Sitting on my desk at the moment are three crackingly good job descriptions for church musician roles in London churches.
I don’t think that they’ve arrived on my desk because those churches want me to do the job. If so, I don’t think I’d be anywhere near making the grade. I’d also like to reassure my boss that I’m not thinking of leaving — unless, of course, he put those job descriptions on my desk! I presume that the job descriptions are there because the usual advertising channels have failed to attract many suitable candidates.
Subliminal advertising
I’ve had the re-mortgaging experience myself of paying for advertising for music apprentices that has yielded little fruit, which is why it’s jolly useful writing a column like this when I can do subliminal advertising for free.
It would be wonderful to think that out there are some godly guitarists or keyboard players who would love to be trained up to lead music in some of these churches that are crying out for their services. People who have a longing for the Word of God to be sung and believed with real conviction and passion. People with a relatively thick skin, but with sensitive people skills. People who would also love to be trained in handling the Bible at the Cornhill Training Course. Am I being a little too obvious here?
The point is a serious one though. If we aren’t employing (whether paid or unpaid) musicians who are skilled in handling the Bible and in handling the sensitive issues that music can raise, then a number of things can happen. Here are two of those things: either we will settle for good musicians who are Christians only in name or we will settle for keen and committed Christians, but second-rate music. The second of these, of course, is preferable by far.
Humble heart
I’m not saying that we need to be over-professional about our church music. I’ve just been studying 2 Corinthians, where the dangers of boasting in outer appearances and impressive professionalism are clear to see. Paul goes to great lengths to explain that it’s through the weakness and failings of our human efforts that God chooses to show his spiritual power. He always impresses on his readers the importance of a humble heart attitude over finely dressed action. However, Paul doesn’t use this as an excuse for doing things badly. Instead, elsewhere he tells us that, whatever we do, to work at it with all our heart, as working for the Lord (Colossians 3.23). Here, it’s clear that a correct attitude leads to the action of doing all things well.
To use 2 Corinthians language, Paul, in his ‘weakness’, says that he has weapons that ‘have divine power to demolish strongholds’ (10.4). If our attitude to singing God’s Word is that it doesn’t really matter how good the music is that accompanies it, we betray a lack of confidence that this same Word (which that music serves) has the divine power to demolish strongholds.
Again, I’m not suggesting that the music itself is the agent of power here — it’s the Word of God, the gospel, that is the agent of power. But, when we sing, that gospel is served by music. So, we’re careful to rehearse our readers thoroughly because they are speaking the Word of God. We’re also careful to prepare our sermons diligently because we are explaining the Word of God. Therefore, we need to be just as diligent in our training of musicians (if we use them) because we are singing the Word of God. This takes years and years of training in quite a specialised field, if I do say so myself, which is why there are so few people applying for these jobs.
There we go — a subliminally shameless advert for musicians everywhere to get trained and for godly Christian musicians in our churches to take the ministry of the Word through music seriously. The jobs are out there — they’re here on my desk!
