On "Conservative" Worship

[Darrell Post]

But clearly the thrust of the NT is that music is a tail, and the dog is the teaching/preaching, reading of Scripture, prayer, communion and fellowship. Hence my point that most of the so called “worship war” goes away if church music as a whole got put back into the middle of the back seat of the car where it belongs instead of in the drivers seat. But this will never happen, because impressive performances fill the pews. We need to get back to the idea of filling pews with the proclaimed truth from the pulpit.

Darrell, I really appreciate the emphasis on Scripture (something missing from most music discussions), but I’m afraid you are missing the point of the verses to which you referenced. Music is not the tail and the dog teaching/preaching, etc. The very verses you pointed us to say that our singing IS teaching. If we are singing songs with good lyrics, we will often be singing Scripture and many songs are simply prayers to God as well. Music and singing are not simply a time killer that needs to be put back in its lowly seat on the bus, but it is a vitally important part of what the church is commanded to do. It is a powerful medium to communicate Scripture, admonish, teach, edify, and bring our praises to God (sounds like preaching doesn’t it?!). I contend that the worship wars will NOT go away simply by viewing music as an unimportant part of our worship services. On the contrary, I believe they will only go away if we view it as Paul intended…a tool that is vitally important in worshipping God, edifying one another, teaching, and admonishing.

“…it is a vitally important part of what the church is commanded to do.”

Then why didn’t the NT make this a priority in prescribing it, and demonstrating it? The NT does tell us what the the church did when they met together. The NT chose to list the things that made the cut, and music didn’t. And I didn’t say music was unimportant and I didn’t call it a time killer. My contention is that the focus has shifted from worship to a performance. And as that shift has been successful in adding to the numbers in the pews, the length of the performance has often grown and the time spent on preaching and prayer has shrunken. My impression is that much of what goes on in the name of worship today would get the same reaction from God as when He said this in Isaiah 1:11 “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle” or Amos 5:21-23: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.”

I appeal to these verses because there are churches where the leaders will make a drastic change in the area of music, and when members appeal, those who cannot in good conscience participate, they are told they either have to change their view or leave the church. So members are being forced out of the local churches, abandoned by their brothers and sisters who then show up the next Sunday and sing How Great is our God while their abandoned brothers and sisters suffer the loss of being torn away from the body of Christ.

[Darrell Post]

“…it is a vitally important part of what the church is commanded to do.”

Then why didn’t the NT make this a priority in prescribing it, and demonstrating it? The NT does tell us what the the church did when they met together. The NT chose to list the things that made the cut, and music didn’t. And I didn’t say music was unimportant and I didn’t call it a time killer. My contention is that the focus has shifted from worship to a performance. And as that shift has been successful in adding to the numbers in the pews, the length of the performance has often grown and the time spent on preaching and prayer has shrunken. My impression is that much of what goes on in the name of worship today would get the same reaction from God as when He said this in Isaiah 1:11 “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle” or Amos 5:21-23: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.”

I appeal to these verses because there are churches where the leaders will make a drastic change in the area of music, and when members appeal, those who cannot in good conscience participate, they are told they either have to change their view or leave the church. So members are being forced out of the local churches, abandoned by their brothers and sisters who then show up the next Sunday and sing How Great is our God while their abandoned brothers and sisters suffer the loss of being torn away from the body of Christ.

The problem is some fundamentalists don’t have the discernment to tell the difference between the conservative evangelical churches and/or fundamental churches that I described above that do not fit your caricature (and there are many of them) and the contemporary evangelical church that is performance driven. To them its all the same. If the church has a worship band, then they are somehow imitating the world. And somehow the younger folk stole their church when they attempted to move the church out of the nostalgic fundamentalist church culture from a half century ago.

….in the early church is difficult without the context, really.

Per:

Then why didn’t the NT make this a priority in prescribing it, and demonstrating it? The NT does tell us what the the church did when they met together.

Well, let’s think about this a minute. The 1st century church is said by the Church Fathers to have come out strongly against the pagan theater and postnatal infanticide, neither of which are mentioned in the New Testament. Do we argue—and of course this has huge implications for the pro life debate—that it was unimportant because it’s not in the NT? Or were these issues that came up as the gentile church grew and the Scriptures were applied to new areas?

Really, the “music is the tail” is an argument from silence, which is of course a logical fallacy, and it really ignores the fact that illiterate cultures (anyone but the rich in Rome, really) tend to use poetry and song far more extensively than do literate societies. Examples include the works of Homer, medieval and Dark Ages sagas (e.g. the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, norse sagas, the Koran and Hadith, etc..), the Minnelieder of the bards of the dark ages, the stories that became Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the like. If we believe Moses indeed wrote down the Torah, 2000 years after many of the events happened, we might guess that the Pentateuch also falls into this category.

In the same way, there are a lot of hints that, at least outside the movement of the Pharisees, reading the Old Testament was not common among the Hebrews. Remember the weeping when the book of Deuteronomy was found and read in (?) Josiah’s reign? Notice how many OT citations Jesus makes of lyric/poetic books like the Psalms and Isaiah? I submit to you that, while not technically an illiterate society, Israel did indeed rely strongly on oral tradition—the Talmud is, despite being written down almost seventeen centuries ago, referred to today as “Oral Torah” in honor of this.

And in a society, it would make no more sense to tell a man to sing, or how to sing, than it would to tell him how to breathe or walk.

I thought I’d pass this article along - the author made some great points, which have not been raised here thus far.

In the same way, there are a lot of hints that, at least outside the movement of the Pharisees, reading the Old Testament was not common among the Hebrews. Remember the weeping when the book of Deuteronomy was found and read in (?) Josiah’s reign? Notice how many OT citations Jesus makes of lyric/poetic books like the Psalms and Isaiah? I submit to you that, while not technically an illiterate society, Israel did indeed rely strongly on oral tradition—the Talmud is, despite being written down almost seventeen centuries ago, referred to today as “Oral Torah” in honor of this.

This is something that I’ve thought about a lot over the last year or so. We live in a hyper-literate age, where the Bible is available via cell phone, printed volume, online, in music, and you really would have to work hard to avoid the Bible if you didn’t want it. Pre-Gutenberg Press, printed or written copies of any book, let alone the Bible, were extraordinarily expensive and rare.

So I don’t think that it’s fair to say that the Israelites/Greeks/Jews in the OT/NT would have the kind of familiarity with the Bible that we do…and, as a side note, I wonder if maybe our ease of access to the Word creates a callousness to it?

In any case, someone mentioned the responses of the people to the reading of the Word in the OT and how it seemed like access to the Law was rare. There are a couple examples of this:

And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the secretary came to [King Josiah] , and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the LORD.” Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, “Go, inquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”
-2 Kings 22:8-13
And they found it written in the Law that the LORD had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.” So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.
-Nehemiah 8:14-18

The NT does tell us what the the church did when they met together. The NT chose to list the things that made the cut, and music didn’t.

Darrell,

So are you saying that (1) Eph 5:17 and Col 3:16 aren’t in the NT, (2) Eph 5:17 and Col 3:16 don’t refer to the gathered church, or (3) Eph 5:17 and Col 3:16 don’t speak of music? Or is there some other option that you are appealing to?

Regarding Bert’s suggestion that the Tanakh might not have been too well known outside the psalms and some of the prophets:

• The early apostles quoted Deut 18 often extensively, to take one example (see the sermons in Acts)
• Also, look at Stephen’s comprehensive exposition of the history of Israel’s apostasy in Acts 7.

[TylerR]

Regarding Bert’s suggestion that the Tanakh might not have been too well known outside the psalms and some of the prophets:

• The early apostles quoted Deut 18 often extensively, to take one example (see the sermons in Acts)
• Also, look at Stephen’s comprehensive exposition of the history of Israel’s apostasy in Acts 7.

True, but Moses commands that the law be memorized and reinforced by the family unit during upbringing (Deut. 6). It does not presuppose that a lot of people were walking around with copies of the Torah, and my original points about the difficulties in getting a written copy of the law still exist.

Just for clarification, the point here is not that people didn’t use the prose portions of Scripture—it’s said many had it memorized or close to it—or that people didn’t read at all. It’s simply that, given the difficulty and cost of hand-written books, you would have an oral culture where people depended strongly on poetic devices and the poetic/lyric word to convey information, and in light of that, you would need to tell them to sing just about as much as you would need to tell them to breathe.

And yet, the Scripture tells them to use this means of communication with each other as to “speak to one another” in this way. So I interpret the NT quite differently than Darrell did above. It is to say—“Hey, what you did to communicate your allegiance to Caesar and Zeus before? Change the lyrics and it’s OK.” In other words, it is to say “what you were already doing has some virtue to it—don’t do guilt by association, brothers.”

And really, how much specific information do we have about how a pastor is to preach, beyond preaching the Kingdom of God and the Gospel? We are not taught expositional, exegetical, or topical preaching, and the main examples of sermons we have are recounting the history of Israel—really coming very close to how the Psalms do this at times, no? So at a certain point, we are left to figure things out from the depth and breadth of Scripture, as far as I can tell, in both areas.

Larry, I mentioned those verses further above. What I was arguing is the tail shouldn’t wag to the dog. In Acts there was actually a list of things that the early church did when assembled together. Teaching the Apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, Lord’s Supper, and Prayer, but music was not listed. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it wasn’t in the list. Similarly, when we look at the list of church leaders given by Christ to the church, worship leader or song-leader didn’t make the list. I am not saying that we should or shouldn’t have one, just that it didn’t make the list—again another indication that music in the life of the church should be held in check and not become dominant.

Joel, you wrote “If the church has a worship band, then they are somehow imitating the world. And somehow the younger folk stole their church when they attempted to move the church out of the nostalgic fundamentalist church culture from a half century ago.”

The distinction I would make here involves what they do with it. If they are going have their own millennial CCM night or do something like that on their own, that’s one thing, but when on Sunday morning they force it down the throats of people who cannot do it, then they do force these people from the church. That is not love. Maturity would be loving the body to the point where one is willing to sacrifice what they believe they are free to do so as to strengthen the body of Christ and not force people to leave the church.

When individuals believers assemble together, it is ultimately a place where everyone builds one another up, sacrificing and serving one another. Not a place where one walks in and says, I have my rights to do this or that even though I know the offense it is to others. Ladies shouldn’t walk in wearing mini-skirts thinking that it is their right to do so even though they know it is problematic for some in the church. The assembled church is a place where brotherly love dominates and sacrifice and service to others is the standard. I know it wasn’t technically a church gathering, but Christ washed the disciples’ feet. But today many cannot even set aside something as periphery as their “Christian rock” music or CCM — they would rather force others out of the church and congratulate themselves on that outcome as though it was progress.

In Acts there was actually a list of things that the early church did when assembled together. Teaching the Apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, Lord’s Supper, and Prayer, but music was not listed. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it wasn’t in the list.

I am curious as to why you limit the input of Scripture to this particular list or to Acts in general. Are the epistles not authoritative as well? This seems to narrow a methodology to me. I don’t think the tail should wag the dog or that music should be dominant. I am more curious as to the precise question here.

Larry, The book of Acts is largely descriptive. It tells us what the early church was doing. Maybe the early church was a singing church. We don’t know because the only mention of music in the book was Paul and Silas singing in the Jail in Philippi. But in the list of things the verse says about the what the church did when they met together, the author didn’t mention music though it would have been easy to do so had it been important enough to include. I have not discounted the parallel verses in Eph and Col as Paul clearly talks about believers singing truth to one another as well as singing in your hearts. But even here, Paul never defines a role for instruments other than the human voice.

But given that some are willing to split churches over music, it seems like the NT as a whole is concerned about a lot of other things. Believers should be more concerned about the health of the body of Christ than coming in demanding one kind of music even if it forces other members to leave the church.

The distinction I would make here involves what they do with it. If they are going have their own millennial CCM night or do something like that on their own, that’s one thing, but when on Sunday morning they force it down the throats of people who cannot do it, then they do force these people from the church. That is not love. Maturity would be loving the body to the point where one is willing to sacrifice what they believe they are free to do so as to strengthen the body of Christ and not force people to leave the church.

When individuals believers assemble together, it is ultimately a place where everyone builds one another up, sacrificing and serving one another. Not a place where one walks in and says, I have my rights to do this or that even though I know the offense it is to others. Ladies shouldn’t walk in wearing mini-skirts thinking that it is their right to do so even though they know it is problematic for some in the church. The assembled church is a place where brotherly love dominates and sacrifice and service to others is the standard. I know it wasn’t technically a church gathering, but Christ washed the disciples’ feet. But today many cannot even set aside something as periphery as their “Christian rock” music or CCM — they would rather force others out of the church and congratulate themselves on that outcome as though it was progress.

The immaturity and lack of love goes both ways. My experiences in a GARBC church and my father’s experiences in 3 different GARBC churches as a worship pastor have also shown a dark side of those church members who leave because the music changed. At my father’s churches, my dad (who is now retired) tried to implement a more blended service with the great hymns of the faith (using more traditional instrumentation along side praise choruses with a praise band and it was met with resistance from a minority of people; usually those who had been taught along the way that CCM and/or music with a 2/4 beat or the use of drums was somehow sinful, worldly or the devil’s music (take your pick). My father was yelled at, slandered, called a traitor, a deceiver, and the list goes on and on. My father showed an incredible amount of patience, sacrificial love, and was willing to flex as he tried to blend the music, but it was the traditional people who demonstrated that their personal preferences became a hill to die on stampeding everything and everyone in their path. Eventually they did leave, but it was because they of their lack of love and failure to control, rather than being the poor little victims that you make the traditionalists out to be. I had a similar situation at the church that I attended before we help plant our current church. 20 years ago, the worship band that I was a part of helped blend the music. Again the music utilized the great hymns of the faith blended with praise choruses. However, certain people were bent out of sorts and it brought the worst out of them. One older gentleman threatened to take the drumsticks and pierce the drumheads because he was so angry. Another lady wagged her finger in my face for 10 minutes telling me that I was leading the young people of the church on a path of destruction to hell. The leaders of the church showed an incredible amount of love and patience for about 2 years, but eventually came to the point where they said that the blended music was the direction that the church was taking and if they didn’t like it, they could leave. At the same time, there was alot of discipleship and teaching that took place to undo the crazy teaching that often accompanies the people who stir up trouble when there is a movement of change in music. Actually in that case, most of the people stayed, except for one family.

Lest you think that I am naive believing only those with a more contemporary view of worship and music have taken the high road, let me give you one example that actually supports your scenario; where a pastor came into one of the church’s that my father was worship pastor, made the church music use solely CCM, steam rolling over those who didn’t like the music, and forced them to leave. I will give you some context. The former pastor wanted nothing but hymns and John W. Peterson cantatas because he felt that any sort of contemporary music was worldly and sinful (he called music sung by Steve Green “genital” music). Eventually he left and for a couple years before the new pastor came in, my father began introducing some praise choruses with a partial band along with hymns in order to blend the music. Actually the congregation was fine with the blend. But then the new pastor came in, forced my father out (because he wanted a younger, hip worship leader) and hired a worship/youth pastor demanding that he use a “CCM-like” band in order to try to bring younger families in. When certain people began protesting the changes, he forced them out of the church. The immaturity and controlling nature of the pastor continued for 10 more years in other ways until it lost a total of 200 more people and eventually they became a satellite of a local mega church that used the location as one of its multi-sites.

Joel, the details in your whole post illustrate the points I have been trying to make. The NT focus is that when we assemble together we should be all about teaching/preaching, reading of Scripture, prayer, fellowship and communion. Music should be minimal and directed Godward, and not be about entertainment.

“…hired a worship/youth pastor demanding that he use a “CCM-like” band in order to try to bring younger families in…”

This sentence right here illustrates the danger. Once we succumb to the pragmatism of trying to use music to grow the church we are headed for trouble.

My aim is to not defend or argue the point from any given anecdote, and I understand that lack of love can happen from any perspective…that is why I think God would respond to our churches with the words of Amos I mentioned above. God would rather we not sing or play instruments at all until there is a real heart-revival and mutual submission to His will and to love one another.

I will say that those aiming to force others to participate in CCM often haven’t really been good at listening to the other side’s perspective. The sounds of rock and roll were more or less born out of the sexual revolution where that generation found the perfect rhythm and beat to help them celebrate and accentuate their free sex and drugs. The reason they found it to be the perfect musical vehicle for their message goes back to the truth that music has a voice. Without any words, music can carry a tone that communicates violence, romance, the light-heartedness of a circus, or a military marching drill. So the CCM advocate approaches the traditionalist and says he needs to start singing and enjoying CCM, and what the traditionalist hears them say, is you want me to start saying God’s love sounds like a sexual orgy, and His grace sounds like a war, and his mercy sounds like a migraine headache. Yes, when that happens they are going to be under the temptation to wag their finger in faces for ten minutes instead of handling the encounter with grace.

For me, I will never accept the sounds of Rock and Roll as appropriate to ascribe worth to God, any more than I would look at modern art with it’s random blotches of paint and say, “that’s beautiful.” My contention is that this falls under the idea Paul had in mind in Romans 12:2 where we are called upon to exercise discernment to determine what is good, acceptable, and perfectly aligned with God’s will. That said, I embrace newer songs and am not stuck in the 19th century as is often the caricature. I used to really like “In Christ Alone” until the church I attended sang it almost every other week and completely wore it out. Conversely, I don’t embrace all older songs either. “In the Garden” was my father’s favorite song, but the lyrics say virtually nothing Biblical.

But I am not going to be anyone’s judge, we all get to stand before the same Judge one day. But when one group walks into the assembly and sets aside their obligation to serve and love one another and instead forces brothers and sisters in Christ to swallow what is detestable to them, that’s where I say the church would be much better off for everyone to leave these things in their homes and get back to ministry and service while gathered for worship. No worship happens if believers have been trampled in the process.