Choral music was founded, nurtured, and developed almost exclusively within the Christian church for hundreds of years. To participate in choral singing is to participate in a historically Christian art form. If you choose to sing in a choir and do it with an accurate...
There are many hymns that come to church DOA [dead on arrival], and the church doesn't do anything to bring them to life.
There is in all true church music a spirit of adoration, aspiration and reverence, and a sense of assurance. To aid the soul to become more keenly and deeply conscious of itself, its supreme personal quality, its high and enduring worth, is the ideal of church music....
I have no doubt that many of the people who press for particular styles of music in worship are motivated by a desire to help us be more culturally relevant in the liturgical life of the church. They believe our musical expressions in worship needs to sound more like...
Music has the uncanny ability to burrow its way into our spiritual bones. When it comes to matters of spirituality and faith, we are what we sing. There is no need to overstate the case. Music is not all-powerful. Many things shape our souls, including our parents’...
The ideal of church music is found in its function. This function is religious: to bring to stronger and clearer consciousness and to greater vitality our inherent religious nature. At the heart of church music must be the consciousness of this religious nature: the...
Sometimes those of us in church music get distracted to the point that we are making “the Lord’s music” without the Lord.
I believe we should consider church music basically to be THEOLOGICAL expression—part of the dialogue between God and worshipers. With few exceptions, music in worship is coupled with important words. For this reason, we should choose literature—for instance, hymns...
Many American churchgoers seem to expect to use the MIND in worship, but only during the sermon. It’s at that point that typical pew-occupiers open their textbook (the Bible), get their pencils ready (to take notes), and put their brains in gear. You can almost sense...
The first and most solid conclusion which (for me) emerges is that both musical parties, the High Brows and the Low, assume far to easily the spiritual value of the music they want. Neither the greatest excellence of a trained performance from the choir, nor the...