To download an mp3 of this talk right click on this link and select “save to disk”: “Starting a new conversation on worship music”

I don’t often enjoy forwarded emails. But many years ago, when I was running the music at a university Christian group’s mid year conference, I was sent one very timely gem of comic relief. For the whole week I was losing sleep trying to make music, which would keep everyone happy. And, with the auditorium full of zealous young Anglicans, Baptists, Charismatics, Salvos, Presbyterians, Uniting Churchers and independents, it was proving a discouraging task. One of the group’s amazing staff workers, Caz Andrews, thought I could do with some cheering up.

It still brings a smile to my face. It’s an mp3 recording of an actual telephone message left by a well meaning parishioner for the pastor of a church in Minneapolis. It begins “hello pastor… I was at your church last saturday night” and from there begins an earnest rebuke of the church for allowing one of the song leaders to tap her foot to the music … not just that, in fact: at one stage (the caller reports with grave concern) she was “wiggling her butt back and forth from side to side”!

It makes me smile every time. Not because I mean to mock the caller; because it shows that what is mundane and acceptable to one person (keeping time to the music with your body), might be outrageous to another. I didn’t realise there was a rule against foot tapping and butt wiggling, but now that I do, I’m glad someone is keeping watch.

If you’re in music ministry then chances are that you’ve had many a conversation begin like this. I recently made a list of some of the rules I’ve been asked to observe:

No performing, No swaying, No standing in the middle of the stage, No standing on the stage, No Standing in front of the crowd, No Singlets, No Smiling, No jazz chords, No holding the mic close to your mouth, No holding the mic away from your mouth, No holding the mic, No calling worship worship, No closing eyes, No drumsticks, No talking during songs, No songs during talking, No guitar solos, No drum solos, No bass solos, No more than 2 songs in a row, No more than 2 and a half bars intro, of course No hands in the air, No modern songs, No extra biblical songs, None of your songs, No “I” songs, No “my” songs, and definitely, absolutely, No Hillsongs.

I’m sure you could think of many more. When you consider this list, is it any wonder that many people when they sing in church look more like they’re in a courtroom than a joyful meeting of freed prisoners! A list of regulations is the recipe for stifling legalism, not fertile soil for creativity and expression and God honouring songs of praise.

Please don’t misunderstand me: there may well be great wisdom in every one of these rules (at least for some churches, at some times, in response to their own particular challenges). But if our conversations about worship music start and end with the rules — if “no” is all we have to say — then what kind of music will we end up with?

The irony is that after setting out these rules most people in the very next breath will say that they really value the creative arts, they love music, they love singing and they want real emotion. They are adamant they want the spontaneous outpouring of the spirit’s gifts on the church: they want minds to be convicted, they want dry hearts to be moved to tears of joy and repentance, and they want people passing by in the street to be drawn to the joy in our songs. They want the kind of music that makes everyone who listens look upwards to see what all the fuss is about, and by the Spirit be convicted that Jesus is Lord.

And that’s great! But if we want these things, then we need a to start different conversations. We need to begin our conversations with a “yes”. To build anything other than a hole in the ground, you need a positive vision of what we want to work towards. Not a list of things we’re not allowed to do. Not a rebuttal of someone else’s vision of music. But “yes: this is how we sing to God together”. We need our own vision of what our music should sound like: without it, we will have no idea what to do next.

Which vision?
You don’t have look far to find an opinion about how church music should be. Everyone has at least some vision for church music. And, being the well trained tunes consumers that we are, it’s normally based on what we like and what we don’t like. As Rob Smith puts it:

most people unconsciously (or consciously) think that their musical taste is superior to that of others, and therefore believe it ought to be catered for. (Rob Smith, ‘Pleasing all the people all the time and other myths’, in Sally McCall and Rosalie Milne (eds), The Church Musicians’ Handbook (Matthias, 1999), pp 22-23.)

I don’t let anyone else choose the radio station in my car. So if my vision of church music is based on what I like and don’t like, then it’s going to be a lonely service! That’s why I want to answer a different question: “what kind of music does God like?”

An older man once came up to me at church and asked to talk about the music. My heart sank, automatically. Recently we had cautiously started replacing some of the older hymns with more modern choruses. He said: “I’d like to make some suggestions about the song choice at this service”. (I know what’s was coming, I thought). He continued: “I really think we should do more of these modern songs”. I was taken aback. He explained how encouraging it was to know that when he was gone (his words, not mine!) there would be lots of young people around to carry on the work in the church. And he thought that we should do whatever we could in the music to build them up and make them feel welcome.

Selfless, loving and missional. I think this is the kind of music God likes.

But of course there’s much more to say, particularly about the details. And last weekend Greg, Cedric and I ran a day of music training for our combined churches. Our goal for the day was just this: to start some conversations about what we say “yes” to, and how to make music that God likes.

Here are some things I think we can say a big “yes” to.

1. YES to loving excellently
I think God values excellence. Psalm 33 says to play skilfully as we shout for joy. Now of course everyone has different skill levels, and there are more important things than making sure you have a professional band playing at every church service. But it’s also a mistake not to do your best, or to try to improve, or to give no value at all to musicianship in the music team.

I’ve been to churches where one of their core values is having bad production values: if the PA doesn’t crackle and the guitar isn’t out of tune, then someone hasn’t done their job right. It’s a kind of perverse asceticism: making painful music to make a point. And it leads nowhere.

For a start, it’s just not wise mission strategy. A Sydney Anglican bishop once told me that the number one factor in church growth is (for better or worse) music. (He went on to say that therefore Moore College should candidates drumming instead of Hebrew, but I’ll leave this idea aside for the moment). To put bad music in the way of people coming to hear the gospel, when we have so many great musicians and resources in our churches, is just silly.

And what’s more, I am convinced that it devalues what the Bible holds as important (even if not of first importance). My friend Lara Goudie has a song called “Famous Lord” where she makes the point better than I can:

generous father you’ve spared no expense,
all around us we see your extravagance;

God values beauty or he wouldn’t have made the world the way it is. And God values human creativity or he wouldn’t have made us the way we are: with the different gifts he has given us.

So let’s pursue people with creative gifts, and encourage them to develop those gifts for God’s glory. To misquote the 19th century English preacher Reverend Rowland Hill, “the devil should not have all the best music.”

But before you start throwing multi-tempic codas and 15 minute conga solos into “How Great is Our God”, remember the final trump card: LOVE. We are to be excellent… but lovingly.

In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is at his wits end with the church at Corinth. They were going so well, but now everything is just messy. And here’s why: Corinth forgot about LOVE. In Chapter 13 Paul makes it clear: without love you’re a waste of space. And that means, he goes on to say in Chapter 14, that when we do church, whether we read the bible or preach or do music, everything must be done “for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor 14:26).

I love Bach – actually I think his work is the pinnacle of God honouring art – but if the people you’re trying to love are 14 year olds who listen to Today FM, then leave the cantatas at home. Likewise, you might be the best rock drummer in the world, but if the people you are trying to serve sing best to the pipe organ, then sign up for the supper roster and love them in that way.

We want to be excellent, yes, but in excellent in love.

2. YES to Teaching the Heart

One of my favourite hymn writers, John Wesley, has this to say about the place of the head and heart in worship music:

[when you sing] do it with the spirit and with the understanding also; not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Hopkins and Sternhold, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would sooner dispose a critic to turn a Christian than a Christian to turn critic. (John Wesley, cited in Mark Evans, Open Up The Doors: Music in the Modern Church (London: 2006))

I don’t know who Hopkins and Sterhold were. But like Wesley, I’ve got zero time for boring music in church. Because if your music is encouraging people to think about what you’ll have for dinner while singing about the cross, then that’s worse than not singing at all. Let’s just say a creed. It’ll be over sooner and we won’t have to bring instruments along.

Some people talk about worship music like the music part of it is merely incidental to the main game, which is getting words that are “good theology”. I have a huge problem with this, because it misunderstands what a song is. What a song says cannot be reduced to the lyrics sleeve. Nor can what a poem (or lyric) says be written in prose. And this makes some bible college nerds really uncomfortable: you cannot proofread a feeling; feelings can be ambiguous.

For this reason some people think you need to measure out emotion in church music in conservatively levelled tea spoons, just in case things get out of hand. By encouraging people to feel a certain way we may be manipulating their emotions.

Rubbish! If what people are responding to is the truth, and if their response is sincere praise to God, then you are not manipulating them: you’re leading them. That’s your job! If the word “feelings” seems to shallow or fickle to you, then perhaps Jonathon Edwards’ word “affections” is more apt to describe those deep sentiments of love and gratitude and devotion towards our maker which are the right response to the gospel (Jonathon Edwards, Religious Affections (Grand Rapids: 1971)).

James 5:13b says it real clearly: “Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise”. Simple as that. Music and emotion are inseparable.

Yes, of course, don’t soft pedal the central role of the Word: God speaks and listening to his voice new life the dead receive. He doesn’t mime. He doesn’t share his perspective through interpretive dance. He speaks. And certainly we shouldn’t have wholesale heresy in our songs.

But I hope we can do better than correct songs. Let’s teach to the heart well. With great stirring melodies and words dripping in right emotion.

Evangelicals often go to Colossians 3:16 for their theology of worship: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom”. But make sure you don’t stop there. Just as emotion without the word is an idol, so truth without the proper response is, James tells us, demonic! (James 2:19) So Colossians doesn’t stop at merely teaching each other the truth. We are to teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, as we “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.”

We say YES to teaching: teaching the heart and moving the affections.

3. We say YES to Music with a mission

In Acts 16:25 Paul and Silas are in gaol “praying and singing hymns to God”. But what’s interesting is that it’s not just a kumara moment: “the
other prisoners were listening to them”. And this is how it’s meant to me – we are to assume that our songs are not just between us and God or even just between us and other believers; we are to sing about God to those who do not yet know him.

John Dickson describes it as “doxological evangelism”: praise to God in the earshot of outsiders (John Dickson, ‘Heralds Together’, in Promoting The Gospel (Sydney: 2005)). It’s how it was in first temple Judaism, it’s how it was in Acts 16, and it’s how it should be now. In the words of Psalm 96, “Sing to the Lord, praise his name … declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous deeds among all peoples”. We need to think about music as mission.

How do we do that?

More than simply removing inaccessible jargon from our songs (as tempting as it is to rhyme “propitiation” with “transubstantiation”), we need to think about music and our culture. As Lesslie Newbigin, one of my favourite thinkers and sometime bishop of South India, realised, the gospel comes into this world to subvert every culture (Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Cambridge: 1986)). It doesn’t come with an angelic culture attached. Hymns are no more holy than death metal; it all depends on whom you’re trying to reach. Jesus is rightly Lord of Polka as much as Progressive Rock. And therein lies the gospel’s power.

Much Contemporary Christian Music sounds like country music, simply because the largest and most influential centre for the production of Christian music is Nashville, Tennessee. It might also speak to people in Sydney, and it might work for churches in Fiji. But we shouldn’t assume that it will. We need to be asking who is in our culture that we are trying to read out to, and what kind of music do they engage with?

A friend of mine is doing a music traineeship in a church in the States. They don’t play any Chris Tomlin or Matt Redman, because the people they’re trying to reach are indie rockers, not country music fans. The worship leaders begin thinking about what style of music to play in church by heading out into the pubs and clubs of their city and listening to their culture. Obviously there is much that they hear and see that must be rejected: obscenity, selfish anger and pride are central parts of many styles of music, and the gospel is not neutral towards these. But much of what they hear is neither intrinsically sinful nor automatically holy. And so they take those elements captive for Christ, to reach their city with the gospel.

We need to say YES to missionary music.

4. We need to say YES to music by the Spirit
I used to think that the Spirit was only for Charismatics and Pentecostals. Then I read the Bible.
Have a read through Ephesians 5:18-20:

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice that there are three members of the Trinity intimately involved in our worship music. We sing to God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we do it while filled with the Spirit.
A church without the real, active involvement of the Spirit will be – Paul’s metaphor tells us – like a pub with no beer. You can’t get drunk without alcohol, and you can’t do church without the Spirit.
So we need to say and emphatic and, I think in many churches, long overdue YES to being filled with the Spirit. We need to say YES to songs and singing and times of corporate worship that are moved by the Spirit. And we need to remember that the Spirit of God is a person. He is the person who Jesus promised would stay with us in his absence (John 15-16).
So what difference does it make when we start thinking of life as the church with such a companion? What does it change about the way we conduct our public meetings, or our time of singing?