We shouldn’t limit ourselves to major key songs! The Psalms reveal that much of the Christian life might be spent in a minor key, and it’s time that the church became honest about this reality as well. The church needs to be able to lament together, and minor key...
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...
I am not much of a singer. I find it difficult to stay in tune. But when I stand next to someone with a fine voice I find it much easier. The voice I hear in my ear helps to keep my voice on line and I like to think of my voice merging with that voice so that the...
Martin Luther, during some of his darkest days said, “I feel like a solitary bird warbling in the wind. No one hears my song, but I will continue to sing for a song keeps me going.” Then he wrote, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” His inspiration was found through...
A corollary to the fact that the congregation is the primary musical group in the church, is that the primary function of the choir is to help the congregation sing better. The choir is not to be a performing group where the musical elite of the church prepare and...
Sacred Choral Music in America Pristine colonial meetinghouses, frontier brush arbors, African-American churches, rural singing schools and ornate urban cathedrals have all been seedbeds for the potent partnership of fervent faith and choral singing. During the last...
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...
Somehow, about forty percent of churchgoers seem to have picked up on the idea that “singing in church is for singers.” The truth is that “singing is for believers.” The relevant question is not “Do you have a voice?” but “Do you have a song?”
Singing is a spiritual activity best experienced in community. The documented benefits are as significant as those in yoga, a healthy diet, and prayer. Our culture, however, has commodified singing and turned it into a perfected idol that is performed by the few and...
The anthropological point that is of significance for theology is that singing clearly demonstrates worship—and therefore the divine kingdom and human salvation—to be an affair of the whole person, mind, heart, voice, body.