Doxology

In the emotionally charged society in which we live, it has become central to the church music lexicon to use language consistent with emotions.  Yours truly has also, in the past, been subject to those inclinations.  However, recently (in the past eight years) I’ve come to the conclusion that our language needs to change in this regard—moving primarily from speaking to emotions during singing to speaking of affections.  “What’s the big deal?” “Isn’t it just semantics?” you may ask.

Not at all.

I’ve struggled as how to express that change.  That’s why I’m so thankful to have come across this little article at Justin Taylor’s blog.  It says in a few hundred words what I would try to say in thousands.  Let this begin to alter the way you think about emotions and emotionalism.

As Gerald McDermott explains, Jonathan Edwards saw affections as “strong inclinations of the soul that are manifested in thinking, feeling and acting” (Seeing God: Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment, p. 31).

A common confusion is to equate “affections” with “emotions.” But there are several differences, as summarized in this chart from McDermott (p. 40):

He explains why affections are different than emotions:

Emotions (feelings) are often involved in affections, but the affections are not defined by emotional feeling. Some emotions are disconnected from our strongest inclinations.

For instance, a student who goes off to college for the first time may feel doubtful and fearful. She will probably miss her friends and family at home. A part of her may even try to convince her to go back home. But she will discount these fleeting emotions as simply that—feelings that are not produced by her basic conviction that now it is time to start a new chapter in life.

The affections are something like that girl’s basic conviction that she should go to college, despite fleeting emotions that would keep her at home. They are strong inclination that may at times conflict with more fleeting and superficial emotions. (pp. 32-33)

Here is how Sam Storms explains the difference in Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards’ “Religious Affections:

Certainly there is what may rightly be called an emotional dimension to affections. Affections, after all, are sensible and intense longings or aversions of the will. Perhaps it would be best to say that whereas affections are not less than emotions, they are surely more.

Emotions can often be no more than physiologically heightened states of either euphoria or fear that are unrelated to what the mind perceives as true.

Affections, on the other hand, are always the fruit or effect of what the mind understands and knows. The will or inclination is moved either toward or away from something that is perceived by the mind.

An emotion or mere feeling, on the other hand, can rise or fall independently of and unrelated to anything in the mind.

One can experience an emotion or feeling without it properly being an affection, but one can rarely if ever experience an affection without it being emotional and involving intense feelings that awaken and move and stir the body. (p. 45)

I’m not saying that emotions are bad or evil.  I’m just saying that the scriptures may be dealing with a realm higher and deeper than emotions only.

Brother Music Minister, begin to re-think your view on emotions

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Too many times have I sensed in Music Ministers/Worship Leaders/Lead Worshipers/Psalmists/Song Directors….the mindset of someone who is out of balance on the casual side of things.  I’m not speaking of outward appearance, i.e. clothing, but of the heart.  Does the scripture tell us that in Christ we now have an intimacy with God?  Absolutely!  However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t treat our Father without respect (forgive the double-negative).

In Spurgeon’s book “Lectures To My Students”, he has a worthy thought in this regard that, even though he is speaking primarily to public prayer, would apply to leading corporate singing:

Jacob wrestling

It is delightful to hear a man wrestle with God, and say, ‘I will not let thee go except thou bless me,’ but that must be said softly, and not in a hectoring spirit, as though we could command and exact blessings from the Lord of all.  Remember, it is still a man wrestling, even though permitted to wrestle with the eternal I AM.  Jacob halted on his thigh after that night’s holy conflict, to let him see that God is terrible, and that his prevailing power did not lie in himself.  We are taught to say, ‘Our Father,’ but still it is, ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’

Familiarity there may be, but holy familiarity; boldness, but the boldness which springs from grace and its work of the Spirit; not the boldness of the rebel who carries a brazen front in the presence of his offended king, but the boldness of the child who fears because he loves, and loves because he fears.  Never fall into a vainglorious style of impertinent address to God; he is not to be assailed as an antagonist, but entreated with as our Lord and God.  Humble and lowly let us be in spirit….

Brother Music Minister, effort to not give off the signal of being presumptuous or brazen before our Father when you stand before His People.

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The primary argument that hard-lined Regulative Principle folks use is that no where in the scriptures do we see instruments used in corporate worship.  They dismiss the Psalmists’ references to instruments (although numerous) as in a non-corporate context.  But what about this from 2 Chronicles 29?

²⁰ Then Hezekiah the king rose early and gathered the officials of the city and went up to the house of the Lord. ²¹ And they brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats for a sin offering for the kingdom and for the sanctuary and for Judah. And he commanded the priests, the sons of Aaron, to offer them on the altar of the Lord. ²² So they slaughtered the bulls, and the priests received the blood and threw it against the altar. And they slaughtered the rams, and their blood was thrown against the altar. And they slaughtered the lambs, and their blood was thrown against the altar. ²³ Then the goats for the sin offering were brought to the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them, ²⁴ and the priests slaughtered them and made a sin offering with their blood on the altar, to make atonement for all Israel. For the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel.

²⁵ And he stationed the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres, according to the commandment of David and of Gad the king’s seer and of Nathan the prophet, for the commandment was from the Lord through his prophets. ²⁶ The Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets. ²⁷ Then Hezekiah commanded that the burnt offering be offered on the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song to the Lord began also, and the trumpets, accompanied by the instruments of David king of Israel. ²⁸ The whole assembly worshiped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished. ²⁹ When the offering was finished, the king and all who were present with him bowed themselves and worshiped. ³⁰ And Hezekiah the king and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed down and worshiped.  (Bold mine.)

King Hezekiah

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This isn't spirituality

This quote by John Piper says it very well.  I’ve often said that a hyper-somber mood and carriage in congregational worship draws as much attention to the worshiper as does hyper-emotionalism.  Let us give evidence, in a manner worthy of the gospel, to the great joy and treasuring of Jesus when we congregate together.

Unbroken seriousness of a melodramatic or somber kind will inevitably communicate a sickness of soul to the great mass of people. This is partly because life as God created it is not like that.

There are, for example, little babies in the world who are not the least impressed with or in need of our passion and zeal and earnest looks. They are cooing and smiling and calling for their daddies to get down and play with them. The daddy who cannot do this will not understand the true seriousness of sin, because he is not capable of enjoying what God has preserved from its ravages. He is really a sick man and unfit to lead others to health. He is, in the end, earnest about being earnest, not earnest about being joyful.

The real battle in life is to be as happy in God as we can be, and that takes a very special kind of earnestness, since God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.

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Does he look like Robert Downy Jr?

“There is such a thing as a good church split” my pastor has said.  It’s a radical thought.  However, because we’ve almost only seen unbiblical church splits (over non-essentials) we tend to think immediately that all church splits are bad.  Not so says Paul (1 Cor. 11:18-19).  In the same way, we have only seen bad “worship wars” with congregations splitting over non-essentials as music styles, volume, etc.  But in this article by Russell Moore, he challenges us much in the same way as the Apostle in that we need to be fighting FOR each other rather than AGAINST each other.  Enjoy!

I have the worship music tastes of a seventy-five year-old woman.

There I admitted it. That’s because a seventy-five year-old woman was picking out the hymns and gospel songs in the church where I grew up. My iPod playlist is really eclectic—ranging from George Jones to Andrew Peterson to Taio Cruz. But, when it comes to worship, nothing gets to me like Fanny Crosby. And, if “Just As I Am” is played, I’m going to want to cry, and probably walk the nearest aisle (even if it’s on an airplane).

I’m left cold by what people call the “majestic old hymns.” I tried to like them, to fit in with the theological tribe into which I was adopted, but I just can’t do it. They sound like what watercress-sandwich-eating Episcopalians from Connecticut might sing (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

And, though I like a lot of contemporary music, much of it sounds to me like many of these songs were written by underemployed commercial jingle writers, trying to find words to rhyme with “Jesus” (”Sees us?” “Never leave us?” “Diseases?”).

But the more I reflect on what I like, and why, the more I’m convinced that my preferences are almost entirely cultural and nostalgic.

I’m not saying aesthetics don’t matter in worship. The Spirit equips God’s people to sing and to play and to write music. So when music is not good this is often evidence of, at worst, disobedience, and at best, misappropriation of talents. And the Scripture commands us to worship in “reverence and awe” (Heb. 12:28).

Worship is directed toward God, yes, but worship arises out of a specific community. The psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are teaching ( Col. 3:16). They build up the rest of the Body. That’s why we’ve got to care about what, and how, others hear when we are “addressing one another” (Eph. 5:17) musically.

What I am saying is that most of our varying critiques of musical forms are often just narcissism disguised as concern about theological and liturgical downgrade. That’s why I think we need more, and better, worship wars.

Thankfully, we don’t hear as much about “worship wars” these days, but I wonder if that’s because of growing maturity or if it’s simply because we’ve so segregated ourselves into services and congregations that reflect generational and ethnic and class-oriented musical commonalities. Maybe we need to reignite the wars, but in a Christian sort of way.

What if the war looked like this in your congregation? What if the young singles complained that the drums are too loud, that they’re distracting the senior adults? What if the elderly people complained that the church wasn’t paying attention to the new movements in songwriting or musical style?

When we seek the well-being of others in worship, it’s not just that we cringe through music we hate. As an act of love, this often causes us to appreciate, empathize, and even start to resonate with worship through musical forms we previously never considered.

This would signal a counting of others as more significant than ourselves (Phil 2:3), which comes from the Spirit of the humiliated, exalted King Jesus (Phil 2:5-11).  It would mean an outdoing of one another, in order to serve and show honor to the other parts of the Body of Christ. And, however it turned out musically, it would rock.

Okay, so I exaggerated a little about my old woman tastes. In the time I’ve been writing this article the background music has included both Conway Twitty and Christian Hip-Hop artist FLAME. But I know myself; you turn on “To God Be the Glory,” and I’ll get misty-eyed.

When I insist that the rest of the congregation serve as back-up singers in my own little nostalgic hit parade of back-home Mississippi hymns, I am worshiping in the spirit all right. It’s just not the Holy Spirit. I’m worshiping myself, in the spirit of self-exaltation. And it’s easy to be a Satanist when you can get your way in worship planning.

Let’s declare war on that, in ourselves and in our churches. Which reminds me: “Onward Christian Soldiers,” what a song…

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I’m re-posting this (as well as the follow up posts) for the newer readers to this site.  I pray that it will be worth your time to read it (or re-read it as the case may be).

My pastor mentioned something to the staff the other day that I thought was very profound. It was in the context of preparing for a service that included the Lord’s Supper. It was a passing thought but it grabbed my attention completely. It was something like this (I am paraphrasing) “It is my prayer that the service today will be reverent; I know it will be formal but being formal doesn’t guarantee that it will be reverent.”

Until he had said that, I had not thought much about the difference in those two terms. Is it possible to be formal without being reverent? Absolutely. How?

The word “formal” comes from the word “form”. Some definitions for formal are as follows: “Pertaining to the essential form of something” and “following accepted conventions or proper forms” and “characterized by strict observation of forms” and “done for the sake of forms only”. (Taken from The American Heritage Dictionary.)

The scriptures describe false professors as:

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; 2 Tim 3:1-5 NASU Bold mine

We can have all the appropriate music, we can say all the right things, sing all the correct lines, we can include all the biblical commands for what a service should be and still miss the power of the gospel. Isaiah cried out to Israel in this regard in his 58th chapter. The body had the form of fasting included in their “worship” but Isaiah said that even though they were acting as a people that “delight in the nearness of God” (v. 2b) they were people of “transgression” (v. 1b). He called them thusly because the fruit of their lives were not in keeping with God’s grace (v. 6-8).

Let’s put it into today’s language….We have here a people who loved praise and worship music, love doctrinal preaching, love to go to church, etc. but were transgressing against God. How can that be?

Let’s get to the second word we are focusing on—reverence. The definition for this word is as follows: “Profound respect and awe” and “an act of showing respect”. In the context of this discussion, showing respect for what? For God, His Nature, His word, and a lifestyle that lives that out. You cannot separate your corporate worship from your lifestyle. You might say “I don’t want to look at my lifestyle when I am worshipping God—it’s too discouraging”. You say correctly.

However, you must evaluate yourself in the sense that it causes you to revere the grace of God. You must compare yourself to the infallible, immutable word of God and see how your justification is not based on anything of yourself but totally of Christ’s work. You must come to God in worship clothed in humility and rejoicing in the might of Jesus’ work alone. We must lead worship realizing that having all of our formal “ducks in a row” does not guarantee that we are pleasing to God in corporate worship.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. Ps 51:17 NASU

When we come together in corporate worship, let us strive to clothe ourselves with humility (1 Pet. 5:5). Let us lead with brokenness, with our only confidence being that the work of Christ! Let us come with a testimony of God’s favor as we have lived out the gospel every day and seeing our failures along the way as signs of God’s grace to justify the ungodly. Let us also see any obedience to the scriptures in the same light; that any successes make us more in debt to grace!

In my next entry, I will try to come at this from the other side of things and ask the question “Can we be reverent without being formal?”

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I found this old article–it’s not quite 10 years old–written by Kevin Twit, who is one of the founders of Indelible Grace Music and Reformed University Fellowship (RUF).  Even though it was written a few years ago it is still very much a current application.  Enjoy!

Recently public television aired a documentary entitled, “The Merchants of Cool.” The program revealed how the various media conglomerates shape our understanding of what “cool” is, and then steer the buying taste of our youth in this regard. Working with college students, I found this very relevant and so I invited some students over to watch the program. The show featured people like MTV’s vice president of brand strategy who described how they go about identifying what “cool” is, and then how they sell that message to our youth. After watching the program, one student said something I found quite perceptive. We were talking about how we as Christians can be set free from slavery to the culture’s idea of what it means to be cool. This student raised his hand and asked, “How can we can be set free from trying to be cool when churches seek to hire ‘cool’ youth directors? All I could say was, “That’s a good question.” It is an excellent question!

The culture does squeeze us, even in the Church. When we come together in worship it is to have our sanity restored. It is about the restoring of what God says is true about life, rather than being squeezed by the message our culture preaches. Worship is about restoring our sanity because we so often live in a sort of insanity! When we believe that we earn God’s favor by what we do, when we believe we can manipulate God to do whatever we want, we are not living in line with reality. That is living in a fantasy world. The world we actually live in is the world in which God loves us because of His great mercy in Christ. Yet we rarely live like that.

Worship is about opening our eyes to see Jesus for who he is, as beautiful and believable. This is what changes us! Worship is formative. It molds us and shapes us as the people of God. In Romans 12, Paul urges us to no longer be conformed to, or squeezed into the mold of, the world in which we live. The basis he gives for this is the mercy of God. As the mercy of God in the person of Jesus Christ sinks into our hearts, we are changed.

Thomas Chalmers was a great pastor, seminary professor, and leader in the Free Church of Scotland in the 19th century. He mentored men like Robert Murray McCheyne and Horatius Bonar (the hymnwriter), and he preached a landmark sermon entitled, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” It is a wonderful sermon in which he points out how we never lose our hold on one love until a new love comes along. He says that the only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. I often talk about this with my college students. A person never really gets over a crush until a new love comes along. Our hearts can be drawn from one affection to another, but they will never lose their longing to cling to something.

This is why John Calvin said that our hearts are like idol factories. We will worship something. We will love something and until a new more beautiful, more believable, love comes along, we will inevitably cling to idols! But the Gospel comes to us and it brings an expulsive power-the expulsive power of a new affection. A new affection comes in, as we see Jesus as more beautiful and believable and it drives out these other affections! It is in worship, through the preaching, the singing, and the sacraments, that our hearts are drawn from other “beauties” as our eyes are opened to see Jesus for who He really is.

During my time in the ministry, I have come to appreciate the power of hymns to help us meditate upon the reality of God’s grace in worship and mold us as the people of God. When my students actually begin to read the words, they can’t believe that they used to regard hymns as lifeless and dull. As one student put it, “These songs convey emotion. Sorrow, loneliness, surprise, overwhelming joy! They are all here, and my generation doesn’t associate any of those qualities with hymns.” Unfortunately, sometimes this rich theological poetry is connected to tunes that fail to express the emotion of the lyric to my students. The words are so rich that we have begun to write new tunes for some of them. And I take whatever opportunity I can to urge gifted composers to search out powerful hymns that have tragically dropped out of use, or even to write new hymns.

Hymns take a truth from Scripture and let us sit in it for a while. They engage intellect, imagination, and emotion. The hymns are mini-meditations upon the mysteries of the Gospel that drive us to worship. They offer a story, something very attractive to postmodern people, and invite us to come in and see if it might be our story, too. For instance, I love to introduce students to the hymns of Anne Steele. She was an 18th century English Baptist hymn-writer who spent 50 years as an invalid. I believe she wrote some of the most remarkable hymns about the power of the Gospel in the midst of grief and pain that you will ever find. Yet her hymns unfortunately have vanished from almost every modern hymnal. When people sing her words they find themselves in her story. They find they can fellowship with a woman who lived 300 years. Suddenly the Kingdom of God becomes huge to them!

Hymns are theology on fire. They are theology expressed in beautiful, poetic language that gets at the heart, and engages the imagination. They help us to sit for three or four minutes in the mysteries of the Gospel that fill us with wonder. The hymn-writers really glory in these paradoxical statements. One of my favorite examples is in a hymn by Augustus Toplady (the author of “Rock of Ages”). He writes, “O love incomprehensible, that made Thee bleed for me. The Judge of all hath suffered death, to set His prisoner free.” To sit in that thought, even for a little while, changes you! And the more you meditate upon it, the more it overwhelms your heart.

C.H. Spurgeon once said “When I cannot understand anything in the Bible, it seems as though God had set a chair there for me, at which to kneel and worship; and that the mysteries are intended to be an altar of devotion.” These mysteries are what the hymns love to dwell upon. Hymns are mini-meditations on the ironies of the Gospel that drive us to worship. They are an opportunity to meditate upon a mystery like “And can it be, that Thou my God should die for me?” until it begins to really sink into our heart.

If we ever lose our sense of wonder, we will be conformed to the culture. If we ever lose our sense of the beauty and the amazement, we will be conformed to the culture, we will be conformed to the flesh. Hymns, you see, are not only opportunities for our meditation, they were often the result of meditation. It used to be that it was the pastors who would write the hymns. Often they would write a hymn at the end of a week of meditating upon their sermon.

For instance, John Newton’s hymn Amazing Grace is actually a result of his meditating all week upon 1 Chronicles 17, God’s covenant with David. We even have the notes from Newton’s sermon the day that he first taught his people that hymn! You might remember how David wants to build a house for God, but God tells him, “You aren’t going to build me a house – I’m going to build your house! I have been traveling in a tent with my people and until they are settled, I won’t be settled! David, I’m putting my house on hold because I am putting you first!” Isn’t that the heart of the Gospel – that God puts us first? As David sits in that, he is blown away, and as Newton sits in that, he too canot help but cry “Amazing grace!”

Hymns are powerful. They sneak into our soul. As William Cowper sings, “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord who rises with healing in His wings.” William Cowper was well aware of the power of hymns as he writes in a letter to a friend, “It is a noble thing to be a poet. It makes all the world so lively. I might have preached more sermons than even Tillotson did and better, and the world would have been still fast asleep. But a volume of verse is a fiddle that puts the universe in motion.” Hymns have this ability to sneak in undetected and surprise us! And we desperately need the truth of the mercy of God to break through, to reform us, to restore our sanity, to open our eyes to help us see Jesus as beautiful and believable – in short, to shape us as a people of God. The hymns have power to do just that.

In her book, A Royal Waste of Time, Marva Dawn tells of Vaclav Havel, a playwright who is also the president of the Czech Republic. He was asked, how the revolution to overthrow communism in the Czech Republic was bloodless and yet had experienced real staying power. He simply replied, “We had our parallel society. And in that parallel society, we wrote our plays and sang our songs and read our poems, until we knew the truth so well that we could go out into the streets of Prague and say, “We don’t believe your lies anymore!” And communism had to fall.

Isn’t that a beautiful picture of what worship should be about? We gather to sing our songs so we will know the truth so well that we can go out into the world and we say, “We don’t believe your lies anymore! We won’t be squeezed into your mold!” And so we can speak to our fearful heart and say, “Heart, I don’t believe your lies anymore!” (or as Charles Wesley put it, “Arise my soul arise! Shake off your guilty fear!”) because Jesus can trump even what my heart says! And Jesus does trump our hearts as He becomes beautiful and believable to you. That is why we gather in worship. That is why I urge you, use the hymns of the church! God is using them to mold us to the truth, restore our sanity, and open our eyes to see Jesus as beautiful and believable.

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Today, I would like to share a quote from Jonathan Edwards and then speak to how it relates to congregational singing.  The quote is from Edwards’ Religious Affections:

“For although to true religion there must indeed be something else besides affection, yet true religion consists so much in the affections that there can be no true religion without them.  He who has no religious affection is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart.  As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affections.

If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart.  The reason why people are not affected by such infinitely great, important, glorious and wonderful things, as they often hear and read of in the Word of God, is undoubtedly because they are blind; if they were not so, it would be impossible, and utterly inconsistent with human nature, that their hearts should be otherwise than strongly impressed, and greatly moved by such things.”

Several points to make from the excerpt:

1.  Affections are more than just emotions.  They are the inclinations of the heart and the will.  They are the mind and the thoughts.  They are an expression of our entire nature and being.  They are the outflow of the inner man, the truest self.  This may sound like semantics.  However, there is a huge difference between an emotional response that any and all may experience and a true affection that can only come from a heart that has been born-again.

2.  Affections are not all there are to expressions of faith.  I’ve met plenty of folks and have myself had seasons of time in my life where expressed affections in corporate worship where thought to be one and the same as the entirety of our commands to obedience.  In other words, we are easily fooled into thinking that because we have worshiped on Sunday—which IS a good thing, by the way—that we have fulfilled all of our responsibility to God’s word.  That is simply not the case.  The part does not make the whole.

Unfortunately, by living in the “Worship Age” we’ve got lots of folks who fall prey to that mindset.  (Note:  The idea that the church has entered a “Worship Age” where music is the primary way the gospel is presented would be a sinful veering away from the biblical imperative to the centrality of preaching as the means to present the gospel—see Romans 10.)  The commands of scripture go far beyond just making sure we’ve always got praise and worship playing in the background.

3.  Expressions of faith must include affections.  On the other hand, I also see folks who refuse to communicate deep affections during congregational singing and preaching.  It’s like a switch turns off.  Before and after a service, these individuals will be very expressive in one-on-one conversations and discussions but once the service starts, they stop.  Edwards warns us that such behaviors should be a “red flag”.

If such behaviors are cultural, they must be repented of.  Just because a person was raised to be overly pious during congregational worship is a poor excuse.  If such lack of affections are natural, they must be noticed as one evidence of an unregenerate heart and should serve as a red flag.  If an individual finds it habitually impossible to experience affections during a song service or the preached word that person should do some serious searching in the Word of God concerning their spiritual condition.

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Mike Harland is the director of LifeWay Worship which is markets lots of music to churches to sing congregationally. He has written a book (that I’ve yet to read) called Seven Words Of Worship. I just read a provocative article written by Harlan which can be read in it’s entirety here. I will highlight several things from the article and comment afterwards:

In many of our churches today our worship has become very produced with visual enhancements and top sound re-enforcement. That’s not a bad thing – it fact it can be a great thing! But when the stage lighting effects dominate the experience, the leaders on stage cannot even see the faces of their congregation. It amuses me when a leader has to put his hand over his eyes to try and see his people. Hello? Is something wrong here? Add to that a highly produced sound mix with in-ear monitors and a full stage mix in the floor monitors, and, well, they can’t hear them either. So, if we cannot see or hear the congregation, how would we know that the people have stopped singing? It would do any pastor or worship leader a world of good to spend a service just watching the people. They might be surprised – and disappointed.

This is spot-on.  It is very important to understand that bells and whistles are not evil in themselves but if a church is depending upon those things to create atmosphere for worship, then it can be evil.  Here’s the rub—I’m quite certain that no one who uses such “enhancements” would say that they are depending on them.  My test would be this:  if you take away those “enhancements” can you function biblically and effectively?  If the answer is “no” then there are dependency issues.

They Don’t Know The Song. In many churches, there is such a focus on the latest new song that the familiar is overlooked. People like to sing songs they know and songs that resonate with them. I recommend using new songs, but slowly and deliberately. By the time a worship leader brings a new song to the church, he or she will have lived with it for weeks and grown in their familiarity with it. The worshippers in our churches should have the same opportunity before springing it on them on a Sunday morning.

I can identify with the fear of presenting music that is “stale” and sung apathetically and mechanically.  But it is important for Mus Min to step out of themselves and see the repertoire from the perspective of the congregant.  That’s why Harland’s input here is so valuable.  He is now getting that perspective.

Congregants generally don’t have as much singing ability as Mus Min.  Congregants don’t generally learn music as quickly as Mus Min.  It usually takes fewer songs to satisfy a congregant’s palette than it does a Mus Min.  These are items that I have to constantly remind myself of.  Especially when suggestions for new songs come at about five a week!

I’ll continue looking at Harland’s article soon!

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Here’s the historical context of the video:  our church quartet had just presented a mini-concert and Bro. Jeff is coming up to preach. 

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