The Songs We Sing Teach Us

Whenever I travel, I like to visit other churches. Worshipping alongside other congregations helps to remind me that our little rural church isn't in this alone. One church this past summer was genuinely a pleasure to worship with. From start to finish, it ticked all the boxes I'd hope to check in the kind of church I'd attend if I lived locally.

But one thing struck me as odd. Odd enough that I spent the rest of the day ruminating over it.

Before the worship team sang their second song, the worship leader paused and spent several minutes explaining what the song meant. Of course, this by itself is not uncommon. Worship leaders will often highlight a Scripture verse that is the basis for a song, or provide a quick devotional that brings depth to the song's lyrics.

But this was not what was happening, though.

He went on to explain away a number of lines from the song that, when sung plainly, would communicate something about God that the Bible does not teach. His solution was to reshape the song in real time so the room would hear it correctly.
I stood there thinking, this is a problem.

If a song needs a five-minute disclaimer before we can sing it safely, it raises an important question: "Should we be singing this song at all?" If something in him feared that this song would teach these people something untrue about God, should we be singing it?
And that brings up a real issue worth exploring more deeply.

The songs we sing don't just express what we already believe about God; they form what we ultimately believe God is like.

Statistics show that only about thirty percent of Christian's read their Bibles daily, and less than 50% interact with the Word on a weekly basis. That means that much of people's understanding of God comes through the Christian content they consume apart from the Scriptures, including the music they sing. Whether or not we intend it, the music we sing in church shapes what we believe about God.

One author once wrote, "Show me a church's music, and I'll show you their theology."
And music has a unique ability to do this because music is sticky.

Don't tell anyone what I'm about to confess; it can be our little secret. But I don't remember most of the content from the sermons I hear. In full confession, I don't remember most of the content of the sermons I've preached. But to this day, I could sing songs from my childhood almost word for word. That's part of the gift of music. Music has a way of carrying words into our memory and allowing them to stick.

Which means that the songs we introduce to our people on Sunday may likely stay with them long after they've forgotten the key points of any sermon we preach that same morning.

That is wonderful when the music we're singing delivers deep Biblical truths about God. It stands to engrave an image of God on our hearts and minds that can carry us through suffering, grief, temptation, celebration, and the ordinary rhythms of life for many years to come.

Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, was once asked to summarize his life's work, and it is reported that he responded with the little jingle most of us learn as children in Sunday school: "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!"

That same power should make us cautious about what we're singing, knowing that it will likely be remembered.

There's an emotional component to all of this too.

Music is powerful precisely because it has the capacity to stir our emotions. It's what makes music such a remarkable gift from God. I don't want less emotion in worship; instead, I want our people to feel more deeply about God. But I want those emotions to resonate from a place that is responding to what is true about Him.

Music has a remarkable way of attaching emotion to sometimes average words. That is why a truth we've known for years can suddenly hit you differently when you sing it. The theology hasn't changed, but the music has helped it move from something you know in your mind to something you believe in your heart.

That is beautiful, provided the words are actually true. But instead, when our emotions are stirred by something vague or misleading, the intensity of what we feel has the potential to convince us that simply because we feel it, it must be true.

The result can be a congregation that feels a great deal while knowing little about the God they're singing to and about. That is what concerned me about the congregant whose post I stumbled upon online. It wasn't God who failed her; it was an expectation that had. An expectation formed by music that hid behind artistic expression as an excuse to wrongly apply Scripture.

Instead of "turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His Glory and Grace," it became "I trust in Jesus because He's promised to fix my problems"

The story of Jericho is not about God knocking down the walls of your life. David and Goliath isn't a promise that faith will enable you to defeat every giant standing in your way.
But sing something often enough, and it starts to sound like the right application of Scripture.

The more I've thought about this, the more convinced I've become that we've sometimes treated music as little more than the emotional setup for the sermon, warming people up so they're ready to receive the teaching of the word. But what if we thought differently about the place music plays in our worship gathering?

Paul tells the church in Colossae,

"Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts." (Colossians 3:16)

Don't miss the Apostle's statement here. When the church sings together, God's people are teaching and admonishing one another. We disciple our people, whether we intend to or not, through what we hand them to sing.

But there are even more layers to this. When we sit under a sermon, the words that are preached are meant to be heard, overlaid with the Scripture, and evaluated as faithful or not. Congregational singing asks something different of people. It asks us to put words into our own mouths and sing them for ourselves as though they are our own and as though they are true.

The question is not whether we can technically defend the lyrics, but whether these words are true and worthy enough that we want every single person in this room to confess them together, as one voice. Because congregational singing is one of the ways the Word of Christ dwells richly among the people of God we must be committed in a congregational setting to sing what is true of God, knowing we will carry those words with us, sometimes for decades to come.

Through this process, I was later confronted by a stewardship issue. We only have so many Sundays to gather and sing as a church. Every song we choose is occupying a space another song could have occupied. So the next question wasn't only whether a particular song is permissible, but whether there is a better song that will teach our people something rich about the nature and character of our God as revealed by the Scriptures.

If we sing three to five songs a week, with the need to repeat music regularly so our congregation can learn the music and participate, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the time we fill with our music.

There are songs that teach many rich and beautiful doctrines that build a firm foundation for the Christian life. Songs that teach about the Trinity. Songs that proclaim the Gospel. Songs that teach us about the holiness, sovereignty, mercy, justice, faithfulness, and providence of God. Songs that give suffering Christians words to sing when God doesn't remove the suffering. Songs that remind us of the resurrection when we're standing beside a grave.

If music really does stay with us, I want our church to be intentional about what our people reach for when they need to remember those profound truths in the moments when they're most needed.

All of this started me down a path that has ruined much of popular Christian music for me. Not all, of course. But when I put on my "pastor" hat and think this through as one tasked with the responsibility to "equip the saints for the work of ministry" (Ephesians 4:12), and to "Shepherd the flock that is among you", the music takes on a different sound. The arguments that work for me when listening to many of the most popular Christian songs while driving in my car no longer work when I'm responsible for shepherding those entrusted to my care as a Pastor.

It has forced a bigger and much more practical conversation with our elders.

If we really believe that the church is teaching when it sings, what responsibility does that give us for choosing the songs?

That's where we'll go next in Part 2: "Why We're Changing what we sing"