Music: WHAT It Is and HOW to Use It
A series on music's essence and role: Part One
Hello, newsletter friends! Last Saturday, I was attending a worship conference in Ohio, sitting in a workshop with eighty other people, when … a quote from THIS NEWSLETTER came up on the screen.
It was weird. But it seemed to help the other people at the conference.
I’m thankful that people are not only finding this newsletter, but also finding it helpful.
This issue launches a brief series on MUSIC. Enjoy!
Early in their studies, worship students learn that “Worship is more than music.” True! People too often describe the worship at a church by describing its music. Many churchgoers can identify their church’s talented singers more easily than can identify their church’s faithful elders. That’s not healthy.
Our cultural moment misunderstands music and overemphasizes its role in contemporary ministry.
Consider three common ways that modern people misunderstand music. People first view music as a universal language. They draw this idea from nineteenth-century Romantic era writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They believe that what music means to one person, it means to others (See Harris: “The Great Misconception”).
The second way people misunderstand music is to think it is a universal language that can solve social problems. Since word-based rhetoric divides people, a universal musical language could unite them. So Bono, lead singer of U2, has poetically said, “Music can change the world because it can change people.” Inspirational to be sure, but is that true?
And, third, people view music as a sacrament. Because many people in a modern world (buffered, to use Charles Taylor’s term) no longer search for the God of the Bible in their local churches, they search for the divine in other places. One place people describe encounters with transcendent spirituality is in music. People might hear a beautiful piece of music, like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and say, “Oh, that music was so beautiful, so transcendent—I encountered God.”
It is unsurprising to hear such sentiments from unbelievers, but they are also common among believers. If you asked church attenders where they most often experience God’s presence during a church service, many would probably answer “the music.” Music seems to them to be a portal to the divine, a connecting point—a sort of sacrament. But is it?
Over the next few issues of this newsletter, I will argue that these views misunderstand and misuse music. Christians ought to understand music from a perspective taught by the Bible, especially if those Christians are musicians and double-especially if they lead music during corporate worship. Small misunderstandings about music in our worship lead to big difficulties.
Earlier, we considered music’s increasingly centralized role in today’s ministry. Consider the analogy of a solar system. Music can serve as an excellent planet, orbiting within a solar system, but it ought not be the sun. If someone centralized their favorite planet and set the sun into orbit, the results would be cataclysmic. Just as no planet has the gravity to serve as the center of a solar system, so music does not have the gravity to serve as the center of a church’s ministry.
This series will follow four steps to provide a biblical perspective on the essence and role of music. Arriving at a proper understanding of music takes four steps, and they are (in reverse order) (4) understanding how music is a cultural activity, as part of (3) all human activity, which responds to (2) God’s cultural mandate, which is related to (1) God’s creative activity. Putting those steps into order, if we can understand (1) God’s creative activity and (2 &3) our human activity as those made in his image, then we can understand (4) our cultural activities, including our musical activities. We’ll understand what music is and isn’t – what music does and how it does it. Then we’ll be able to put music in its proper place in our lives and ministry.
When we situate music in its right place (its proper orbit), our musical efforts and ministries will beautifully serve others and glorify God.
If you’ve read all the way to the end of this newsletter, you’re my kind of person! Please click the “like” button to let me know you got here. :)
When will you be compiling your articles into one comprehensive book on worship? I can’t be the only one who finds them to be most interesting and helpful.😊
Great stuff Matthew. I echo Juliet’s comment. When shall we see a book?