Minor or Major?

The key to church music

As far as we can tell, music has always had a place in the lives of Christians, particularly in our corporate experience as the people of God. There is a wealth of evidence for this in the Old Testament; it is not so obvious in the New Testament, but passages such as Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 suggest that singing was part of normal Christian activity. Today, music still has a place in most Christian gatherings.

A clash of cultures

Although music has always been part of Christian experience, music itself cannot be Christian or non-Christian. There is no such thing as ‘sacred music’. Words can be Christian, but not tunes. Singing Latin motets does not make them holy, nor does adding a flute to a heavy metal group. Music is one of those aspects of creation which God gives generously to all humanity. Like money or sex, it is something which sinners pervert by not acknowledging their creator and believers accept with thanksgiving.

But music is also a human art form. As such, it has developed conventions, meanings and values. The resulting ‘music culture’ affects anyone who is interested in playing or listening to music. The music culture should not call the tune in Christian meetings. Where it is in conflict with gospel principles—and it often is—it must be overruled. This means that church musicians often face a dilemma in working out how and why they serve the church.

One example of this conflict is between music as performance and music as service. Part of every musician’s training is how to perform, how to attract attention and sustain it and how to differentiate oneself from other musicians. However, a Christian is obliged to serve others and this always involves being humble and often requires being inconspicuous. The very things that might enhance music as performance can diminish its value as service. Conversely, being an effective servant may mean making your music less impressive.

On the whole, musicians are greatly appreciated in Christian meetings, because of the enormous enjoyment which people get from singing and listening to music. In fact, for better or worse (and I think the latter), how much people enjoy a Christian meeting is often determined by whether or not they like the music. This places a certain amount of power in the hands of musicians in church. They have the potential to serve the congregation well, but they can also cause great disruption if musical agendas replace the agenda of the gospel. A talented musician whose thinking and conduct is shaped by the gospel is a great asset to any congregation, but a talented musician who is not gospel-directed is, frankly, a pain in the neck.

Christians must not submit to the conventions of any pagan culture. It is of utmost importance that our thinking is transformed by the gospel renewing our minds so that we are no longer conformed to the pattern of the prevailing music culture.

A theology of music?

Although there are many references to music in the Bible (especially in the Psalms), music (as such) is never discussed. It is difficult to imagine a ‘theology of music’ based on the Bible. It would be like having a ‘theology of mathematics’ just because the Bible contains numbers.

Our concern is not to have some distinctively Christian understanding of music, but to appreciate the function of music when Christians meet together. The key to this is the nature and purpose of the Christian assembly.

Why Christians meet

One of the major problems facing Christian churches is our vagueness and uncertainty about why we meet together. We continue to meet because we have always done so and we continue to sing and pray and read the Bible because we would not know what else to do. But we have lost sight of the reasons for doing these things.

Normally, when a group of people meets, the reasons for doing so determine the group’s nature and functions. People gather in a movie theatre to watch a movie, or at a bus stop to catch a bus or on a rugby field to kill each other. Sometimes the corporate nature of the event is incidental to its function, such as movie-watching, and sometimes it is essential, such as playing rugby.

We need to seriously ask ourselves this question: what type of gathering is church?

We can do many of our church activities—prayer, learning, reading the Bible—just as well, if not better, alone. The reason for Christians gathering together is not obvious until we understand the nature of the God who gathers us.

The gathering God

The Bible’s teaching about why believers meet together is rooted deeply within the nature of God’s activity in the world. The nation of Israel knew God as a ‘gatherer’. The foundational event of the exodus is remembered as the time that God brought the nation of Israel from Egypt and gathered them at Mount Sinai on the “day of the assembly”, to hear his words of instruction (see Ex 19:1-6; Deut 4:10). In the promised land, the temple became the symbol of God’s presence where God’s people would continue to gather together.

But the Old Testament is a record of Israel’s disobedience and subsequent judgement by God. This judgement involved scattering the Israelites:

The LORD said, “It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them.” Therefore, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “See, I will make this people eat bitter food and drink poisoned water. I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will pursue them with the sword until I have destroyed them.” (Jer 9:13-16; see also Lev 26:27, 33; Jer 18:13-17; Ezek 12:15)

Notwithstanding this, the prophets announced that God had not finished with Israel; he would gather them yet again (see Is 11:12; Jer 31:8, 10; Ezek 27:21,22). The gospel fulfils these prophecies and Jesus’ ministry is described thus:

… he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.” (John 11:52)

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” (Mat 12:30)

One of the major themes of the epistles is the unity which the gospel brings to all believers, drawing them together under Christ in the manner which God intended. The images of the church are corporate ones: the body, the building, the family, a people.

The gospel of the gathering God provides for us a cornerstone for understanding why Christians meet together.

Gathered in heaven

In Hebrews 12, God describes the consequences of his gathering work. Israel was gathered at Mount Sinai (or Zion), but the Christian church is gathered in heaven, in the city of God. We are assembled before God and Jesus and “thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly”. This describes an event which we do not see today, and yet it is happening. Paradoxically, the gospel is at work in the world, creating a family which is in heaven now, gathered before the Father.

The whole of Hebrews is addressing this truth: the symbolic and shadowy covenant of Sinai and the ritualistic activity of the Old Testament ‘church’ has become a reality in the gospel of Christ. We can now “draw near to God” through Jesus’ blood.

The presence of Christ

It is a marvellous fact that, by the Spirit of God, what is true of the heavenly meeting is also true of the earthly one. God is with us! As Jesus says in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.”

The heavenly presence of the Church before Christ has consequences for Christians meeting together. We are to “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Heb 10:25); we must “consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds” (Heb 10:24); and we should “encourage one another—and all the more” (Heb 10:25) as the heavenly reality becomes closer and closer to us. Ephesians 4 explains these activities in more practical detail, but the purpose of the earthly gathering can be summarised in the image of unity in 4:16:

From him [Christ], the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Here is the significance of the Christian meeting. A church is the people God has, in a particular place, gathered to himself by the gospel of Christ. It cannot be made more or less significant by the building which holds it, the size of the gathering, its formality, its time and day, nor its music.

Three dimensions of church

The Word of God

Our understanding of why Christians meet together will shape the activities which take place in church and the manner in which they are carried out. Consider the scene at Mount Sinai as the Israelites received the commandments of God. They understood that they were in God’s presence and this affected their priorities. They were not primarily concerned about the choice of trumpet music! Since God was in their midst, what mattered more than anything else was to listen to what he said.

The earliest church meetings followed the pattern of Sinai. In Acts 2:42, the believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. In his instructions to the Colossians, Paul commands that the Word of Christ dwell in them richly through wise teaching (Col 3:16,17). Hearing the Word of God remains the fundamentally important activity when Christians meet. It is by his Word that he has called us together. If we do nothing else, we must hear the Word of God from the Scriptures, in whatever format—preaching, study, discussion or otherwise—is appropriate to the meeting. This is the first dimension of any Christian meeting.

Prayer

The second dimension of church involves our response to the Word of God. Throughout the New Testament, churches are repeatedly exhorted to pray. Having heard from God and understood his character and his plan for us, we recognise our complete dependence upon him and, through prayer, express this dependence in the most humble way possible.

Love

We meet as Christians because God has called us to himself. He has accepted each of us and brought us into his presence. We are, therefore, bound to accept one another. In the Christian meeting, the greatest barriers between people are broken down, since God makes no distinction between us. This is one of the great themes of the New Testament. God makes no distinction between male or female, old and young, not even Jew and Gentile. When Christians love one another, we are expressing the power of the gospel. The practice of the fellowship of the gospel is the third dimension of the Christian meeting.

These are the spiritual dimensions of the Christian meeting: hearing God’s word, responding to him in prayer and loving one another. A consideration of the role of music in church, and any other church activities, must take place within these three dimensions. But one question remains before we can address music specifically.

Praise

Most people describe the point at which music and the Christian meeting come together as ‘the time of praise’ or ‘the time of worship’. This pervasive opinion contains two errors. Firstly, it assumes that the purpose of coming to church is to worship God and secondly, that the way we praise God is through our music.

People will describe a church saying “The worship was wonderful” when they mean “I loved the music”. We see advertised a ‘Service of Prayer and Praise’, in which the praise element always refers to singing. But this is a limitation of both praise and music. We need to pay more attention to what the Scriptures mean by the word ‘praise’.

The obvious part of the Bible to examine is the book of Psalms. It is very clear here, in almost every psalm, that praise is declaring what God is like and what he has done. In general, praise in the psalms is telling others about God rather than speaking to God. Even in Psalm 105, which is explicitly a psalm of praise to God (see verses 1 & 2), it is chiefly concerned with telling others about God.

Although the Psalms were undoubtedly sung, they were handed down in Scripture without a note of music attached to them. There are no melody lines in the book of Psalms and yet the element of praise is undeniable. Praising God cannot, therefore depend upon music. Adding music to the Psalms—a great thing to do—does not make them more ‘praise’.

In the New Testament, the concept of praise remains the same—declaring what God is like and what he has done—but through the gospel, the content of this praise is expanded. We read praises of God at the beginnings of many of the epistles, as the writers remind us of the gospel (see Eph 1; 1 Pet 1). Hebrews 13:15,16 tells us that God is praised when we acknowledge him and do good in the world:

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

However, there is nothing like the book of Psalms in the New Testament. It doesn’t have a ‘Book of Praises’, as the Psalms are called. Rather, the whole New Testament rings with praise since the highest praise of God is the proclamation of the gospel. The redeemed people of God declare the praises of him who brought them out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Pet 2:9). Declaring the gospel, whether it be done in song, in preaching, quietly over a cup of coffee or written in a letter, is our praise of God.

The place of music

It is absolutely essential that, when we approach the question of the place of music in our meetings, we do so in the light of what church is all about. Otherwise, our conclusions will lead us away from the gospel and away from God. However, with a Biblical understanding of why we meet together as Christians and what we do when we meet, music can be a blessing. Practical advice about church music can be found elsewhere, so I will only offer a few thoughts here.

I want to make three pleas for the consideration of those who are involved in church music.

1. Music must be ministry

‘Ministry’ is one of the most abused words in Christian jargon. It is often used to refer to one’s authority over a particular area of Christian service. My ministry is my opportunity to use my superior gifts. The ‘Minister of Music’ acts like the ‘Minister of Transport’, calling the shots for everyone else.

We would do well to rid ourselves of the word ‘ministry’ and replace it with serving, for this is the essence of what Christians must do: serve each other in love. Service is directly opposed to self-promotion and self-satisfaction. Musical talents are valuable to the Christian meeting only if the musicians genuinely desire to serve others. This means more than giving enjoyment to the congregation and it is bound to be in conflict with the performance training that all musicians have undergone.

2. Music needs to be ‘demystified’

Music has great power over human beings and that power should not be confused with spiritual experience. In some circles, music has become a barometer of spiritual authenticity. The more you are affected by the ‘praise’, the more you are in tune with God.

This is unbiblical thinking. The Word of God, prayer and love for one another are the spiritual content of a Christian meeting. None of these three dimensions is made more valuable by music, although each can be well expressed in music.

Music needs to be made less mystical and appreciated for what it is: a good, enjoyable and useful gift of God. Music can be an appropriate way of expressing emotions, just like shouting or laughing. But it should be an expression of the emotions aroused in a believer by the gospel, not by the music.

Music also provides a helpful way of speaking corporately. The congregation can, in one voice, sing of God’s love or pray together or together read the Word of God out loud. Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 speak about singing as a means of speaking to one another.

3. Musicians need to be aware of pitfalls

Finally, a few more words of warning. As this article has suggested at times, the path to serving people through music has its pitfalls. Let me raise two that seem to be widespread in Christian meetings.

  1. One of the great experiences of large churches, conferences and rallies is the mass singing. It lifts the soul to hear a thousand tongues sing to Jesus, just as the hymn says. But this service can become a disservice if, in five years time, all that anyone can remember of the gathering is the great music. We want people to remember how God has changed their minds and lives. If the music serves this end, it is good. If not, we have been betrayed.
  2. If you are a songleader, try not to preface songs with comments such as “Let’s praise God now”. This only confuses people about the meaning of praise and the function of the singing. It makes people think that music is the focus of worship. It would be better to tell people to praise God as they leave church, for then they will be looking to proclaim the gospel in the world.

A godly musician’s contribution to a Christian gathering requires more, not less, skill than a musician whose service is not shaped by the gospel. Godly musicians will weigh their contribution against the needs of the church and not their own desires and abilities. And the people of God will benefit from such an orientation. When a musician’s heart is set upon hearing God, responding to him and loving one another, his or her service will always be welcome.

Adapted by Greg Clarke from an address given by John Woodhouse to the Save the Stave 1992 delegates.

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