Determining the right music for church is not easy, but God's Word offers helpful metrics.
Christians disagree about music style as much as any other issue in the body of Christ. More than likely, you've experienced this firsthand. As I've already written, conflicts over music have been common through out church history. Christians have listened to and enjoyed all of kinds of music. But should they?
In seeking to determine what is the right music for a church, it's important that we use biblical principles in our evaluation. That's not always easy—the Bible doesn't contain music notes. God never gives us His musical preferences.
While it may be difficult, I do believe it's possible to evaluate musical preferences using God's word. The following seven tests each relate to biblical principles that we can apply to our music to determine its suitability. Keep reading
There has been a longstanding tension between performance music and participation music--see Betty Carr Pulkingham's Sing God a Simple Song: Exploring Church Music in the Eighties. Throughout the history of the Church the pendulum has swung back forth between the two kinds of church music. In the 21st century the pendulum is swinging in the direction of performance music with the use of praise bands and electronic sound systems and the disappearance of genuine congregational singing. Worshipers in many contemporary churches can either sing along with the band or listen to the band's vocalists. The volume of the band is too loud for worshipers to hear themselves or the other worshipers. This is done deliberately to spare the worshipers embarrassment at hearing themselves, as well as to enable them to feel the pulse of the music. It essentially devalues the singing of the congregation and demands studio level quality of the singing of those whose voices are heard. It represents a major erosion of the Biblical ideal of Christians in their worship gatherings singing with one voice.
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