Not Just Any Song Will Do: Three Basics for Choosing Church Music - UPDATED

Why sing songs written by fallen mortals when Almighty God has inspired 150 of his own hymns?" That kind of thinking made choosing music for worship a moot point for many of our Reformed forebears. You sang the psalms. No wrestling over hymns versus praise choruses. How things have changed over the centuries!

One hundred and twenty-one years ago, Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney voiced concern over the fact that the popular gospel music of Dwight L. Moody's cohort, Ira Sankey, was finding its way out of the revival tent and into the sanctuary of many a Reformed congregation.

The most that can be said of Mr. Sankey's [songs] is that they do not appear to have introduced positive error as yet, and that they exhibit no worse traits than a marked inferiority of matter and style to the established hymnals of the leading churches. The most danger thus far apparent is that of habituating the taste of Christians to a very vapid species of pious doggerel, containing the most diluted possible traces of saving truth, in portions suitable to the most infantile faculties supplemented by a jingle of "vain repetitions."

Today, worship planners and leaders stand beneath an avalanche of hymns and praise choruses. Never before have we had so much music to choose from. But much church music (new and old, "contemporary" or "traditional") is of suspect quality and appropriateness for authentic worship in the Reformed tradition. However, in our entrepreneurial ecclesiastical climate, there is no longer a "supreme court" that determines what music is appropriate to sing in our churches, as there was in Dabney's day. That choice must be made by worship planners/leaders in each local congregation. Throw on top of that the rapid growth of "contemporary worship," coupled with the ever-present pressures of the "church growth movement," and the temptation is rife to incorporate merely what's "popular" or "what works" without first asking some more important questions of the music: questions of theological faithfulness, musical quality, and liturgical appropriateness. Read More

Also See:
The Future of Congregational Singing: Hymnals or Tablets? NEW
Sing to the Lord, All the Earth (and Minnesota)
How to Keep Your Worship Services Free from Disappointment
The Key To Making the Most Out of Congregational Singing
3 Reasons Music Matters