot of work and prayer, but we have to start somewhere.

Also, we need to realise when we’ve had enough milk and get onto the meat. There’s so much shallowness out there that we need to be deep. We need to think, to work, and to learn about the meat from people older and wiser than us.

And lastly, we need to encourage a respect for the past. We must study history and think about the future. God calls us not to just look down at the ten years around our feet, but to look backward, to pray and work, and then move forward into the future.

We serve a God who cares about generations, and so we must be long-distance Christians.