Should Your Church Stop Singing On Sundays?

May 17

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Listen… Before you start calling my best friends to make sure that I’m still saved… I’m the first person that would say that music is an integral part of the believer’s expression of worship. It’s an amazing gift and valuable tool given to us by the LORD for personal and corporate times of worship. In fact, I’ve made a living helping local churches maximize their creative potential — commonly musically related — and genuinely believe that many local churches are doing a great job of stewarding the musical and creative gifts of the people who call their church home. My vocational calling has been intrinsically tied to music for over 10 years. I believe that the church has been, and should always be, a place where people can fall in love with creativity and pursue innovative and purposeful, passionate art. Biblically, there is an overwhelming precedent set for the people of God using music as a tool for personal and corporate worship. I believe that it is a unique gift that God genuinely loves.

But, I also believe that more than ever churches need to approach their culture — models, philosophies, budgets, staffing, programming — with intentionality. They need to ask, ‘why’. Why do we include music in our corporate gatherings? Why do we pour resources, time and energy into facilitating an opportunity for live music to be used as a tool on a weekly basis? Why do most of our church meetings include a time of worship through song? Why. At the base level of culture, the why is fundamentally important; it is the backbone of healthy, intentional, value-driven vision that informs decisions. Poor cultures are led by preferences or traditions and commonly skirt the question of ‘why’ to focus on other questions like ‘how, who or when.’ So, for the sake of healthy and impactful church cultures, I find myself playing the role of devil’s advocate — for lack of a better term — and asking the hard, sometimes cringe, questions like ‘why’.

I’m not here to intentionally offend you… I just want to ask some honest questions. Let’s talk about music and song as a tool with which we can accomplish the vision and mission of our churches. At the end of this conversation, I hope that you can confidently answer the why or that at least your heart has been stirred to investigate more thoroughly your church’s culture. I also hope that you’re inspired to intentionally pour in resources and invest in the musicians that call your church home so that they can steward their gifts and serve with excellence in your context. This is ultimately about building stronger people who contribute to stronger churches and have greater impact in their communities while accomplishing their unique, God-given purpose.

Why do we gather?

As easy at it could be to sit and deconstruct thought patterns and models of church, I would like to take a more constructive approach. Let’s call them renovations. Some rooms need to be stripped down to the studs while others just need a new coat of paint, right? I’m sure that when you ask yourself the question, ‘why do we gather corporately as a church’ there’s at least some ideas that go through your mind. I don’t know if there’s a one-size-fits-all approach; each church is unique and some may differ in focus or purpose when it comes to mission. In my opinion, it should at least include worshipping the Lord, encouraging and edifying the believers and continuing to develop a meaningful and authentic community. Perhaps yours also includes an evangelistic focus or missional element. Regardless, it’s important that we define what we’re hoping to achieve by meeting together.

Ok, once you’ve defined that for yourself now we can start investigating our worship, production and creative arts departments. The ultimate question being, ’is our musical expression honestly contributing towards fulfilling our purpose for gathering?’ Another way of phrasing that is…

Is our church’s music a win?

What do I mean by that? Let’s pull off the bandaid… For many churches, their expression of worship music is not inspirational. Volunteer musicians who are amateur-at-best are partnered with a duct-tape production value to provide an 18-25 minute set that is suffered through by the congregation. If we’re being honest it’s more of a burden than a blessing, more painful than prophetic. While very few local churches can — or should try to — aspire to the level of musicianship and production that comes from a ‘megachurch’, there is something to be said for skillful playing that is not only pleasant to the ear but that inspires the listener. While the Bible shows clear examples of the people of God using music for the purpose of corporate worship, it also explicitly states that it should be skillful. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time imagining David hiring musicians for 24/7, 365 temple worship that couldn’t play a 4 bar progression cleanly, struggled to keep time or consistently sang out of pitch. Is your church’s musical expression helping or hurting, building or distracting, from its’ purpose?

No, I don’t think comparing your church’s level of musicality to the church of 40,000 people two states over that produces an album every year and has paid, touring musicians on stage every weekend is healthy or realistic. I do, however, think that a fair, contextualized comparison should be drawn. I call it ‘The Local Bar Test’. Head on down to a local bar, lounge or coffee shop that has live music on a Friday night and check out what it sounds and feels like. Remember, the people that play here aren’t touring musicians who are in the middle of a 23-city arena tour promoting their latest record. These are people who probably hold down day jobs but are passionate about their music and want to share it with a live audience. My hope is that you’ll notice what people in your community are anticipating from something that is local and homegrown. The venue is different but the enjoyment from the audience can be paralleled to the engagement of your congregation.

But what about the gifts?

I’m a firm believer that it is the responsibility of the leadership of local churches to give its’ members opportunities to use their gifts. And I think that was probably your immediate rebuttal to the local bar test… It’s not a perfect metaphor, I can respect that. The church isn’t an audience, it’s a congregation; we focus on engagement over entertainment. But, can I challenge our philosophy on gifts for a moment?

Many people believe that each individual’s gifts are given to them for the act of worship; their own unique expression of praise to God. In reality,

“Scripture speaks of gifts given to the believer by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of serving the body of Christ; edifying and encouraging the church and leading people into a clearer revelation of the person who is Jesus and His place of Lordship in their lives.”

Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 12 is a key passage exemplifying this. We can’t separate the gifts of the believer from their place within the body. Our gifts aren’t about us, they’re about serving others. Would it then be a bold extension to suggest that if someone’s use of their gifts was not edifying or encouraging to the body but actually something that the body was being forced to endure that it is not a Biblical use of the gift? Maybe it’s a gift issue? Maybe it’s a stewardship of the gift issue? Personally, I am convicted the stewardship of someone’s gift is as important as their use of it. These gifts were never intended for our own personal pleasure and we have to look at them through that lens. They aren’t for the bar or the bedroom, they’re for the body. As musicians, we bring our gifts to the body with a posture to serve and not to receive personal praise or admiration for our talent nor to personally get some time in with Jesus while 80-120 people watch on. What if you were hosting a church meal and the person who was responsible for cooking the food was a passionate home-chef; they had all the Magnolia Table books and subscribed to Meat Church’s YouTube channel. But when they cooked for the church they consistently undercooked chicken, overcooked fish and burnt the hamburgers? Point made, let’s move on…

While the gifts of the creative arts, including musicianship, commonly are highlighted within the local church, they are not the only gifts in operation. In fact, the majority of your church is not musically inclined. For some of them, they have never picked up an instrument; for others, they wouldn’t complain if they never got the chance to pick one up again. As church leaders, we can bend over backwards to find people who have played music and then try our best to turn them into musicians when they would probably be more effective serving in other ministries or roles. We can’t be so committed to the model that we neglect where people’s true, God-given gifts are; forcing them into what we need instead of what’s best for them.

Are we stuck with no music in our church until the Lord returns?

Coming quickly back to the value of beautifully-made music as an incredibly tool for worship and encouragement, my short answer is: I hope not. My long answer? Let’s talk about developing people off of the stage.

My musical journey was largely impacted by opportunities that were afforded to me in small, local churches when I was a teenager. My parents had invested in piano lessons for me and my brother for years and were both musicians and worship leaders. Our house was filled with worship music daily. I teethed on early Maranatha and Vineyard charts that my dad stored in the piano bench with our family’s upright. When my uncle asked if my mom and dad would join his worship team at the Baptist church they attended there was an offer extended to my brother and I as well. My dad played piano so naturally I had to pick a different instrument. I took all of the money I earned during the summer and bought a Squier’ Stop Dreaming, Start Playing’ P-Bass that came with it’s very own Fender Rumble amp and instructional DVD. Two weeks later, I was on stage for a Sunday morning with two music stands in front of me: one for my chord charts and one reminding me where the notes on the neck were. A couple of years later, I was hacking away on an acoustic guitar with the team and eventually given opportunities to lead for specials (remember those…) and youth worship.

Would I have ever become the musician and worship leader I am today without those opportunities? I honestly don’t think so. Was that a different time when resources weren’t as readily available for aspiring musicians in the church world? Absolutely. I joke with young musicians now about what it was like to learn parts to songs before YouTube or Spotify. I would take my CD player out and blast early Hillsong United and Desperation Band records while I learnt the bass lines or chord progressions by ear. For some of you, that approach still feels modern compared to what you had when you first started.

Today, the sheer number of resources that are available for musicians in the praise and worship genre is staggering. From free online resources to subscriptions and everywhere in between, there is no excuse for someone to say that they don’t have the tools in front of them to learn and master an instrument. So instead of putting the novice drummer up on the skins to hit stuff off-beat and make the congregation wince, why not equip them with real tools and resources to grow off stage and ask them to wait until they’ve stewarded their instrument to minister to the congregation? God commonly prepares in private what He will promote in public. If they need the incentive of playing in front of people to encourage their growth, their priorities are probably misaligned and they need mentorship. If you don’t have anyone in the church that can mentor them on a personal or musical level, why not ask a more experienced or mature musician in the area to take them under their wing?

“Investing in the musicians of your church doesn’t mean that you have to put them on the stage. Just because a person isn’t ready to play on stage for a corporate gathering doesn’t mean that they can’t be encouraged and given resources in the hope that they will steward their gift and bring a more matured version of it to the church in the future.”

The bar is too high to be accessible…

You’re right, the bar is high these days. Great music that is professionally engineered and mixed is readily accessible at your congregation’s finger tips. Your people might be listening to a live worship album with post-recorded vocals from a full-time artist that have been tuned and mixed by some of the best talent in the world on their way to church and then walking into… Welp… Honestly, I think most people have a relative amount of grace for the local church and know that what they see on YouTube is going to be different. But subconsciously, they’ve been conditioned to expect pitch perfect vocals, smooth transitions and quality mixing. And that’s not even starting the conversation about what the people who aren’t from your church think when they walk in to check you out.

The reality is, putting together a small band on a minimalist stage with low-level production value is still going to be relatively expensive. The cost of putting together weekly corporate worship is probably your church’s third highest expense after staffing and facilities. There are resources, time and energy that have to go into maintaining the space and preparing for each weekend. The hope is that it at least looks and sounds presentable — you’re talking about a generation of people that will scroll through a reel or short at a rapid rate if you don’t get their attention. And look, I’m not talking about your church putting on its’ version of Hillsong or Elevation — contextualized excellence is beautiful and important. One person leading well from an acoustic guitar is always going to be better than a group of people leading poorly in a full band. But even the most basic musical environments take a level of intentionality which requires time, energy and resources.

Odds are, you’re feeling defeated by a lack of engagement from your congregation during corporate worship. It’s ok, you’re not alone. A lot of pastors and worship leaders are right there with you. I do believe that ultimately our congregations’ engagement in worship is a discipleship issue but the environment that we provide for them to focus their attention and affection on Jesus has to at least be conducive to its purpose. And I do believe it, money doesn’t grow on trees. Most local churches are moving forward with limited resources and are already stretching as thin as they can to do what they’re currently doing. To have enough money to take your teams and facilities up to a base standard of expectation would be the equivalent of a fish-loaves style miracle.

So…. What are the solutions??

Maybe it feels like we just took your living room down to the studs… Or at least we just looked at paint chips for the last 15 minutes… As with any renovation, thoughts, conversations and ideas have to eventually lead to a strategy. To recap our conversation, we acknowledge that the musical expression of our churches are not automatically a win for our congregations. In some instances, they are not fulfilling the larger purposes of our communities; in others, it’s actually distracting from or becoming a barrier to those goals. We can’t justify it as an outlet for our people’s gifts and bringing our musicianship and production value up to an acceptable level is a difficult task that will requires a lot of resources.

We’re at a point where we feel comfortable asking questions like,

Is our use of music in some contexts not achieving, or potentially distracting from, important goals such as intentional discipleship, meaningful community, ministering to individuals and families or impactful evangelism?
Can we accomplish those important goals and fulfill the purpose of our corporate gatherings with music?
Can our mission, vision and values stay the same while we shift our model to better achieve the results that we feel convicted to pursue?
Could the time, energy or money being spent on our current worship environment be better spent elsewhere and allow us to see greater impact in our community?

I think, at the end of this conversation, you probably find yourself in one of two groups of people…

Group A — I have a renewed desire to see the musical expression of my church be a beautiful tool to inspire people and fix their focus on Jesus.

What if you…

Work with your leadership to identify and establish your expectations for musicians serving in your context.
Consider taking a break from weekly music in your services for a season to focus on training musicians and other creative team members.
Bring in a consultant or coach to help identify next steps and areas for growth.
Resource your musicians with tools to encourage stewardship and personal improvement.

Group B — I think our musical expression of worship is distracting us from our larger goals but I can’t imagine how we would replace that element in our weekly gatherings.