Worship Service Music

Let’s talk about a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot this week--the music part of church services. I won’t call it “worship” in church, because worship is not synonymous with music. Worship is so much more than music.

What do we (whether a worship leader or a congregation member) want from the music during church? If you want to put on or watch a performance, then don’t read further. These comments are not for you.

If you’re looking for a communal experience of building one another up as you worship, then I have some thoughts for those leading the music.

First, do not introduce more than one new song each week.  And when you introduce a new song, sing it three weeks in a row. People cannot participate when they do not know the song. This is something Kennon Bickhart was great at!

Second, not every song on the radio is singable by a group of people. Many churches have done away with the “special music” part of the service, where a soloist would present a song. Because of that, maybe we’re trying to turn every song into a congregational song?  I don’t know, but that just doesn’t work.

I have been in more than one church where the congregation has been scolded about not singing along, when the songs were either unknown or too difficult to sing.

Third, if the purpose of the music is to worship God and to build one another up, the people need to be able to hear each other singing. If the music is too loud for that, it needs to be turned down. Michael Hendricks wrote in The Other Half of Church, “When we sing to each other, the words, the melody, the sound from musical instruments, and the expressions on our faces as we all sing enter our back-right hemisphere and travel forward. The right side is nonverbal, so the words flow to the front without being fully processed, but the other input is full of material that creates right-brain imagery. Facial expressions, melody, and the relational tone of our community as we all sing stimulate our right brains to build joy, relational attunement, character, and identity.” None of this will happen if we can’t hear and see each other sing… if we’re not singing at all because the songs are unknown or too musically difficult to follow.

The theology of the songs we’re singing is another point that could be made here, but it’s a topic in and of itself.