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Selecting Your Music
He put a new song in my mouth… . Many people will see this and worship him. Then they will trust the Lord.
Psalm 40:3 (NCV)
I’m often asked what I would do differently if I could start Saddleback over. My answer is this: From the first day of the new church I’d put more energy and money into a first-class music ministry that matched our target. In the first years of Saddleback, I made the mistake of underestimating the power of music so I minimized the use of music in our services. I regret that now.
Music is an integral part of our lives. We eat with it, drive with it, shop with it, relax with it, and some non-Baptists even dance to it! The great American pastime is not baseball—it is
music and sharing our opinions about it.
A song can often touch people in a way that a sermon can’t. Music can bypass intellectual barriers and take the message straight to the heart. It is a potent tool for evangelism. In Psalm 40:3 (NCV) David says, “He put a new song in my mouth… . Many people willsee this and worship him. Then they will trust the Lord” (italics added). Notice the clear connection between music and evangelism: “Then they will trust the Lord.”
Aristotle said, “Music has the power to shape character.” Satan is clearly using music to do that today. The rock lyrics of the 1960s and 1970s shaped the values of most Americans who are now in their thirties, forties, or fifties. Today, MTV shapes the values of most people in their teens and twenties. Music is the primary communicator of values to the younger generation. If we don’t use contemporary music to spread godly values, Satan will have unchallenged access to an entire generation. Music is a force that cannot be ignored.
Not only did I underestimate the power of music when we began Saddleback, I also made the mistake of trying to appeal to everybody’s taste. We covered the gamut, “from Bach to Rock,” often in a single service. We’d alternate between traditional hymns, praise choruses, and contemporary Christian songs. We used classical, country, jazz, rock, reggae, easy listening, and even rap. The crowd never knew what was coming next. The result: We didn’t please anybody, and we frustrated everybody! We were like the radio station I mentioned in chapter 9 that tried to appeal to everyone by
playing every type of music.
Again, it’s impossible to appeal to everyone’s musical preference and taste. Music is a divisive issue that separates generations, regions of the country, personality types, and even family members. So we shouldn’t be surprised when opinions of music differ in the church. You must decide who you’re trying to reach, identify their preferred style of music, and then stick with it. You’re wasting your time if you’re searching for a style of music that everyone in your church will agree on.
Choosing Your Style of Music
The style of music you choose to use in your services will be one of the most critical (and controversial) decisions you make in the life of your church. It may also be the most influential factor in determining who your church reaches for Christ and whether or not your church grows. You must match your music to the kind of people God wants your church to reach.
The music you use “positions” your church in your community. It defines who you are. Once you have decided on the style of music you’re going to use in worship, you have set the direction of your church in far more ways than you realize. It will determine the kind of people you attract, the kind of people you keep, and the kind of people you lose.
If you were to tell me the kind of music you are currently using in your services I could describe the kind of people you are reaching without even visiting your church. I could also tell you the kind of people your church will never be able to reach.
I reject the idea that music styles can be judged as either “good” or “bad” music. Who decides this? The kind of music you like is determined by your background and culture. Certain tones and scales sound pleasant to Asian ears; other tones and scales sound pleasant to Middle Eastern ears. Africans enjoy different rhythms than South Americans.
To insist that all “good” music was written in Europe two
hundred years ago is cultural elitism. There certainly isn’t any biblical basis for that view. Depending on where you grew up you may love Kentucky bluegrass, Dixieland jazz, Chicago blues, Milwaukee polka, or Nashville country and western. None of these styles is any “better” music than the other.
Churches also need to admit that no particular style of music is “sacred.” What makes a song sacred is its message. Music is nothing more than an arrangement of notes and rhythms; it’s the words that make a song spiritual. There is no such thing as “Christian music,” only Christian lyrics. If I were to play a tune for you without any words, you wouldn’t know if it was a Christian song or not.
The sacred message of a song may be communicated in a wide variety of musical styles. For 2,000 years, the Holy Spirit has used all different kinds of music to bring glory to God. It takes all kinds of churches, using all kinds of music styles, to reach all kinds of people. To insist that one particular style of music is sacred is idolatry.
I’m amused whenever I hear Christians who resist contemporary Christian music say, “We need to get back to our musical roots.” I wonder how far back they want to go. Back to the Gregorian chant? Back to the Jewish melodies of the Jerusalem church? They usually only want to go back about fifty to one hundred years.
Some people assume that the “hymns” mentioned in Colossians 3:16 refer to the same style of music we call
“hymns” today. The truth is, we don’t know what their hymns sounded like. But we do know that the New Testament churches used the style of music that matched the instruments and culture common to that day. Since they obviously didn’t have pianos or organs back then, their music wouldn’t have sounded at all like the music in our churches today.
In Psalms we read that in biblical worship they used drums, clashing cymbals, loud trumpets, tambourines, and stringed instruments. That sounds a lot like contemporary music to me!
Sing a NewSong
Throughout church history, great theologians have put God’s truth to the music style of their day. The tune of Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” is borrowed from a popular song of his day*.* (Today, Luther would probably be borrowing tunes from the local karaoke bar.) Charles Wesley used several popular tunes from the taverns and opera houses in England. John Calvin hired two secular songwriters of his day to put his theology to music. The Queen of England was so incensed by these “vulgar tunes” that she derisively referred to themas Calvin’s “Geneva jigs”!
Songs that we now consider sacred classics were once as criticized as today’s contemporary Christian music. When “Silent Night” was first published, George Weber, music director of the Mainz Cathedral, called it “vulgar mischief and void of all religious and Christian feelings.” And Charles Spurgeon, the great English pastor, despised the contemporary worship songs of his day—the same songs we now revere.
Perhaps most impossible to believe, Handel’s Messiah was widely condemned as “vulgar theater” by the churchmen of his day. Like the criticism of today’s contemporary choruses, the Messiah was panned for having too much repetition and not enough message—it contains nearly one hundred repetitions of “Hallelujah!”
Even the hallowed tradition of singing hymns was once considered “worldly” in Baptist churches. Benjamin Keach, a
Baptist pastor of the seventeenth century, is credited with introducing hymn singing to English Baptist churches. He began first by teaching the children to sing because they loved it. The parents, however, did not enjoy singing hymns. They were convinced that singing was “foreign to evangelical worship.”
A major controversy occurred when Pastor Keach tried to introduce hymn singing to the whole congregation in his church at Horsley Down. Finally, in 1673, he got them to agree to at least sing a hymn after the Lord’s Supper by using the biblical precedent of Mark 14:26. However, Keach allowed those who objected to doing this to leave before the hymn. Six years later, in 1679, the church agreed to sing a hymn on days of “public thanksgiving.”
Another fourteen years passed before the church could agree that hymn singing was appropriate in worship. The controversy was costly, causing twenty-two of Benjamin Keach’s members to leave and join a “non-singing church.” However, the fad of hymn singing caught on with other churches, and the “non-singing church” soon called a pastor who made hymn singing a condition of his coming. How things change. You can slow progress but you can’t stop it.
The amazing thing to me about this incident was Pastor Keach’s incredible patience. It took him twenty years to change his congregation’s worship style. In an average church it is probably easier to change the church’s theology than its order of service.
One of our weaknesses as evangelicals is that we don’t know church history. Because of this, we begin confusing our current traditions with orthodoxy. Many of the methods and tools we use in churches today such as hymn singing, pianos, pipe organs, altar calls, and Sunday school were once considered worldly and even heretical. Now that these tools are widely accepted as gifts from God used to enhance worship, we have a new blacklist. Today’s objections are aimed against innovations such as the use of synthesizers, drums, drama, and video in worship.
The debate over what style of music should be used in worship is going to be one of the major points of conflict in local churches in the years ahead. Every church will eventually have to address this issue. Be prepared for heated disagreement. James Dobson once admitted on his “Focus on the Family” program that “Of all the subjects we’ve ever covered in this radio program, from abortion to pornography to whatever, the most controversial subject we’ve ever dealt with is music. You can make people mad about music more quickly than anything else.” The debate over music styles has divided and polarized many churches. I guess that is why Spurgeon called his music ministry “the War Department”!
Why do people take disagreement over worship styles so personally? Because the way you worship is intimately connected with the way God made you. Worship is your personal expression of love for God. When someone criticizes
the way you worship, you naturally take it as a personal offense.
Saddleback is unapologetically a contemporary music church. We’ve often been referred to in the press as “the flock that likes to rock.” We use the style of music the majority of people in our church listen to on the radio. Years ago, after being frustrated with trying to please everyone, I decided to survey our church. I passed out 3 x 5 cards to everyone in the crowd service and asked them to write down the call letters of the radio station they listened to.
What we discovered is that 96 percent of our people said they listen to middle-of-the-road adult contemporary music. Most people under forty don’t relate to any music before 1965. To them, a classic is an Elvis tune! They like bright, happy, cheerful music with a strong beat. Their ears are accustomed to music with a strong bass line and rhythm.
For the first time in history, there exists a universal music style that can be heard in every country of the world. It’s called contemporary pop/rock. The same songs are being played on radios in Nairobi and Tokyo and Moscow. Most TV commercials use the contemporary/rock style. Even country and western has adapted it. This is the primary musical style we’ve chosen to use at Saddleback.
After surveying who we were reaching, we made the strategic decision to stop singing hymns in our seeker services. Within a year of deciding what would be “our
sound,” Saddleback exploded with growth. I will admit that we have lost hundreds of potential members because of the style of music Saddleback uses. On the other hand, we have attracted thousands more because of our music.
Rules for Selecting a Music Style
Realizing that I am walking into an area full of land mines, I would like to offer a few suggestions regarding music. Regardless of the style your church chooses to use, I believe there are a few rules you need to follow.
Preview all the music you use
Don’t have any surprises in your service. I learned this principle the hard way. I could tell you a number of stories that would bring tears to your eyes, like the time a guest singer decided to sing a twenty-minute song on nuclear disarmament! If you don’t manage your music, your music will manage your service. Set up some parameters so that music supports the purpose of the service rather than working contrary to it.
When you preview the music you intend to use, consider both the lyrics and the tune. Ask yourself whether the lyrics are doctrinally sound, whether they are understandable to the unchurched, and whether the song uses terms or metaphors that unbelievers wouldn’t understand. Always identify the purpose of a song. Is it a song of edification, worship, fellowship, or evangelism?
At Saddleback we categorize songs according to target. Songs on the crowd list are appropriate when unbelievers are present (at our seeker services). Songs on the congregation list are songs that are meaningful to believers but wouldn’t make sense to the unchurched (we sing them at our midweek worship service). Songs on the core list deal with service and ministry (we sing themat our SALT rallies).
Ask, “How does this tune make me feel?” Music exerts a great influence on human emotions. The wrong kind of music can kill the spirit and mood of a service. Every pastor has known the agony of trying to resurrect a service after a music number that left everyone feeling depressed and suicidal. Decide what mood you want in your service, and use the style that creates it. At Saddleback, we believe worship is to be a celebration so we use a style that is upbeat, bright, and joyful. We rarely sing a song in a minor key.
Even when we invite popular Christian artists to sing at Saddleback, we insist on previewing every song they intend to sing. The atmosphere we’re trying to maintain in our seeker service is far more important than any singer’s ego.
Speed up the tempo
As I pointed out in chapter 14, the Bible says, “Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs” (Ps. 100:2, italics added), but many worship services sound more like a funeral than a festival. John Bisagno, pastor of the 15,000-member First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, says,
“Funeral dirge anthems and stiff-collared song leaders will kill a church faster than anything else in the world!”
At Saddleback, we joke about our aerobic singing. It is lively! I recently received a First Impression card from an eighty-one-year-old visitor and his wife that said, “Thank you for stirring up our geriatric blood!” It is impossible to fall asleep when Saddleback sings. We want our music to have both a spiritual and emotional impact on people. The I, M, P, and T of the IMPACT acronym I shared in the last chapter are all songs with an upbeat tempo. A and C songs are slower and more meditative. Unbelievers usually prefer celebrative music over contemplative music because they don’t yet have a relationship with Christ.
Update the lyrics
There are many good songs that can be used in a seeker service by just changing a word or two in order to make them understandable to unbelievers. References to biblical metaphors and theological terms in a song may need to be translated or reworded. If the Bible needs to be translated from seventeenth-century English for seekers, so do the obscure lyrics of older songs.
If you use hymns, this sometimes requires major editing. “Here I raise mine Ebenezer,” “Beulah land,” “terrestrial ball,” “cherubim and seraphim,” “angels prostrate fall,” and “washed in the blood of the Lamb” are all confusing phrases to the unchurched. They have no idea what you’re singing about.
The unchurched are likely to think that “the balmin Gilead” is a song about terrorists!
Some members will insist that there’s good theology in the old hymns. I agree. Why not edit out the archaic terms and put the lyrics to a contemporary tune? Remember, there’s nothing sacred about the music. Dress up some of those old friends in new clothes. If you print congregational songs in your program, you are allowed to edit the lyrics if the song is in the public domain.
By the way, some contemporary praise choruses are just as confusing as hymns when it comes to terminology. Unbelievers have no idea what “Jehovah Jireh” means. You might as well be singing “Mumbo Magumbo!”
Encourage members to write new songs
Every congregation should be encouraged to compose worship songs. If you study church history, you’ll discover that every genuine revival has always been accompanied by new music. New songs say, “God is doing something here and now, not just a hundred years ago.” Every generation needs new songs to express its faith.
Psalm 96:1 says, “Sing to the Lord a new song” (italics added). Sadly, in most churches they are still singing the same old songs. The Columbia Record Company once did a study and discovered that after a song is sung fifty times, people no longer think about the meaning of the lyrics—they just sing it
by rote.
We love old songs because of the emotional memories they stir within us. There are certain songs, like “Victory in Jesus,” “I Surrender All,” and “So Send I You,” that automatically bring tears to my eyes because they remind me of significant spiritual turning points in my life. But these songs do not make the same impact on unbelievers, or even other believers, because they don’t share my memories.
Many churches overuse certain songs due to the personal preferences of either the pastor or the music leader. The repertoire of music is held hostage by the leader. What the minister of music or pastor likes should not be the determining factor in the style of music you use. Instead, use your target to determine your style.
If you really want to know if you are using worn-out songs in your services I challenge you to try an experiment next Sunday: Videotape the faces of your congregation while they sing the songs during the service. When people sing the same old songs, apathy and boredom show up on their faces. Predict-ability has killed more worship services than any other factor.
A song loses its testimonial power if people aren’t thinking about what they’re singing. But songs can be a powerful witness to unbelievers when people sing songs they feel deeply about.
Many of the gospel songs of the first half of this century tend to glorify the Christian experience rather than Christ. In contrast, today’s most effective worship songs are love songs sung directly to God. This is biblical worship. We are told at least seventeen times in Scripture to sing to the Lord. In contrast, most hymns are sung about God. The strength of many contemporary worship songs is that they are Godcentered, rather than man-centered.
Replace the Organ with a MIDIBand
With today’s technology any church can have the same quality and sound of music that is heard on professionally produced albums. All you need is a MIDI keyboard and some MIDI discs. The beauty of using MIDI is that you can use it to “fill in the gaps” wherever you lack instrumentalists. For instance, if you have a keyboard player, trumpet player, and a guitarist, but lack a bass player and a drummer, you can simply add the MIDI track for bass and drums to your “live” musicians. If no one in your church is familiar with using MIDI technology you can get instructions from almost any music store.
At our size, Saddleback now has a complete pop/rock orchestra, but most churches aren’t large enough to assemble that. If I were beginning a new church today, I’d find a person who knew something about MIDI and give him or her a keyboard. MIDI was not around when I started Saddleback, and I sometimes wonder how many more people we might have reached in our early years if we’d had MIDI-quality music in
our services.
When I took our music preference survey, I couldn’t find a single person who said, “I listen to organ music on the radio.” About the only place you can still hear a pipe organ is in church. What does that say to you? Think this through: We invite the unchurched to come and sit on seventeenth-century chairs (which we call pews), sing eighteenth-century songs (which we call hymns), and listen to a nineteenth-century instrument (a pipe organ), and then we wonder why they think we’re out-of-date! I’m afraid that we’ll be well into the twentyfirst century before some churches start using the instruments of the twentieth century.
You must decide whether your church is going to be a music conservatory for the musical elite or whether your church is going to be a place where common people can bring unsaved friends and hear music they understand and enjoy. At Saddleback, we use music for the heart, not for the art.
Don’t force unbelievers to sing
Use more performed music than congregational singing in your service for seekers. Visitors do not feel comfortable singing tunes they don’t know and words they don’t understand. It is also unrealistic to expect the unchurched to sing songs of praise and commitment to Jesus before they become believers. That’s getting the cart before the horse.
Unchurched visitors often feel awkward during the
congregational singing portion of your service. Since they don’t know the songs, and the songs speak of praise and commitment to Jesus, they are forced to stand there while everyone else sings. This is especially embarrassing in a small church, because everyone notices if you aren’t singing. On the other hand, unchurched visitors feel very comfortable listening to performed music, if it is in a style to which they can relate. So focus on performed music in your seeker service and save times of extended congregational praise for your believers’ service. (At our believers’ service we regularly spend thirty to forty minutes in uninterrupted praise and worship.)
Understand that the larger your church gets, the more congregational singing can be used in the seeker service. This is because when an unchurched visitor is surrounded by a thousand other people, no one cares if he’s singing or not. He or she can hide in the crowd and listen without feeling watched, soaking up the emotion of the moment.
Although it is better not to have extended congregational praise in a seeker service, I believe it is a mistake to remove it from a seeker service entirely because it is a powerful, emotional element. When believers sing in harmony together, it creates a sense of intimacy in even a large gathering. This intimacy impresses the unchurched, who can sense something good is happening even if they can’t explain it.
To “harmonize” means “to bring into agreement.” When believers sing in harmony together it is an audible expression of the unity and fellowship of the body. Each person is singing
his part while listening to the others in order to blend. There is something profoundly attractive about believers singing together in sincere, heartfelt praise. It is a witness that these normal-looking people really do have a relationship to Christ and to each other.
Make Your Music Count
Although music is usually the most controversial element of a seeker service, it is a critical element that cannot be ignored. We need to understand the incredible power of music and harness that power by being willing to set aside our own personal preferences and use the music that will best reach the unchurched for Christ.