Thinking About Sacred Music for Reformed Churches and Schools
For a variety of reasons, I have long stewed over the thought of writing a consideration of music for Reformed schools and churches. As a musician, I love the art of music and the study of music and church history, and I have made a considerable investment personally in music through the years of my own studying and practicing. I also frequently serve as a church musician and have for multiple years. I have seen the topic of church music raised routinely within churches I have experienced, as well as within the classical school setting, since most classical Christian schools desire to include elements of sacred music in their program through chapel services, assemblies, choirs, or something similar. The topic of sacred music is one that easily and often provokes controversy, resentment, or simply confusion amongst Christians.
Given that background, another impetus for writing is that I wanted to tie elements of this topic together, which are often disassociated and disconnected for many Christians. I do not suggest that I am the final word on this subject by any means or that my treatment here is even close to exhaustive, but I wanted to incorporate different elements of this question that I often find are not tied together or examined in their totality. In examining the ‘question’ of how to ‘do’ sacred music, I think we find that it is actually many questions tied together that bear upon one another. I hope to examine some of them as rationally and charitably as I can based upon my own years of reflecting and my various experiences. The topic is one that obviously bears upon Reformed church congregations, but I think it is equally worthwhile for teachers and leaders within liberal (or classical) education to consider. It is especially important for those wanting to develop a specifically Reformed understanding of classical education, as is our goal at the Beza Institute.
And as this topic is one that can be contentious among Christian believers, I want to quote at the outset some of my favorite lines from Augustine’s De Trinitate:
Accordingly, dear reader, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you stick equally fast seek with me; whenever you notice that you have gone wrong come back to me; or that I have, call me back to you. In this way let us set out along Charity Street together, making for him of whom it is said, Seek his face always (Ps. 105:4). This covenant, both prudent and pious, I would wish to enter into in the sight of the Lord our God with all who read what I write, and with respect to all my writings…
In this Augustinian spirit, I want to share some of my reflections on sacred music in the hope that they may help other believers, especially those in Reformed churches and schools.
What Is Sacred Music For?
The most fundamental question to consider is, what is sacred music for? By sacred music, I mean Christian music that is written for the corporate worship of God’s people and is to be sung by believers in worship. The Reformed doctrine of vocation eliminates the feigned ‘sacred vs. secular’ divide so that all callings, disciplines, and bodies of knowledge may be pursued according to God’s truth and in service to God. However, while rejecting a sacred-secular dichotomy, all the Reformed would still agree that there is a difference between what we do for corporate worship as a body of believers and what we do as individual Christian believers in our life’s vocations and various temporal activities. The Reformed tradition especially admits this because of our regulative principle, which the Westminster Confession of Faith (1648) explains thus: “[The] acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.” In short, we worship God as He shows us and teaches us in Scripture. A thorough treatment of the regulative principle of worship is not my goal in this piece, but I emphasize it to show that we do indeed distinguish certain things (including sacred music) as appropriate for the corporate worship of God and exclude other things.
The Scriptures guide our corporate worship of God. The Word call us to “sing to the LORD” and to “make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation” (Ps. 95:1). We are also called as new covenant believers to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28). Paul instructs the believers to gather with “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody … giving thanks” (Eph. 5:19). I could reference many other Scriptural passages – especially the Psalms – yet these few passages are sufficient to make the fundamental point: our worship is to joyfully and reverently honor, praise, and give thanks to our King and Savior. Obviously, our worship is to be sincere and reverent before God, not focused on performing before men. This always ought to be our chief consideration when we evaluate different kinds of music or different songs and consider how we should engage in sacred music as a church congregation or a school.
Liturgy, Expression, and Worship
I would further add some additional preliminaries. Reformed worship (and I would argue Christian worship in general) ought to be liturgical, meaning that it follows set practices, structures, habits, and forms which are intended to teach us, to guide our affections and feelings, to reinforce the Gospel and the biblical doctrines, and to show us how to offer our prayers and praises to God. Different churches follow different liturgies, but every church has a liturgy – either explicitly acknowledged or implicitly practiced. Even secular organizations and practices have implicit liturgies to them— habitual activities that carry and reinforce an implicit set of beliefs. Since our religious worship is liturgical, we should take care that our liturgies are shaped by the Scriptures (which is the regulative principle) and consider how sacred music fits within biblical liturgies.
A key advantage of focusing on liturgical worship is that it displaces the assumption that worship is primarily expressive— reflective of our expressions toward God. Worship does involve our expression (i.e., we pray, we confess, we sing), but it is far more holistic and receptive. Worship is that which God calls us into by His Word and ministers, hence the Reformed ‘call to worship’ which opens each service. In worship, God teaches us through our regular practices of hearing God’s Word and participating in the sacraments. Even the expressive elements of our worship, such as confession, singing, and prayer, are intended to guide us and lead us in what we should pray, how we should think about God and ourselves, and so on. In my experience, I find the practices of liturgy (including corporate prayers of confession or responsories) to be very helpful frames of reference for my thoughts, prayers, and imagination. They help me to know how to worship God, what to pray for, and so on when I otherwise could be very easily distracted, tired, or at a loss for what to do or say. I often find myself using ‘rote’ prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, or ‘scripted’ liturgical prayers in my devotion and throughout the day because I otherwise easily wander in my mind or get overwhelmed and don’t know how to pray as I ought (Rom. 8:26). Liturgies teach us and help us in our weakness through providing a solid framework for our worship and habituating us through repetition.
When we place all the emphasis in corporate worship on personal expression, then we evaluate the worship service based on how we felt during the service and afterwards, which is a very subjective and changeable thing. It can leave us feeling weary, insufficient, or hopeless if we cannot muster a certain degree of fervent feeling or expression in the service. It grounds our emotive state in our own changeable feelings rather than in the certainty and objectivity of God’s unshakeable promises. Alternatively, if we focus on the objective elements of worship and receiving what God gives us through His Word and sacraments, we orient our perspective better and can find more abiding contentment, peace, and assurance for our souls. Our corporate worship is meaningful because of what God has done for us and because of our response through stable, timeless liturgies—rather than being meaningful because of how we feel on a given day or at a given time. To paraphrase something said by one gentleman in my church, the liturgy is not about expressing what I feel but about teaching me how I should feel and how to express it.
Thinking liturgically, our sacred music in corporate worship should be expressive, but it is not reducible to merely expression any more than any good and beautiful art is reducible to the author’s self-expression. I think it is also very important to clarify that we should speak of the entire worship service as worship, rather than using the term ‘worship’ to refer to the music alone. I have heard this use of the term so frequently that it is discouraging. What role do our confession, prayer, Word, preaching, offering, and sacraments play in the church service if they are not themselves acts of our corporate worship and commanded by God? ‘Worship’ includes everything we do in the corporate worship service (as informed and instructed by God’s Word), and it does not just refer to the music. To reduce ‘worship’ to merely singing is to fall into that subtle trap of assuming that worship is essentially expressive and thus it refers only to singing, because singing is perhaps the most obviously expressive element of the church service. It is such a shallow understanding of what we do in our Lord’s Day worship, so I deliberately and routinely want to push back on using the term ‘worship’ as synonymous with music and singing. How we name things and speak of them is significant not merely because it reflects our thinking about them, but it actually shapes and informs our thinking. Speaking properly of ‘worship’ is a good start to thinking more comprehensively and biblically about it.
Another problem with neglecting liturgy and using the term ‘worship’ for the music and singing is that we can create confusion regarding roles and leadership in the church. Many churches (not usually Reformed ones) refer to church musicians or lead musicians as ‘worship pastors’ or ‘worship ministers’ or ‘music ministers’. I don’t think many who do this are ill-intentioned, but the trend is troubling. The Reformed tradition has a very specific understanding of ‘minister’ or ‘pastor’ (see WCF XXV, XXX, and XXI, as well as various Reformed books of church order or public directories of worship) which helps us carefully understand the importance of ordained ministry in the life of the church. To call someone a ‘worship pastor’ suggests that there can be a separate class or track for church leadership other than those outlined in our confessions and directories regarding polity. It may be entirely acceptable and even prudent to ask talented individuals in the congregation to help lead music through instrumental accompaniment or through leading singing, yet I am not comfortable calling them church leaders unless they are ordained and called in the modes that our denomination practices (which we believe are biblical). Those who lead sacred music in the worship service need to still be under the leadership and guidance of the ordained minister(s) and elders of that congregation, rather than being in a role of quasi-independent authority. I don’t suggest that most ‘worship pastors’ or ‘music ministers’ are nefarious, but it is better to think through these things clearly.
As another noteworthy point here, it helps (as I argued above) to not bifurcate ‘worship’ versus the rest of the service, which reinforces the notion that we need a ‘worship pastor’ to lead ‘worship’ (i.e., music) vs. the regular pastor or ministers who lead the rest of the service. Worship is the entirety of the corporate service, and this entire service should be structured according to the Scriptures and guided by those whom God has ordained to lead the church. I do not intend to get into the innumerable details and controversies such as who should actually lead the singing, or who should read the Scriptures, and so on; my main point is to show that we should not create a separate category of ‘worship pastors’ who don’t fit within the denominational structure and who have quasi-independent authority over something called ‘worship’ (i.e., music) which is segmented off from our other elements of the worship service.
Sacred Music as Affective
Considering expression and liturgy, I think some in the Reformed tradition seem almost afraid of expression or the affective quality of music, but I think this suspicion can be misplaced. Music by its very nature is affective, uniting the highest with the lowest in man and influencing thoughts and feelings through a combination of consonances and dissonances. It creates moods such as elevation, distress, sorrow, and longing. This is a beautiful quality of music which derives from our nature as intelligent creatures who can discern the harmonious order of the cosmos and create music which imitates this beautiful order. I want sacred music to help us worship by appropriately calling forth from us longing, sorrow, joy, awe— and to combine those feelings with substantive, rich biblical texts and liturgies. No one would want to employ music in our services that is dissonant, chaotic, distracting, or ugly. We would never want music that is purely an ‘undistracting’ unitary note repeated because such would neither be desirable nor beautiful— hardly a fitting way for us to lift our souls in praise to our Maker.
When Reformed Christians say they are wary of contemporary Christian music and its expressive, affective qualities, I think they have a fair point of criticism, though. Too often, contemporary Christian music is concerned with creating a certain sound and atmosphere. It is often very rhythmically driven, which can get people excited and ‘moving’ regardless of whether it’s rock-and-roll or CCM. If the emphasis is on creating this specific type of experience and not on substantive texts and a biblical liturgy, then we risk creating experiences devoid of (or indifferent to) proper biblical content. We get people to think they’re worshiping God because they’re moved by popular or rhythmically driven music, rather than reverently approaching God with their mind, emotions, and voice simultaneously. We also create conditions where congregants feel disappointed with the corporate worship service if the music doesn’t create their preferred atmosphere or subjective experience, which is harmful. God gives us the means to worship Him and be reminded of His Gospel, and that has nothing to do with whether the music makes us ‘feel good’. So music is undeniably experiential and affective, but those experiences and affections must be grounded in the truth which is best captured in and wedded to biblical texts and liturgies.
Pitfalls and Misunderstandings
I want to briefly run through several pitfalls or misunderstandings that can easily cloud our thinking about the ‘music wars’ in churches. We evaluate our sacred music based on the Word of God (as we should evaluate everything else in church), and we should prioritize texts and liturgies that reflect God’s Word faithfully, embody the Gospel, and truthfully praise God’s wondrous attributes and works. Thus, the age of a song or the time in which it is composed is accidental, not essential. A song’s origin in the twentieth or twenty-first century does not per se automatically render it more or less meritorious for our use rather than a song composed centuries ago. To act like older is per se better than newer— better simply because it is older— is a shallow error and a form of chronological snobbery. Each song should be evaluated objectively on the merits of its own text and how it can help the congregation to worship.
However, to indicate that age or time of origin is accidental is not to say that it is an unimportant or meaningless consideration to which we need not attend. Rather, age or time of origin can be very helpful for us to consider in a secondary way. In every century of church history, there are worthy, substantive, biblical texts composed, and there are simultaneously some songs composed that are less substantive or even outright heretical or harmful. The passage of time allows us to see the church’s reaction to these songs to evaluate and prove which ones are substantive and which should be rejected or discarded. I do not mean to suggest a kind of Roman Catholic trust in an infallible ecclesiastical magisterium over time; rather, living believers today can reliably make accurate (though never infallible) judgements about which songs are biblical and which are not. Yet the sifting process of time does help make this clear and allows the best songs to emerge over the centuries. When we sing the hymns of venerable saints like Ambrose of Milan, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, or Horatius Bonar, we are singing some of the richest sacred poetry in the Christian tradition. We are singing what the catholic church has sung for centuries in multiple places and multiple languages. It is a rich tradition in which we stand, and we should want to be connected with that tradition of saints who have gone before us and aided us by their writings and experiences captured for us. As a pastor of mine has said, when the church worships, she should show her age.
Admittedly, though, if every hymn of the church was written at some time by some saint, then every hymn was at some time ‘contemporary’ to the generation of those who first received it. If we esteem the rich tradition of Christian hymnody, then we should seek to perpetuate it by raising up songwriters in our churches and schools. What makes for good writing of hymns (both text and music) will be considered eventually. I will also eventually consider the difficult question of how to balance drawing upon the tradition with trying to enjoy the work of those who are writing wonderful music today.
Another aspect I want to mention briefly is that music is a product of culture more broadly and thus does involve differences amongst cultures. Most of the music debates in Reformed churches happen in the Western world (i.e., Europe, the U.S., and Canada), but there are many Christian bodies on multiple continents worldwide. Grace does not destroy nature but elevates and sanctifies it, so we should expect that our worship in a way embodies, elevates, and transforms aspects of our specific human cultures, which are grounded in time and place. I do not expect Indian, African, or Mexican sacred music to sound just like J.S. Bach, Lowell Mason, or the Scottish psalter. Nor do I expect that any Christian congregation’s music today will sound just like the music sung by the earliest Roman Christians or by the Reformers in the sixteenth century in Europe. To suggest that the music of our culture or era is the standard of what is biblical would be a grave error. I think other churches in distinct cultures will have to think through for themselves how to best practice sacred music in their congregations. In our battle for biblical liturgy, let us not mistake a certain kind of music as the only biblical kind of music (though I do mean to say more eventually about the kind of music). Regardless of the culture, nation, or era in which we find ourselves, the overarching standard must always abide: that our worship be in obedience to God’s Word and governed by the Scriptures. Yet faithfulness to the Word will have different kinds of expressions in different places based upon many factors such as time, place, culture, language, technology, and money. For example, I have witnessed a small church in the rural mountains of Mexico that regularly uses guitars in worship, not necessarily because they’re committed to the trends of CCM, but because they have neither air conditioning nor a piano in their rudimentary church building. Surely they are no less faithful for using a guitar than my congregation is for using a piano, provided our worship is according to God’s Word.
Another aspect many neglect when thinking of sacred music is that we truly must recognize a difference between ‘Christian music’ generally versus sacred music for liturgical worship. Since I embrace the Reformed doctrine of vocation, I welcome wholeheartedly the idea that Christian believers should be engaged in all kinds of industries, arts, and disciplines, and that certainly includes the music industry. I want Christians in every kind of moral music that can be made. I further hope that Christians will write music about a variety of things informed by their biblical framework, rather than merely writing songs that are only explicitly about praising Jesus. Andrew Peterson, for example, is a great example of a Christian songwriter who has written folk or singer-songwriter music within a Christian framework that imaginatively explores many things, such as his life experiences or creative fiction. However, I think we need a fundamental recognition that not all ‘Christian music’ is sacred music that we can or should use in worship services. I like a great deal of Andrew Peterson’s music, yet I would not use it in the worship service because it’s not suited for congregational singing and because some of it is primarily experiential or storytelling. There’s a place for Christian folk music, maybe Christian rock music, or even Christian country music – but none of these are really suitable for what Christians should sing in church on Sunday morning. One problem (amongst many) that emerges when we have a massive CCM industry is that individual Christian congregants start to want their church’s music to sound like what Nashville-produced CCM artists can record and play over the radio and Spotify; their appetite becomes for that sound, rather than for whatever (likely humbler and less performative) version of sacred music is actually practiced in their congregation. Maybe it’s time we recognize that Christian recording artists are not worthless, but that most of the recorded Christian music ought not to set the tone for what our Sunday morning worship looks like for reasons theological, liturgical, and eminently practical.
What Should We Consider?
What then, should we look for in sacred music that we should sing in corporate worship as a church or a Christian school assembly? I propose that we evaluate the text of a song, as well as giving regard to its musical components. The text of a hymn or song ought to be biblically grounded, faithful to sound doctrine, and magnifying God and His work rather than focusing on man. Lyrics can be expressive of our contrition, sorrow, or praise (just look to the Psalms, for example), but lyrics should always draw our gaze upward to Christ as the object of our praise and the basis of our hope.
Also, I advocate that liturgical texts should be written beautifully, and I would argue that this will generally mean written beautifully in the highest cultural forms of literary excellence. We should write sacred texts with literary and poetic excellence because we want to show our honor for God and because it honors God to produce the best and finest kind of art we can. Just as doing any vocation with excellence in service to God is maximally glorifying to God, so it is maximally glorifying to God when we offer the best of our arts to Him. There is an excellence in formal poetry that is simply not found in self-expressive, irregular free verse, which takes little to no skill to write. I don’t mean to propose that God requires a certain kind of poetry, meter, or rhyme scheme – or even that English poetic standards are the bounds of sacred hymnody. Diverse cultures employ different poetic forms based upon the distinct elements of their language and culture, which means that Latin poetry of the church fathers is different than the English poetry of Isaac Watts or the German poetry of Paul Gerhardt. However, I primarily want to establish that the form of the text of our sacred music should matter for the same reasons that form matters when we study the arts and literature generally. God is the source of order, beauty, and forms, and we imitate His harmonious order when we seek to inform our writing in an imitative fashion. We ought not to be indifferent to form in writing.
Nor ought we to be indifferent to harmonious order in the musical component of sacred music. It is not enough to produce a biblical, liturgical text; it should be set to music which can aid the congregation in singing and arguably can elevate its beauty. Once again, I don’t want to set needlessly tight parameters because this will differ across time and cultures. Yet I think we can set some guardrails and guidelines. Sacred music should be music that can be sung by the entire congregation in corporate worship. There may be a place for talented composers writing exquisite sacred works for trained choirs and occasional performances (e.g., Handel’s Messiah, J.S. Bach’s Passions and masses, or Palestrina’s polyphonic motets, and countless others); yet the ordinary life of the church should consist in all God’s people regularly singing sacred songs together. This is why the Reformed tradition has eschewed designated church choirs, excessively performative musical components of the service, or so-called ‘special music’ in church services. Practically speaking, I want Reformed churches and schools to sing music that everyone can sing. One of frustrations with much contemporary Christian music is that it is written by individual artists for their own preferences and styles, and it does not lend itself to being easily singable by a congregation. To be easily singable requires a consistent rhythm and meter, as well as a steady melody that can be clearly notated and reproduced. Much contemporary music is challenging and unpredictable in rhythm and melody, and much of it is written on guitars without being clearly notated for congregational singing— or, at best, with notation merely as an afterthought.
When evaluating our musical choices in church and in Christian, classical schools, we should be asking several questions: 1) Are we doing music in such a way that allows all the people to participate in singing? and 2) Are we doing music in such a way that teaches our congregants and students how to sing and increases their musical interaction and knowledge? This latter point is essential (in my view) but often missed. One might contend that, since many Christians today are not familiar with older traditions of reading musical notation or singing harmonic parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), we should discard these because they don’t actually appeal to the majority. However, with what would we replace them? There is no better way than traditional musical notation to unite many individuals in intelligently making music and singing. I find that the influx of contemporary music does not alleviate this problem; in fact, many of the melodies and rhythms of contemporary songs can be more unpredictable and more challenging than the ones found in traditional hymnals. And at least traditional musical notation (as used in hymnals) gives congregations and students a method to learn how to sing potentially any melody— even difficult or unfamiliar ones – while the shallow practices of contemporary music provide no help, method, or skill in this regard.
If we really want our congregations and schools to join together in making music unto the Lord, we should encourage people to learn how to read music. The topic of how to teach music to churches and schools is a complex one that cannot be treated fairly here, but I will simply venture here that no congregation will grow in its musical skill and competency if it is not given means to do so – such as utilizing hymnals and musical notation which present notated melodies and rhythms. Even if many do not yet know how to read the hymnal fluently, we will not grow more fluent in its use by shelving it away in favor of contemporary songs and projected slides of lyrics. I find that congregations that use the hymnal instead of projected lyrics or bulletin lyrics typically tend to be more wholehearted singers and often more musically knowledgeable. I don’t believe that is a coincidence. What is habitually cultivated is strengthened.
Once again, I want to find the proper balance between pursuing musical excellence and maintaining humility and sincerity. Our worship is not automatically more pleasing to God if it is sung in four parts (SATB) as opposed to unison, just as it is not automatically more worshipful merely because it is an old text rather th.an a new one. However, if we want to develop the musical arts and explore the beautiful consonances of the cosmos which God has made, I think we open up a wonderful arena of artistic beauty and creativity when we pursue the musical arts and subsequently employ them in glorifying God. We ought not to idolize our skills or the art of music, but neither should we be indifferent to the quality of our sacred music. I believe we should explore excellence and harmony in sacred music for the same reason we should explore excellence in music in general, and excellence in any art at all. We glorify God by discovering the natural potencies and phenomena He has created and by refining and developing these by God-given reason unto excellence (i.e., arts developing nature). If we focus on technical musical excellence to the exclusion of everything else, then it is unlikely our corporate worship will be sincere, heartfelt, or humble. Yet we should endeavor to make our music excellent, and singing beautiful melodies and filling them in with harmony is a wonderful way to joyfully offer our talents unto the Lord. I find few things that bring me more joy than singing harmonies with other Christian believers in heartfelt praise to God, and I saw this reflected in the choir students I used to teach. They came alive once they learned how to sing harmonies, and it increased their joy and passion for singing.
I would like to provide one more note on the use of hymnals which is connected to all I have said so far. Another reason to preserve the use of hymnals is that they represent the collective wisdom of many laborers who have gone before. This is evident not only in the fact that the hymnbooks preserve the best hymns and poetry of Christian forebears, but they also preserve musical experience and knowledge. Almost all the musical settings of hymns found in traditional hymnals are arranged in musical keys best suited for their congregational singing – i.e., so that the melody is within the range of all voice parts (male and female) and the various harmonic parts within the ranges of each respective part (SATB). This is quite a feat of detailed study over time, and it is not to be discarded lightly! We shouldn’t reinvent the wheel when we have so much upon which to draw! Hymnals also list the author of the text and music for each hymn, as well as identifying the tune name and the meter. Most include alphabetized indexes in the back for referencing. These are incredible tools that educate the congregation each week as they are used, especially with regard to cultivating their musical sense.
I want to include a note here to explain a potential ambiguity that could arise from my reflections. I have already explained that I do not believe music can be solely evaluated based on its date of origin. I am thus granting that contemporary music may indeed be legitimate, depending on how it is written. I think the underlying themes of the ‘music wars’ tend to be the struggle between more formal, liturgical music of the tradition versus the loosening of boundaries (poetic, musical, textual, sometimes theological) that has accompanied much of the contemporary shift. One issue I have tried to highlight is how this shift has affected the actual way in which music is written and how congregants engage in it. However, I do not deny that there are those who write original musical tunes (so obviously ipso facto contemporary), but composed and written in the traditional style of notation and in SATB harmony. Greg Wilbur is an admirable example of this kind of songwriting, but I even enjoy writing this kind of music myself as a creative outlet. I think this is a very viable option for pursuing ‘contemporary’ music that presents far fewer of the concerning issues I have highlighted. If contemporary musicians write sacred music that is notated on the staff in SATB harmony and can be included in hymnals, there is a good chance that it could be included seamlessly amid otherwise traditional worship services and traditional hymnals. As some nerdy analysts might note, there are even some contemporary tunes (meaning tunes written quite recently) to be found in otherwise traditional hymnals and psalters, but they can be easily accommodated when they are notated traditionally and written for SATB harmony. I would like to see more Christian musicians taking this path and adding their contributions to the songbooks of the generations. That is simply not the case, though, for the majority of what passes as contemporary music today, which is why I don’t find much contemporary music enduring.
And on the consideration of musical instruments, I do not think the Bible categorically excludes any kind of instruments from worship (see Psalm 150). For the sake of simplicity, I won’t consider the view here of those who reject all instruments in worship (which I also think is easily refutable by the Scriptures). I think instruments have developed across cultures in different ways and at different times through the diverse applications and creativity of God-given human reason. Thus, like all arts and products of human ingenuity, they can be brought in service to God. We should, though, be attentive to how instrumentation actually forms the kind of music we make. Depending on culture, some musical instruments may have cultural associations or induce atmospheres which don’t lend themselves well to comprising reverent, liturgical worship. In America, for example, I find drum sets and electric guitars to be heavily performative and associated with rock-and-roll, which is not the spirit or mood I want to cultivate in reverent, liturgical worship. We want to use musical instruments to assist us in worshipping with greater unity, harmony, and beauty, rather than employing musical instruments in ways that are merely for entertainment, performance, or distraction. We must always consider what liturgies are being developed by our musical choices in worship and endeavor to use musical arts and instruments to beautify and assist our worship, rather than fundamentally changing its character into something other than reverence and praise. More broadly, I think that writing sacred music for piano (or organ), ensembles, or SATB harmony allows for and incentivizes a greater variety of harmonic complexity and beauty. This inevitably contrasts with the increasingly simplistic, repetitive, and cliché harmonies that dominate the CCM industry, where music is written primarily as chord charts and lead sheets for guitars, rhythm, and keyboards. The exceptional musicians that may exist (diverging from the average trend) merely prove the rule. Just as with all other art forms, the medium actually shapes the message: how we employ technological arts (techne) significantly shapes the character of what music we produce and thus the character of our churches.
Concluding Practical Reflections
As I draw this lengthy series of reflections to an end, I want to offer some practical suggestions for consideration. Most of what I have described is highly relevant to Western sacred music and may apply less readily to Christian congregations in the third world or in non-Western cultures. As I have tried to make clear, I am hoping to identify some fundamental first principles that we can use to evaluate sacred music in whatever context we find ourselves, while simultaneously acknowledging that much of the particular manifestation and application of these principles depends upon contingencies of culture, language, place, and time. The principles remain the same, but how we apply them depends on many other factors. However, since most of these ‘music wars’ take place in Western cultures (and since Western music is what I am most qualified to talk about by my own experience and training), I have steered my reflections primarily in that direction.
Also, we should consider the necessity of making choices within constraints. Almost everything in this “life under the sun” (Eccles. 1:3) requires making choices due to temporal limitations and finitude. I am primarily thinking of the basic question for churches and schools: which songs should we sing? To choose some songs is inevitably to exclude others, and vice versa; there is no way to disguise this. If we sing more contemporary songs, we inevitably sing less traditional ones, and vice versa. I gladly acknowledge that there are many worthwhile songs being written in our present lifetime (with substantive text and musical excellence), and I think we should encourage this and teach poetry and music so that present generations may add their contributions to the corpus of Christian hymnody across the generations. However, I think we should generally ‘tip the scale’ in favor of the older hymns of the church simply for the same reason that I believe we should read more old books than new ones. We stand to gain so much from the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before. By singing their songs, we become vividly connected to the tradition of prior Christian generations and situated deeply in the historical faith. Also, practically speaking, young people today in our schools and churches are very easily able to access endless amounts of contemporary music by radio stations or Internet streaming, and yet – outside of the local church or a classical Christian school setting – very few Christian young people will have an occasion to sing traditional hymns of the faith from a hymnal with a robust congregation of believers. Which is more prevalent? Which is more countercultural? I think we ought to consider these practical realities and not miss the opportunity to give our young people something they may very well not find anywhere else. Admittedly, though, my recommendation for preferring the traditional music is a general recommendation, not an absolute one.
Part of my preference for the older hymns is simply that there are few contemporary poets in recent decades who can match the depth, complexity, earnestness, and formal beauty of the older poetic hymnwriters. Just as with many other fine arts, modernizing trends don’t have a wonderful track record to show for themselves. In colloquial terms, they don’t make them like they used to! There simply aren’t too many Christians today (Douglas Bond would be a remarkable exception!) who write with the theological and poetic richness of an Ambrose of Milan, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Watts, Philip Nicolai, Paul Gerhardt, Martin Luther, John Newton, Charles Wesley, or Horatius Bonar. May God raise up more saints like these in our generation! And may we endeavor to keep their poetic tradition alive!
I also favor preserving the use of metrical psalm-singing in our churches and schools. The position of exclusive psalmody – found in the oldest manifestations of the Reformed tradition and still present in some denominations – is not one I will treat here due to its complexity. However, even if we (along with most Christian denominations) accept the view that we may sing in worship other kinds of sacred music besides merely psalms, I still psalm-singing to be incredibly valuable. The practice has been present in every century of church history from the beginning, and it is one we would do well to preserve. Much of what I have already said about singing from the hymnal applies to singing the psalms, which have been arranged in meter many times over the centuries since the Reformation. Many contemporary songwriters also like to write versions of the psalms set to music, and these should evaluated upon their individual merits and should be evaluated by the same criteria we have already identified (especially their singability by a congregation). When recognizing that we have to make choices, I think we should not discard psalm-singing, even if that means we cannot sing as many non-psalm hymns or contemporary songs. Even if there are many wonderful contemporary songs being written, I do not want to fill our services with them at the expense of the beautiful and biblical tradition of psalm-singing. I would agree with the position of the ARP 1946 synod which encouraged “a large place in our service of worship [to be given to the psalms] that by wise selection and interpretation they may be so used as to endear themselves to the hearts of people.”
Every choice of music we make also cultivates appetites and inclinations in our young people. It is not hard to draw young people’s appetites after new and contemporary things, especially when much contemporary music imitates the sounds of mainstream pop, rock, or country music. Maybe it is not such a bad thing to be deliberately countercultural and seek to instill appetites in our students that they might not be so quick to acquire otherwise, especially if that is an appetite for singing harmony and singing the rich psalms and hymns of Christian history. My main question in making these decisions for a church or a school would be: which kind of music best forms and habituates our students both theologically and musically?
No matter how lengthy, this overview cannot possibly consider every aspect and will remain merely cursory. I hope that these reflections can inspire Reformed believers and Christians more broadly with a framework for thinking about these questions and an invitation to walk down “Charity Street together” as we endeavor to cultivate sacred music unto God’s glory and our enjoyment. May our sacred music habituate us for our eternal worship and express our longing for that glorious day, as Philip Nicolai described it so exquisitely in the superior text of his chorale:
Now let all the heav’ns adore Thee, And men and angels sing before Thee,
With harp and cymbal’s clearest tone;
Of one pearl each shining portal, Where we are with the choir immortal
Of angels round Thy dazzling throne;
Nor eye hath seen, nor ear hath yet attained to hear
What there is ours;
But we rejoice, and sing to Thee
Our hymn of joy eternally!
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