Sing Unto the Lord

Heart songs are all about how I feel towards God. They evoke emotion in me and they are filled with a lot more feeling. These songs are not so heavy with theology but are strong in helping me respond emotionally to God (emotional response is a good thing). Many different people accuse others of singing one group or another of these songs.

The whole division misses the point of scripture. We as Christians are called to respond to the truths of God with our hearts. How often do I hear Christians who believe that they are strong theologically point the finger at others for being too emotional. God is the god of our affections. If we say that we believe we are deserving of God’s unquenchable fury, that we have no good in us and yet Jesus came and took all of that upon himself so that we could be adopted as the children of God, if we believe all that and are not moved emotionally then one would question the validity of our belief.

Strong biblical theology is nothing without a heart that sings with thankfulness, and emotional expression is nothing without something to be emotional about.

For myself, I struggle at times to be emotional in the way that I should. Too often I sing lyrics that should leave me broken and yet I am unaffected. I am praying that the hardness of my heart will be done away with and that I can worship my saviour with all my mind, and all my heart.

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

I have been thinking a bit lately about the way we do stuff in music ministry. So often, the people who are responsible for making this area of church life happen, are not paid to give their time to music ministry and so are rushed and busy in the way that they conduct it. I have spoken to a few guys lately who are running music in their church and they would love to try and do different things and to teach more songs or reorganise the roster or write new arrangements but it doesn’t ever happen because life is so busy. So we fall into the default mode of just doing whatever we did last week and we keep being dissatisfied with the result.
Last year I had a chat with a close friend about the way I was spending my time. He introduced me to a word that has changed my thinking not just about my time or music ministry but about all of life. He told me that I should be ‘intentional’ with my time. To be intentional means that there is always a goal or result that you are hoping to achieve. Basically you will always have ‘intent’. No minute or act is wasted. As Christians we are called to be intentional. We are to ‘run the race’, ‘persevere’, ‘fight the good fight’. We should be doing these things with the intention of bringing glory to our Lord Jesus. We are to worship him with our time and our bodies, constantly seeking to refine ourselves through the power that God gives us in his Spirit. Being a worshipper of God is not shift work. It is a constant. Not only that but it is never over. There is no point in this life where you can say that you are done with worship. It is a continuous process, an intentional process.
I believe that we should take this approach to ministry. There is no time when your ministry is complete. You can never say in this life that the congregation and the music team have a perfect theological understanding of worship, are perfect at loving one another and encouraging one another, and are perfect masters at their craft of music making for God’s glory. And I don’t believe it is enough to accept that there are problems but to respond apathetically to them. To be satisfied with sub-par music, dodgy theology and an unloving music team is to say that you do not care for God’s glory.
That all being said, we still face the issue of time and how to best utilise our time to see results – particularly in the case of unpaid workers who need to earn a living elsewhere. One thing that I have tried to do that you might find useful is to write out a five year action plan. Where do yo want to be in five years in this ministry? What are you doing year by year, and roster by roster to reach these goals. In every action that you do are you working towards your goals or are you continuing to spend your time in an activity that doesn’t need to be done? You may find that doing something like this frees up time because you begin to streamline your activities to reach goals. Some questions that might be helpful in setting goals are:
- How large do I want this music team to be? How can I reach that goal?
- What culture do I want to develop amongst the congregation in terms of singing? How can I reach that goal?
- How proficient or what level of excellence do I want to see among the musos? Why? How can I rach that goal?
- What acts of creativity would I like to see develop? Song writing? More arranging?
- What kind of leadership structures will I need to see these things happening effectively?

I hope these thoughts have inspired you to go and begin shaping a future for your ministry area. Remember that this will only happen through God and for his glory. Keep yourself humble, keep Jesus exalted.

This is post 100 for Sing Unto the Lord (Hoorah Hoorah). I thought I would come back to what I had said a while ago about how important it is for Christian musos (Cruisos) to read and think about theology. I want to add to that to talk a little about why Cruisos should think about theology and how it applies to the way we do music, as well as sharing some stuff that I have found helpful.
Unfortunately, music in churches have been the cause of innumerable divisions and schisms (same sort of thing but schism is a funner word). From the reformation and before to now people have always fought about church music. What should we sing? Only Psalms? No Psalms? With music? No Music? With a wordly instrument like the Pipe Organ? With drums? Can we sing music written by heretics? Should the band be on stage? Should we dim the lights? Do the congregation sing or is it just the choir? Are there styles that shouldn’t be sung? Can we sing secular songs and change the words? All of these arguments and more have gone on since the beginning of church history.
The first thing to note is how sad it is that these trivial things cause so much division. While many stakeholders in these arguments care for God’s glory, too many care for their own preferences.
The second thing is that it is crucial for cruisos, music directors and pastors/ministers to be well thought out about why they do what they do. In an area that has had so much error over the years it’s important that we are careful and deliberate in all decisions we make. Part of this will be making sure that we are always reading God’s word to shape our decisions. But there are many issues that are not covered explicitly in the Bible. How can we be wise and thought out about stuff if we don’t have it written down for us?
That’s where reading and discussing comes in. I think that Cruisos should be regularly reading stuff that helps them sharpen their minds in thinking about why they do what they do. Particularly because there is good material out there for consumption.
Below I’m going to list some stuff that I have found extremely beneficial. Some of these things I have mentioned before but that’s because I really think they are worth checking out. Perhaps you can grab some of these resources and distribute them to your music team with the intention of discussing them at your next meeting. This will force people to read and think. The last thing that we want is a group of musicians performing a task that can have the potential to fall into heresy and man-pleasing, who have never thought about why they do what they do.

Websites
Sovereign Grace – Heaps of song downloads + sermon downloads. Not too many articles for reading but there are some.
Worship Resources – This is the home to the monthly webzine ‘Worhip Notes’. The site deals mainly with a European context but often the zine has some stuff that relates to us in Australia.
SBTS Institute of Christian Worship – This is the worship arm of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Here you can find lectures galore. Spend days listening to them. There are some gems here.
Indelible Grace – This site is devoted to hymns and rewriting hymns. Lots of thinking has been done about this area of church music. These guys have some good articles about this.

Blogs
Bob Kauflin ‘Worship Matters’ – This is pretty much the best blog on this area of church life that I have come across. Lots to wade through.
Doxologist – This is the music arm of Mars Hill church in Seattle. They often have interesting stuff but spend more time on critiquing music culture in the secular world. Good reading. Not heaps regularly updated.
Worship.com – This is a multi-contributor blog on church music and worship related stuff. It has a wide readership and references to lots of good blogs. It would be great to have something similar in Australia.
Garage Hymnal – Here you can read guys who think more about our Australian context. Not regularly updated but well thought out.

Books
‘Music through the Eyes of Faith’ Harold Best – This book has heaps to say about the ‘why’ of Christian music. I have found this book to be brilliant in the way it deals with creativity in a music context. Must read!

‘Singing and Making Music’ Paul S. Jones – Lots of essays on different issues in church music like… Kids music, hymn writing, is there a place for clapping?, other stuff. Deals with issues through the Bible.

‘Worship by the book’ Don Carson – This book has a lot of great stuff in it but the first chapter is particularly fantastic. It deals with worship from a biblical perspective.

‘Engaging with God’ David Peterson – This is similar to the above book but a more in depth look at what the Bible says about worship.

There are lots more resources than just the ones I have described. These are just some of those that I have found really helpful as I’ve tried to think through why we do what we do in our context. I would encourage you to check these resources out particularly if you are serving in a music team but also if you want to think a bit more about how we can worship God in the way he has told us to worship him.

Martin Luther had a heart for Youth group music ministry. He wanted to make great songs relevant to the kids… check it out in his intro to his mate Johann Walters hymnal, the Wittenberg Geistliche Gesangbuchlein.

‘Therefore, I too, with the help of others, have brought together some sacred songs in order to make a good beginning and to give an incentive to those who can better carry on the Gospel and bring it to the people… And these songs were arranged in four parts for no other reason than I wanted to attract youth (who should be trained in music and other fine arts) away from love songs and carnal pieces and to give them something wholesome to learn instead… It is unfortunate that everyone else forgets to teach and train the poor young people; we must not be responsible for this too.’

I find Youth group music ministry really hard. In our context it is difficult to practice and get a team of youth and leaders together to do a good job. We generally run our music in a rock band format with a guitarist, bass player and the guitarist usually sings. This is partly because the sound we produce can be heavier and more fluid, but it is also because I’m always pushed for time. Unfortunately, I end up spending lots more time on Night church music than youth.

I think however that these two ministries are inextricably linked. Our night church singing culture has shifted dramatically over the last two years from being stiff and non-expressive to being more vibrant and joyful. This is mainly because of youth group guys coming to night church and shaping the culture to match what they loved about music at youth. This shift showed me how important the youth group are to night church ministry. I had a chat with a mate of mine, Tim, about this phenomenon. He saw the same thing happen at his old church. He said that the youth became ‘a dominant minority who were intentional in the way that they shaped night church culture.’ (check out Tim’s new church here)
Last year I spoke to the senior youth group about their impact on night church. They wanted to see it’s singing culture change from the way it was to the way they saw Senior Youth music (alive). There were three main ways that they helped to change culture and these were the same three ways that stuff changed at Tim’s church.
1) don’t hang in the ghetto. Too often Youth group guys who come to church choose a group of seats at the back or to the side of church and they all sit there. They don’t mix with other guys and they end up becoming a ghetto. I asked the youth to move away from ghetto mode and to sit at the front and in the middle. The reason being that everyone else can then see them and the way they are singing and it will be infectious.
2) Sing loud, sing proud. For some reason Youth were singing their hearts out at youth group but were shy and timid when it came to night church because they felt intimidated by the older guys. This had to change if they were going to have an impact.
3) Get involved in church ministries. We are blessed to have a youth group that is committed to seeing its members hook in to ministry at church. Dave has taught the guys to be passionate about having a life of ministry. We have youth group kids involved in teaching Sunday School, sound, music and the ministry of looking out for those younger than them at youth group. It was through the kids being involved in music ministry and being up the front that helped to shape the culture the most.
Youth group music ministry is strategic because the kids who are singing there may well shape the culture of church for the next ten years. While the situation our youth is in makes it hard to give youth music a good go, it is well worth investing the time and energy.