I’m very much looking forward to the London Music Ministry Conference on November 17.
I’ve been reminded this month of the importance of investing in evangelical church music. An evangelical church organist had emailed me a few weeks ago, wondering why the organ is used so little in our meetings these days. One of the reasons is the style of the songs that are being written, which is hard (but definitely possible) to make work on the organ. Another is that evangelical organists are a rare breed.
It’s not just evangelical organists who are few and far between, but also pianists and band musicians who are able to lead congregations. There are quite a few classically-trained musicians, who, in God’s grace, belong to Jesus, but not many are able to cross over into leading congregations without a lot of re-training. Even if they do manage to make the change, their professional technique can be compromised. The Musicians Apprenticeship Scheme goes a short way to redressing the balance, but I think that there’s much more that we need to be doing.
Singing each other the truth
The first step is to see singing together as Christians as part of our ‘truthing’ each other — in confession, praise, admonishment or adoration of the Lord. This, if I can say so gently and humbly, needs to be understood by our pastors as well as musicians. Singing together, of course, isn’t the same as preaching, where we are fed the Word of God by those entrusted to teach us under God (Ephesians 4.11), but it is very much part of the mutual truthing that is encouraged a few verses later, and especially in Ephesians 5.19.
Driving a wedge?
I think that, as evangelicals, we have played a part in driving a wedge between the truth that we say to each other (e.g. in Bible studies or in general conversation) and the truth that we sing to each other. We’re rightly careful about the theology that we sing — that’s not the issue here. The issue is that we haven’t been as careful about the way that our sung theology is communicated musically. We train our preachers and Bible study leaders to be the best they can be, but, when it comes to music, if you can strum a couple of chords on a guitar or have grade 4 on the piano, you could be thrown into running the music in your church.
Implications
The resulting low standard of our music has some serious implications. The wedge that we have driven between spoken and sung truth sends a message to those who come to our churches looking for spiritual food that only spoken truth is important. This means that some leave our churches as they look for somewhere that will feed them spiritually from the sung word as well. Sadly, the churches they end up at have historically under-invested on the spoken word. Then, even more sadly, what they say about our churches is, ‘The Spirit isn’t there’. What they really mean is that they think the music’s terrible, but it’s partly our fault if we haven’t taught people that it’s as important to sing the truth as well as we preach it.
What I’m not saying is that we ought to get rid of our poorly trained musicians — praise God for grade 4 pianists — I failed grade 4! Nor am I saying that instrumental accompaniment is a necessary requirement for our Christian meetings (though I have spoken about this in previous articles). My plea instead is to see the importance of doing our music well not only for our own edification and encouragement, but also because we have a duty to teach the wider church that we value truth, whether said or sung, as the way we grow together in spiritual maturity into Christ.
Apprenticeship scheme
Please pray for us as we seek to train church musicians through the Musicians Apprenticeship Scheme and national conferences like the one in November. Pray that we will remain faithful to the Word of God, and be responsible in the way we help organists, guitarists, choirs and all church musicians to do our part in helping the church to grow up in every way into Christ.
Richard Simpkin is Director of Music at St. Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate, London.
