Featured SongTeaching Doctrine Through Song: David
Home » Blog » GeneralPosted by David L. Ward on June 8th, 2006
Thanks for reminding us of the importance of what our songs are teaching. It's often said that songs can be more effective vehicles for truth-delivery than sermons! (We must not despise the fact that God has ordained preaching, not singing, as the means by which people are saved - see Romans 10) Your post reminded me of a chapter in a John Witvliet book called Worship Seeking Understanding titled "Soul Food for the People of God." In it, Witvliet compares the choice of songs for a congregation to our diets. Like the maxim "we are what we eat" he says "we are what we sing." Going even further, he says "What more soul-shaping force can we imagine than the songs we sing?"
He gives us seven dimensions of this metaphor:
Congregational song is a means of spiritual nourishment.
A great couple of quotes from this heading are "Consider the prominent spiritual disease of sentimentality: religious experience as candy-coated happiness and bliss. If we feed our souls a steady diet of musical candy, we will have little spiritual protein to sustain us." and "[Music] is more than a shell for the text. The music we sing shapes the affections of our souls. It gives emotional content to the text."
This nourishment comes to us through patterns and habits of reception: We all have a discernable liturgical-musical diet
Witvliet discusses variety in our services and not overwhelming our people with constant innovation but forming routines and habits and identifying those that already exist.
Just like eating is more than an event, singing is more than simply "an event."
Just like the point of a business lunch is the business deal, so the point of singing is to worship God. Worship, he says, does not exist for the sake of music. He also refers to the community aspect of singing.
Liturgical and Musical taste/etiquette
In this section Witvliet compares singing to cultivating an appreciation for a wide variety of foods. We should seek to become worship music connoisseurs, not intolerant, selfish wielders of our favorite kind of music regardless of how it affects the spiritual state of the church or is conducive to worship.
The nature of those we are serving makes all the difference for how we cook
Witvliet teaches that we should prepare music for a wide variety of people. I would add that it should be for our people. Those who plan worship should have an eye toward the particular edification of the people in their specific local churches. When I'm planning I routinely make choices based on the lives and predilections of specific people.
Music is powerfully uniting
Just like food is powerful at uniting and creating community, so is the music of a church
Liturgical music as spiritual chef
"Congregational music requires a cantor (song leader), church musician, a chief facilitator, and an enlivener." "A good cantor always helps us have good encounters with new things and comfortable experiences with well-loved things."
A closing thought from Witvliet
In the last section of this chapter he says " the church needs most is discerning, prayerful, joyous people who treat their work as worship planners and leaders as a holy, pastoral calling." AMEN!
