We should sing together…because singing brings us together. When you sing with other people, you are saying in effect, “I will not be a soloist; I will not be your competitor; I will blend my voice with yours.” That is, in a very simple and important way, saying that...
To sing worship music from more than one generation is, in part, to communicate our larger identity as the people of God. We hail from many backgrounds, families, races, and tastes, but now we are joined together through the blood of Jesus Christ, who has reconciled...
The acceptance of the fact that Christian existence is based on and permeated with God’s forgiveness in Christ through the Holy Spirit strikes simultaneous deathblows to attitudes which can be described as musical legalism and musical lawlessness. Musical legalism can...
Music is a demanding art. To achieve excellence in it requires hard discipline and unremitting work. Yet with all his devotion to it a Christian musician must keep his priorities clear. God is the source of all talent. When God gives talent, including musical talent,...
We can learn a great deal about worship by looking at the earliest Christians, for the culture that surrounded them was in many ways similar to ours in twenty-first century North America. Then and now the population is highly pluralistic, with the people’s...
Many Christians are formed to think of their own private prayer life as primary and to consider Sunday worship as effective to the extent that it ignites or deepens their personal piety. In this way of thinking, the question “what did worship do for me?” is completely...
Feelings are great liars. If Christians only worshiped when they felt like it there would be precious little worship that went on. Feelings are important in many areas, but completely unreliable in matters of faith… We think that if we don’t FEEL something there can...
If we ask, “How should we worship God?” a healthy Christian and Protestant instinct will be to respond with another question: “What does the Bible say?” Rightly understood, this is a necessary and indeed a sufficient response. We must not, however, presume that we...
The contemporary obsession with spirituality, among Christians and pagans alike, surely betokens something worthy of the church’s attention. I am not convinced, however, that the current vogue for spirituality should be embraced without making important historical and...
Years ago, I was in England at a large Christian conference. During one seminar, we were led in corporate worship by a guitarist whom I thought was average in every respect. As he finished what I would describe as a sorry time of worship in song, the elderly gentleman...