I can see that I need to add a few extra comments to my last musical exhortation. To cut right to the chase, the answer is that yes, as “pure music,” Schonberg and all his ilk are out. Attempts to create music that fly in the face of how God (clearly) intended for music to …
Two Kinds of Inappropriate Music
As we seek to cultivate our understanding of the kind of music we should be offering to God—and the corollary of what we as a congregation should be learning how to perform—we find that we come up against another challenge. Church musicians come up against a greater challenge than other artists do. Some of this …
Words and Music
In the modern world, we have come to think of music as one thing and “the words” as quite another thing. They may complement one another, like ham and eggs, but they are also separable and distinct. We therefore have instrumental music only, and we have poetry, or lofty speech. If the poetry is high, …
A Bouncy Little Ragtime Piece
Every week as we say the Apostles Creed, we confess that we believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. This refers to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. Only God can create from nothing; it is one of the characteristics of deity. But Genesis does not say that …
Oaks, Not Cabbages
On the physical level, the whole body is involved in singing, and in making music with various instruments. This means there is something else to remember as we pursue musical reformation in our congregation. The apostle Paul addresses a common problem with body life, a mistake that is easy to make. That is the mistake …
Growing Up Around Us
As we seek to grow and mature in our understanding of music, and we learn more about the kind of music that best glorifies God in worship, we have to be careful to balance certain things. The first thing is that we have to recognize where we are—we are living in a time when general …
That He Might Listen
As we continue to meditate on the role of music in our worship of God, we need to settle something early on. We worship God using means that He has given us in order to worship Him. When we worship God, we are returning something. Nothing appropriate that we offer to Him originates with us. …
The Devil is a Musician
This is a solemn and joyful occasion, and so our music should match that kind of occasion. This means that we need musicians to teach and lead us. At the same time, in the ordinary course of things, we the people of the congregation, not musical experts, are to be the ones offering the sacrifice …
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Music
We have already noted the importance of recognizing the importance of what kind of occasion this is, and therefore what kind of music should be presented to God. We have also noted the need for expertise. We come now to the question of what kind of people are to perform the music. And the biblical …
The Right to An Opinion
We began this series of exhortations by noting that worship is a particular kind of occasion, and so it requires a particular kind of music. Related to this was the point that not all our music has to be church music, but that all of it should be fundamentally consistent with what we sing here. …