126. Mark Reagan Interview (Postmillennialism and Music)

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 126,

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Postmillennialism in Music. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to our interview week where we're doing interviews this week before we get to our next series, which is 10

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Reasons Voting Democrat is a Sin. It's going to be a great series. Now, before that,

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I wanted to share with you some great interviews. Today is no exception. We're going to be talking to the music leader at Christ Church.

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That's Pastor Doug Wilson's church, and we're going to be talking to him how Postmillennialism informs the way that he thinks about music, and he thinks about especially music in the church.

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So enjoy, and we'll see you next week on our new series. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the broadcast.

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It is my pleasure, and what a blessing it is today to be talking to my brother in Christ, a man

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I've just recently, just now even, been able to meet and get to know. His name is Mark Reagan.

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He is the music director at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Mark, thank you so much for being on the show today.

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Welcome. Great to be with you. Yeah. So for anyone who doesn't know about you, doesn't know what you do at Christ Church, you know, kind of what's your background, and you can talk about education, family, anything you want, but help us get to know you.

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Okay. Well, I'll start with a present. So yeah, I'm director of music at Christ Church, Moscow.

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I've been doing that since 2019, and actually, it's my second time doing this job.

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I met my dear wife Corinne here. She was a student at New St.

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Andrews College, and we met and married back in the early 2000s, and then moved away to go to school, and then came back to direct music at Christ Church.

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So I've been involved in the ministry here for a number of years, a number of times.

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Yeah. And so I do have a doctorate in music. That's actually what we left

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Moscow for me to complete, was my doctorate in choral music and choral conducting.

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And finished that while I was ABD for a while, and was teaching school in the

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Mid -Atlantic region, and then came back here in 2019 after I finished the degree, and worked a little bit for New St.

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Andrews, sort of as a side gig. And what takes up most of my time is sort of sitting at the helm of the music ministry here at the church.

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Yeah. I mean, that about covers it. So I direct choir,

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I'm a composer, and a lot of the day -to -day that I'm involved in is just liturgy, planning, choosing music, preparing new hymn and psalm settings for the congregation.

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So it actually does take a bit of time. I'm a slow mover, but it takes a lot of time to assemble a worship service thoughtfully.

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So that's what I do a lot during the week. That's awesome. And I want to get into some of those nuts and bolts and just talk more about that in a moment.

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But for now, let's jump right into post -millennialism, because that's why you said yes to the show.

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You are a guy who is post -millennialist. So what does that mean as a doctrine?

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What is post -millennialism? Sure. Well, you're sort of going through a series on practical post -millennialism.

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I do think of post -millennialism very practically, actually.

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I do think it really is an application of faithfulness, is the way

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I see it, and that we plow and hope that the

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Lord would bless our efforts. So that we're told in 1 Corinthians 15, in Paul's long explanation about the resurrection, his application is that our efforts in the

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Lord will be blessed, that they're not in vain, that we should be joyful in the work that the

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Lord has given us, expecting that he is blessing them, and there will be an increase to that.

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So I'm not a theologian, and I'm not a minister of the

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Word, so I wouldn't be able to explain post -millennialism by proof -texting it.

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But what I can say is that, based on images that we have in Scripture, and images that we see revealed in the world, that God does expect faithfulness with the things that he gives us, not that he might destroy them.

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You know, you set your hand to the plow, you don't expect the dust bowl the next day.

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It could happen, but we expect that we set our hand to the plow so that we'll plant a crop and reap a harvest.

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And that's normative, that's the way the Lord has made the world. And when you look at other places in Scripture, this is borne out, so when

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Jesus tells the parable of the talents, you know, he expects the things, the resources that he invests in us will be invested, we'll invest in them, we'll use them, we will, through our using of them, we'll try to bear fruit.

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He gives us the responsibility of doing that. And the promise from him is that as he gives us those opportunities, that he will grant that increase.

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So that's sort of how I see post -millennialism, you know, and because I work in music and the arts, we just think that's very important, that God is a creative God, that he's made all things, he's worked his hands.

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And so we as his image bearers, to one degree or another, are also sub -creators, and he's glorified in that, so long as we're doing it to his glory, that we're imitating him, that we're taking principles from his word and bearing them out.

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So to be, I'm getting a little long -winded here, Kendall.

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It's all good, brother. To be, you know, to create something that won't have the ability to bless, will not have the ability to last, but is something that is only for, you know, maybe just for you for a day and not for your children or not for your community, not to share with actually bear fruit and bless people is a rather discouraging prospect, you know.

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Rather, you know, that we create, we make things in the hope that God will bless them, use them.

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We pray that God will bless our efforts so that we might be a blessing to others around us.

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Right. Yeah, you said right, sort of right off the beginning, that 1

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Corinthians 15 passage was such a great passage on what the future of the world looks like.

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He must reign until he puts all of his enemies under his feet, and until that point, your labor is not in vain.

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And this is why I wanted to do this series, and I'm so glad you touched upon this point, because we live in a world that we've inherited a sort of a dispensational framework for a long time, and even a pre -millennial, historic pre -millennial framework where it feels a lot like our labor in this world is in vain.

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We're just organizing deck chairs on a sinking ship. And what you just pointed out, and what

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I really want our people who are listening to this to be able to see is that no, our labor in the

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Lord is not in vain. So if you're good at music, well, make music to the glory of Christ.

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If you're an engineer, build things that are going to last for a thousand years. Whatever field you're in, we have to get rid of this sort of sacred -secular divide, this functional

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Gnosticism that's come into the world and into the church, and remind people that your labor does matter, and that whatever you do, you should do it to the glory of God, and you should do it so that it will last, so that it blesses your grandchildren.

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I'm so glad you covered those topics, because I think that's so critical, and it's optimistic.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, and if you look at what

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Adam was doing in the garden, he was a gardener, tending to the plants and the animals there.

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And if you go to plant seeds and you think, these are not going to sprout, and they're not going to yield a crop, then you're not even going to start.

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And unfortunately, this dispensational trend in Christianity, and I see it in American Christianity a lot, and I'm sure it's worldwide, has been very detrimental.

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Fortunately, there's a lot of people that are inconsistent. I mean, if you're a Christian businessman and you're a dispensationalist, you've got to make money, you've got to eat.

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And I expect that you're going to do your job with the tenacity to make money and to see that it succeeds, but that would be at odds with your theology.

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Yeah, I tend to think about dispensationalism as the quintessential boomer theology.

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Forgive me, I'm not trying to say it in a disrespectful way, but there's a generation that is consuming and consuming and consuming the wealth that they've saved up for a lifetime instead of saving it for future generations.

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And that to me seems like, what's the point of saving for our children? What's the point of giving a legacy to our children?

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The world's just going to burn anyway. That sort of mentality has really taken a hold of the church.

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Right. I guess the question is, we don't know when. Right. There's a lot of people who say, well,

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Jesus is coming back tomorrow, so whatever that means.

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Either you need to look busy or just cool your jets, sit down and just wait for it.

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I often tell people, this is a side note, but I tell people, hey, if Jesus prayed something, do you expect that the prayers of Christ would be answered?

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If there's anyone who's going to have 100 % answered prayer rate, wouldn't it be Jesus? And of course, yeah,

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Jesus, everything he prayed, God's going to answer. Okay, great. Would Jesus pray that the church would be perfected in unity?

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Do you believe that he's going to answer that prayer? And then they're a little more hesitant. They say, well, yeah. Okay, so it's probably a long time before he returns because that prayer has not been answered yet.

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And that's a side note. Brother, tell me about music. I play guitar very imperfectly.

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I'm a campfire guitar player, like I can strum chords, but it does something to me.

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It invigorates something in me when I do it. It touches me in a different level than other activities.

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What is music? Where did it come from? Why is it such a gift from the

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Lord? I'm assuming in PhD studies in music, you have great answers to this.

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I just know that I like it. I have no intelligent answers for where did it come from?

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Why did God make it? All these things. Right, yeah. And I think we're still trying to figure some of that out. My studies of it, the music that's made tends to reflect the values of the people to one degree or another.

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So if you're trying to identify what it is, you can go pretty far with developing an ancient understanding that we've inherited from the

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Greeks and then the early church, medieval church carried on.

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So the idea is that music is an object lesson or a picture of God's order in the cosmos.

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You know, that God has structured the universe in a very orderly way, not in a random chaotic way.

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Oh, that's good. And so music is really another way of just representing music or explaining it, describing it as the idea of harmony, that music is, that's what music actually is.

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Music is orderly, it's harmonic, it's not chaotic, it's not shattered or fragmented.

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But it holds together, flows together, and it's orderly and unified, just as the

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God of the Trinity is as well. So I think you can get pretty far with that definition.

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So even if you're a campfire guitarist and you're strumming, you're singing, from that point of view, you're tapping into something that's orderly.

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And it brings you joy to be engaged in that way, to sort of, you're in the flow of traffic, you know, the way that God has made things.

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So I think that's a lot of it, you know. That's so good. Yeah, so I probably would start there.

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I mean, there's problems with that. The medievals were so, the medieval church were so taken with this idea about heavenly music that it was like the best music to them was the music you couldn't actually hear with your ears, which is, doesn't, that seems completely impractical to the way we experience it.

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Because in fact, when we sing, when we harmonize, when we join our voices in song, it does, you know, it resonates with us emotionally and physically too.

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And just to say, well, that's, you know, that's not the important, important music is the music that's out there in the heavenlies somewhere.

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So I do think that that's a good, it's a good starting point. It's really just tapping into God's order in the universe and sensing that.

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It makes so much sense though, as you're saying it, like, I don't know why I've never thought about it this way before, but in Genesis 1,

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God is hovering over the raw material. And then part of the creational project is after he hovers over it, showing that he rules over the raw material, then he orders it and he arranges it.

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And he has, he's taking it and making it into something beautiful.

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That's what music is. I mean, you've got these, you've got these, what is it? 12 basic notes,

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I think, or something like that. You've got these 12 basic notes. And from that, you arrange them in orderly and beautiful ways into symphonies and orchestras and whatever.

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And you're taking something that's unfashioned and you're ordering it. It sounds to me like we are imitating the very image of God when we make music.

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Mm -hmm. Oh, yeah. Right. And it can be, you know, in modern music, if you're talking about like sort of music of the academy, they've tried to escape all that.

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And it's not because they haven't tried to be creative or, you know, use their minds and their wills to order things the way that we see

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God ordering them in the first chapters of the Bible. But that they've sort of escaped from the reality of actually how

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God has made tones to work. You know, so you're right that a composer or a songwriter is sort of bringing order to the chaos.

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But there's already, you know, we're sub creators with the materials that God has made for us to use.

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And we don't become gods in ourselves by sort of rejecting

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His natural order of things as well.

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I don't know if that makes sense to you. It does. Yeah. But, you know, there's been a lot of...

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Well, we live in an age when in the arts, and certainly, I mean, you see this, the whole trans movement is this way where it's that we really want to be gods ourselves.

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And we want to be able to create our own realities for things.

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And that whole project has been with us, actually, for a number of decades.

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You see that in the arts. But as you take the materials as God has created them and intended for them to be used, you know, we can create an infinite number of beautiful things and glorify

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Him. Why do you think that the arts are particularly susceptible to this kind of just idolatry, even, of that I'm going to be

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God? I'm going to use my creativity, which, as you said, is sub -creational at its base.

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Why do you think the arts seem to be particularly susceptible to going off the rails, even?

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Music today, I mean, you just look at the top 10 songs right now. There's so much demonic just undertones to it.

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It's licentiously sexual. It feels like that this tool that God has given us, whether it be video, images, you know, whatever, is particularly susceptible to going off the rails and also has the potential to be quite glorious.

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Why do you think that it seems to be so polarizing in that way? Yeah, I think it's just very susceptible to a type of atheism or man -centeredness.

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You know, historically, the Church was at the center of creating art and seeing art develop or patronizing or commissioning art to one degree or another.

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And so, there were theological ties. There was, you could even say, the preached word was tied to the creation of art.

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And eventually, we got to the point where that whole system, I wouldn't call it a system, but that whole idea that the

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Church was involved started to break down. It just became more, art became developed more as in line with a free agency or a result of a free agency in the arts.

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So, the individual became the arbiter, the decider of what was beautiful and what should stand for art.

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And so, there's a sort of a hyper -individualism, hyper -self -expression that you're really trying to explore the hidden recesses of your soul, of your psyche, and kind of vomit that out.

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Yeah. And that's the artistic expression. And that's why,

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I mean, you're saying, like, these songs are demonic. I mean, what in the heart of man, apart from Christ, isn't demonic.

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It can't, you know, the heart is all sorts of evil.

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So, the individual cut off from Revelation, cut off from God, cut off from the Church, is just going to produce that sort of stuff.

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Let me ask you this, just maybe so I can understand it a little better. Different tools have different capacities.

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So, a hammer can do wonderful work on a construction site, and it can also do damage on a small scale if you use it inappropriately as a weapon.

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Nuclear power can do great wonders as far as bringing energy to large groups of people, much bigger than a small construction site.

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It can power an entire city, or it could destroy an entire city. So, it seems to me that music is a very powerful tool that can either be used for great good or great evil.

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Is that a fair way to represent what music is? Yes. Yes, that's right.

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And it has, you know, and I think part of what we've experienced here in our corporate worship at our church in Moscow is, and I'm constantly surprised by it, that there's a real potency to the music.

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We're doing so -called traditional music, traditional psalms and hymns that, you know, really are looking to the past for our materials and our inspiration.

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But when we sing that, we sing that with a loud and unified voice, it does have, in the moment, it's very potent.

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It also has the potency to develop unity in the body and encourage the faith of the believers.

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So, it does have an incredible potential for good or for evil.

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So, if you're giving, if you're piping in songs that are catchy but are evil, that they're pushing people in the wrong direction, that would be catastrophic to people,

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I think. I think we're seeing it, you know, just when you look at the kind of music that we're producing as a society, it's heartbreaking, actually.

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Like, you know, the inner Puritan in us could probably say, oh, how dare they?

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But really, if you think about it, this is, like you said earlier, music comes out of a visceral place.

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It comes out of a place of, let's see, raw emotion.

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This is how I'm feeling. So, for instance, I was watching a YouTube video the other day on how there's only one modern song that this guy who was doing the

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YouTube video knows of that used all 12 notes, and it's a Nirvana song. And the lyrics are just so desperate and depressed and defeated and dejected, and just listening to the song, even though it's catchy, it just makes you be like, you know, what's my life all about?

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It just, it brings you down. Well, the thing, if you're gonna, yeah, I'd have to watch the video to see what they say about it.

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It's interesting that they would use all 12 tones, but you know, you don't need all 12 tones to make it.

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In fact, if you try to use all of them, you know, so we're talking about, you take a piano keyboard, and you go from a

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C to the next C up, and you play every key, including white, black, all the way through, those are 12 pitches.

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You don't need all 12 pitches to write music. You only, most, to show musical unity, at the most, you would actually need a seven, and that's like the

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C major scale, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and then you circle back around.

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That's seven pitches. That's all you would need. To actually go beyond the seven and use all 12,

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I mean, that's a challenge to do that, but we're not, you know, we don't need to do that.

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That can actually start to fracture the music beyond, even beyond your ability to control it in a certain sense, and that may be what, you know,

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Kurt Cobain, or I expect he probably wrote this song, maybe it was after, is that some of these modern composers, were they as sort of egalitarian thinking, like, well, we're going to take these 12 pitches and treat them all as equal.

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Well, then you have no center to, you know, the center can't hold because there's no center.

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It's all kind of free flowing and everything's equal. That was sort of my point, is listening to the song with, that tries to employ, purposely tries to employ all 12 notes, didn't feel unified.

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It didn't feel like it had a center, like you're saying. It feels random. Yeah. It feels random, and that's what he's trying to convey in the lyrics.

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It sounds like, I don't know the song, but it sounds like he's trying to convey that sense of random hopelessness, meaninglessness.

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Right. Because everything is, because there's no, there's no helpful hierarchy in the man's life.

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You know, he doesn't, he's not a, he's not a father, a husband.

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He doesn't go to church. He doesn't see himself as a citizen, a part of the community, you know, that sort of thing.

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He's just this sort of free agent, free floating individual. Right. Right.

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That's exactly the emotions that the song conveys, and as you said, it can, that's catastrophic when that's the anthems that are being played to our people, and especially to our young people.

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I think about, I'm assuming because you're from Moscow, you've read everything that Tolkien and Lewis have ever written.

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Oh, yeah. Well, I've memorized it, too. Wow, that's amazing. You guys are just...

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Yeah, I know, yeah. Moscow's the shire of America, I love it. Well, it's, no, we're far from perfect.

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But... I'm catching up, I'm catching up. Oh, praise the Lord, me too. Yeah. But it strikes me that both

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Lewis in Narnia and Tolkien in the Cimmerillion have the creation of the cosmos, of their world, created through song, not through spoken word, as it seems to indicate in Genesis 1, but through singing creation into existence.

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And I was just thinking, as you were talking about Kurt Cobain, there's like a spirit of Melkor, if you've read the

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Cimmerillion, the Arrow of Luvatar sings the creation into existence, and it's beautiful, and then

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Melkor comes with a discordant note, and that discordant note is the chaos and the sin and the brokenness that ends up being cast down upon Middle -earth and in Arda.

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That sort of discordant note that we see in our society today is powerful, and it's breaking things in the process.

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It's breaking people, breaking our society. It's a... Catastrophic's a great word you used.

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Yeah, well, the interesting thing is, it's sort of in God's economy and the way that he has dealt with us, is he's taken the discord and he's redeemed it.

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And in fact, we have in music, and even in good music, music that's influenced by Christian worldview, we have the idea of dissonance in the music, but we don't leave it there.

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The dissonance moves on to resolution, consonance, and rest.

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And we see revealed in Jesus Christ the idea of God being a redeeming

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God. And again, I'm not a theologian, but without God actually redeeming anything, he wouldn't be revealed as such.

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He wouldn't be revealed as a redeemer. So even those discordant notes that are added in, and it's almost a taunt saying, well,

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God, how are you going to deal with this? Well, he's able to, without being flippant, he's able to make great lemonade out of lemons.

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So I was going to say in your earlier point that one advantage that Christians have, this is post -monial thinking, is that we do actually have, in some ways, our songs maybe are not as powerful.

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They're certainly not amped up to the degree that you hear songs on the radio.

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They're not as, and they don't have that popularity that songs on the radio do. But they are actually corporate songs sung corporately as opposed to a song that's just sung by one person that, frankly, in popular music, those songs come and go.

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You know, they're played for a while. They make it to the top of the charts, and then they go away.

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They're replaced by something else. Probably something else that's equally as bad in terms of its message.

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But those songs aren't meant to be sung corporately. They're not anthems in the same way that church music is, and they won't have the same potency and effect in the life of a community and the life of a church because they're not shared.

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They're a consequence of someone's idea in Nashville or wherever.

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It's something that has to be marketed and sold. But then they sell you something else.

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So there's sort of this transient revolving door that you have in popular music, which you don't have in church music.

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At least, that's not what we want. We want a corporate song that multi -generations can take part in in real time, all in the same room.

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But then in 10 years, in 20 years, that project is still continuing, even as people have moved on.

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They've died. They've gone to be with the Lord. But that song is still building that body and that community in faith.

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Let me ask this, because that's a great point. We talked about how music is central to the human image that God has given us, that it's powerful, that it reflects this idea of ordering chaos and bringing things into good order.

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And we would both argue that Christians are uniquely gifted to be able to do that because we know the gospel story.

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So you're mentioning how a good composition will take us from the trials—I'm not going to use the musical terms because that's not my field, and I can't even remember—dissonance and all that.

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But we do that as a reflection of the gospel. Here's the sinful parts in the struggle, in the mire, and then here's the resolution where Christ saves.

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And every sort of composition can have this overarching redemptive theme.

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Well, would you say—this is my question—that the reason why corporate singing is so powerful is because in the cultural mandate of taking dominion of the world, this is not an individual mandate.

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It's a mandate to a people, and to a people to take dominion of the earth, and music being a central tool in the dominion -making or dominion -extending process.

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Would that be a fair assessment? Your question is, is music a vital part of the dominion mandate?

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Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. How does— Maybe this is a question underneath the question.

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How does music take back culture? That's sort of what I'm getting at. If it's important for us as a corporate body to do it, well, how does it do it?

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Well, as I've been saying, music is a reflection of our corporate identity as a church and as a community.

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And so music isn't just—I've been thinking about this—I was writing another article, thinking about this the last few days, is that music is not just meant for the church, although that's where we're seeing a lot of attention, a lot of recovery right now, is the music of the church and corporate singing.

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But it also reflects other values such as our love for country, our love for our state community.

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You know, you sing happy birthday at birthday parties, so it's showing the love and appreciation for a person who we're celebrating that day.

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So music is deeply embedded in all kinds of cultural circles, whether that's in the church or outside of the church.

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So you would say music is enculturating, even? Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

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Right. And, you know, music—what I was saying earlier about music and sort of music in the academy or sort of the cutting edge or the avant -garde of artistic expression has been largely divided from the community to the extent that we sort of elevate the artist as some kind of genius that we need, or even a prophetic voice that we need to move our culture forward.

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And that's very foreign from what we've seen in history and how we experience community life and church life.

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You know, really the artist, the composer has a duty to create new things, but that's in keeping and in line with the values of the community already.

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You know, so far as that's a faithful community. Right. Yeah, so everyone is singing something, and everyone is using their songs to instantiate a kind of culture, and the culture that God has called us to build is what our songs reflect.

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It's the gospel. It's His awesomeness in creation. You look at the

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Psalms and all the theological themes that are there. I think the Psalms—I'd love to see a systematic theology written just about the themes that come out of the

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Psalms, because my thought is that every major category of theology shows up in the

39:13

Psalms. Oh, yeah. And why not? Because we're building a culture that's based off of the lordship and the worldview that God has given us.

39:27

Luther represented the Psalms, I'm paraphrasing pretty widely here, but he represented the book of Psalms as being the whole of Scripture in miniature, effectively.

39:43

That's good. So everything that you see happening elsewhere in the Bible is spoken about in the

39:50

Psalms in poetic form, so it's condensed into pithy lines and all that.

39:59

But yeah, in fact, our brothers that are exclusive psalm singers, if you look through their psalm collections, they, in fact, will do this.

40:10

They'll index, like you see in another hymnal, where the hymns will be indexed by theme, say, the birth of Christ, Christ's ministry,

40:21

Christ's ascension, that sort of thing. You find these categories indexed.

40:27

And they'll do the same thing with the Psalms. Of course, the Psalms don't speak specifically of Jesus Christ, but all the promises about Christ, all the fulfillments in Christ are there in the

40:41

Psalms as well. So you can flip through these indexes and see everything that God has revealed in Scripture is also there in the

40:53

Psalms too. Yeah, that makes so much sense.

40:59

And it also, as you were saying that, I was thinking about sort of the modern worship movement, you know,

41:08

Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation, all that stuff. I don't think there's anything wrong, obviously, with writing songs.

41:15

We're not exclusive psalm, psalmody. We're not EP in that way. But the real problem is, number one, theological narcissism in those songs, that it's really about me.

41:31

It's about me walking on the waters, me doing this. That's wrong, because all of our songs should be

41:38

God -centered. But even in our experience of God, there's a God centrality to it.

41:45

But also, those music groups avoid imprecatory -type messages.

41:54

They avoid the despair that we see in Psalm 44.

42:01

They avoid many of the themes that aren't uplifting. So they've taken a theme that God has given us, that there's joy or there's victory or there's whatever, and they've isolated that and made it the only theme.

42:15

So therefore, those churches tend to be fairly shallow, because the songs that they sing have a very shallow message.

42:24

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. Which is one reason why we should sing the psalms, because we do cover the waterfront, as I've been saying.

42:37

You know, one thing that—so I've listened to a few of your other episodes where you talk about music, the idea of getting men to sing.

42:49

I mean, masculinity is right there in the psalms. And so as we're trying to resist and keep sort of feminine, me -centered,

43:05

Jesus is my boyfriend, that sort of worship, we're trying to keep that at bay, then we should be singing the psalms, because that is like an immediate corrective to that sort of stuff.

43:19

And so you're right. In fact, we want to be worshiping

43:24

God faithfully. Again, I'm not an exclusive psalmist, but we should be singing the psalms, because that would just inform us in so many ways that we haven't considered as kind of modern evangelical people.

43:42

You ever had that moment, brother, where you read the Bible, and you're like, I've never seen this before.

43:49

I got that when I was in Colossians 3 .16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

43:58

And we hadn't even planted the Shepherd's Church yet, so we're a four -and -a -half -year -old church. We were ready to plant the church, and the

44:07

Lord just laid this verse on both my heart and the other elder's heart who was planting this church, and we're like, why don't we sing psalms?

44:16

And we have a whole hymn book here that God has given us, and I remember thinking to myself, why has no one ever told me this before?

44:22

Yeah, and it surprises people. I remember talking to my dad about that, because he wasn't familiar with the idea.

44:31

And at the time, I was going to another Presbyterian church where we're singing the psalms, at least supplementing our hymns with that, and he's like, well, why should we be singing this?

44:43

I mean, it just hasn't occurred to people that this is, you know, God has graciously given us a hymn book right at the center of the

44:54

Bible to sing to Him. He's filled our mouth with songs, so to speak, to offer back to Him.

45:05

Yeah, how gracious. So if I were to summarize what we've been talking about, and I think that this is such a powerful point, is that music defines and builds culture.

45:18

And your pastor, Pastor Douglas Wilson, has said recently many times, he said it on my podcast episode where I interviewed him, he said it on Tucker, he said it on a bunch of different places, that in order to fight in a culture war, you actually have to have a culture, in the same way that if you're going to fight in a naval warfare, you've got to have a navy, or a tank warfare, you've got to have tanks.

45:43

What I'm hearing is that if we are going to be the kind of church that can take ground in culture, we have to have a robust culture.

45:53

And one of the best ways that we can do that is by having a song ministry, or a ministry of music that actually builds that culture from within, right?

46:06

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so we're at the point in our ministry where, well, since COVID, 2020, we've had just a lot of people move here from all over the country.

46:30

They want to get out of a blue state or a blue city to a less hostile environment.

46:38

Moving from places like where I live to places where you live. I expect, well, you're in Massachusetts, right?

46:43

Right. So, yeah, quite hostile. We're in the midnight blue. But in any case, my thought is, well, we've got to make sure that these people are cared and fed, and make sure that they have directions given to them so they know what to do while they're here.

47:08

So, we've sort of ramped up in terms of our familiar songs, what we like to call song candy, which are songs that our community already likes to sing.

47:20

We can sing loud and confident. And so, prioritizing that sort of stuff so that people can kind of have a clear direction of, okay, what are these people about?

47:33

And what do they love? What are they doing? And so, that was a good plan.

47:42

And I think the Lord is blessing that. So, we're, and I don't want to brag on us, but we're pretty good at congregational singing while we're here.

47:55

So, what I'm hoping is with other projects, some projects that I work on is composing music or that other things in terms of concerts, other musical offerings.

48:10

We'll sort of see that congregational culture, congregational singing culture spill out into doing even greater things that are artistic expressions, manifestations would be just an overflow from our congregational singing.

48:36

But the building of our culture for the culture of war is just largely based on what we do on Sunday morning.

48:48

That as we gather to hear God speak to us in his word, we gather to partake in the sacraments, to offer prayers and offer praises through singing.

49:03

Discerning the body on that Sunday morning for an hour, hour and a half, that's culture building right there.

49:13

And so, we just want to see that to spill out in all sorts of ways,

49:19

Monday through Saturday. Right. And that's a great segue to this question. The pastors and the pastoral staff and all of that are responsible before God, excuse me, to bringing not just good teaching and good preaching and good

49:37

Bible readings that match up with your liturgy and all that, but bringing good songs.

49:43

And you're doing that. That's your work, is to be a part of the culture building project on Sunday at Christchurch by enculturating a group of people with God glorifying hymns and psalms and all of that.

49:57

Now, what would you say to fathers or husbands or mothers and wives, single folks, whatever, what would you say on how to bring music in a powerful way and in a culture building sort of way into their

50:17

Monday through Saturday life? Maybe it's, oh, I'll just let you answer.

50:23

How would you say that we can build a godly culture in our homes through music or in our life or however that works out?

50:33

Sure. Well, we want to see our Corporate Sunday Worship as really being the center point of our week.

50:43

So everything that we do starting on Monday morning flows out of Sunday. And then as we're coming back around Friday, Saturday, we're looking forward to it again.

50:55

So in terms of that, what's the weekly music making look like?

51:02

We shouldn't expect that. It never happens practically.

51:08

You don't arrive at church on time. Find your seat.

51:14

Everyone's perfectly behaved. And of course, they're behaved throughout the whole, all the children are behaved throughout the service.

51:24

Everything comes off without a hitch. I don't know. At least it doesn't happen in my household like that.

51:33

We have to, in fact, we have to prepare ourselves for church. We were just at our school had its end of the year award ceremony yesterday, and I was holding my three -year -old son, and he's pretty wiggly.

51:50

My wife reminded me that she said, well, this is practice for church. She was sitting through the awards ceremony at the

51:55

Christian school, and she's right. Him sitting still and listening, we have to work on that.

52:05

So I'm getting around to your question, answering your question. We do need to see

52:11

Sunday morning something that doesn't happen automatically, something that we can look forward to and in some sense, practice for.

52:18

So one thing our church does is that in the bulletin, we'll actually print the song numbers, page numbers for the songs that are coming up in the next week.

52:33

Not with the expectation that everyone's going to practice them, but at least you're forewarned. You know, be forewarned is to be forearmed, that you know what to prepare for for the next week.

52:46

So some of that can take place. And I admit that we don't even, my family, we're not so dedicated as to practice that specifically.

52:58

But we do have a hymn of the month booklet. So for 12 months, we have a hymn of the month or the song of the month that we sung for four or five

53:10

Sundays over the course of the month, so people get good at them. Well, we'll learn those.

53:17

You know, I'll take some time to teach those to my kids. Or if there's a refrain or a chorus in the song, make sure that the kids can do that, can sing that, maybe have that.

53:30

If they can't read yet, have that memorized so that they have something to remember.

53:37

And as soon as that chimes in, they're ready to respond to it and join the congregation in singing it.

53:45

So there's a little bit of preparation that can be done.

53:51

If you're doing family worship in your home throughout the week, devote a little bit of time to singing the song, either you're looking forward to Sunday or be anything.

54:06

The singing should just be a very natural, just a very natural activity.

54:12

In fact, like David, we should turn to the

54:17

Lord in song to express what we're going through, how we're feeling emotionally, spiritually, as a vehicle for our

54:29

Thanksgiving. I think if we're honest with ourselves, we're just not very good at doing those sorts of things.

54:40

If we're going through a hard time, we grumble, and we feel sorry for ourselves.

54:46

And if things are going well, we're not always as thankful for those things.

54:54

And that's to say nothing about even thankful for our trials. So learning to sing well, and by that I mean just using the songs that were provided in our churches, and using them as a vehicle for expressing all the things that are happening to us is really what the

55:19

Lord wants us to do. And as a way of actually building faith in us is using songs that way.

55:28

It's funny, this morning actually, we were doing our Bible study.

55:35

Myself and my two older children, we are reading through the Bible. We just started in Genesis, and we're going to read through the whole

55:42

Bible, three chapters a day. And that's our little morning routine that we're doing. So we just got to Lot and the situation where his daughters thought there were no men on earth.

55:55

Pretty strange scene in Genesis. And I was explaining to them that Moab, Ammon, and the

56:04

Philistines all show up in the three chapters that we're reading, and that all three of those tribes have giants, which is a fascinating thing.

56:14

And then I mentioned Og of Bashan. And my son, when he heard that, he said, yeah,

56:22

Mike, and Forever N .A., the song. And I was like,

56:27

I was so proud of him. Og the King of Bashan's Land. Yeah, yeah. So a song that you guys, your church put together, he loves it, and he started singing it at the table, and the theology.

56:38

Oh, praise the Lord. Yeah, that's great. I was so thankful because I think that was our hymn or our psalm of the month two months ago, and we were learning that as a congregation.

56:49

So it was so cool. Another thing I've done is in family worship, we'll sing the doxology before we eat.

56:58

So we'll eat, we'll sing the doxology, then we'll open up the scriptures and do a Bible lesson. And all of the children from our three -year -old to our 14 -year -old, we'll put our hands up like this in a posture of receiving, and we'll sing the doxology.

57:14

So we bring music into our home. And gosh, I have noticed that even my three -year -old has just taken hold of that so much.

57:22

And he was the one even who suggested after we sing it that we have a time of thanks where we tell everybody what we're thankful for, because he made the connection.

57:33

Right. Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah, singing and music just should be relative.

57:41

We're used to in a consumer culture where we've got Spotify and iTunes,

57:48

YouTube, that our music experience is as a music consumer as opposed to a music maker.

57:59

And in the church, we have to be music makers. That doesn't mean that we're all pros, or we're all necessarily trained in it, but it's not a foreign experience.

58:10

And so we need to be doing that in our homes to one degree or another as well.

58:19

You can imagine, back in the day, my grandmother was growing up, and they just sang all the time.

58:26

They might have had radio, but they certainly didn't have television even at that time.

58:31

So singing was a way of really entertaining. It was a pastime.

58:37

Right. And I'm not a music expert. You are certainly the expert in this conversation, and I am very much a layperson in this conversation.

58:48

But I've just noticed my family, as we've become more singing -oriented, where we'll sing hymns and psalms, sometimes even

58:55

I've led Bible study through A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. And as we sang it, we talked about the different lines that Luther wrote and whatever.

59:05

But as we've become more of a singing family, I think we've become more worshipful.

59:12

We've been united together more. I really have seen

59:17

God use that in a powerful way in my family to where I see my children now singing worship songs throughout their day, and I'm so thankful for that.

59:27

I would encourage anybody who's listening to this, learn from what the church is doing.

59:32

The church is bringing music into the service, obviously because God commanded it, but also because we're building a

59:42

Christian worldview and culture in that moment that you're now to take with you into your homes and into your car rides and wherever else you go.

59:52

Tom Miller Oh, amen. Yeah, right. Well, you know, one way of actually teaching,

01:00:00

I've heard this so many times, but one way of teaching or getting folks to believe

01:00:09

Christian doctrine and Christian teaching is by getting them to sing it. Singing is a delight.

01:00:19

It's fun, provided that it's a good song and catchy, and people do, in fact, enjoy it.

01:00:31

It's just like popular music. I mean, the music is catchy, but often the lyrics are demonic, or they're leading us in the wrong direction.

01:00:45

But frankly, if it's got a good beat, you could dance to it. You don't really care. And so that's a way for false teaching can get into us through catchy tunes, but good teaching, just the same way.

01:01:00

So it's a great formational tool for the community, and certainly for children.

01:01:07

Chris I was just thinking about that. The most or the least jaded humans on the planet are the youngest children, because they haven't been through all of the failures and disappointments and even participated in evil and things, so they don't have all the baggage.

01:01:26

And yet they're the most sing -songy people of all. Children are always finding ways to sing, and we ought to learn from that.

01:01:32

We ought to see that as adults and use that as a tool to bless them. This might be controversial, but I do want to ask, if music creates culture, and let's say that we're talking to a group of people on this podcast who agree with that and say, okay, yes and amen.

01:01:53

I'm not listening to the top 20. I'm not listening to the latest rap album that's just objectifying women and glorifying drugs and violence and whatever else, but I am consuming a tremendous amount of Big Eva, big

01:02:08

Christian radio. I personally stopped listening to it years ago because I felt like it was me -centered, and it was not

01:02:19

God -centric. Even, this might be even more controversial, a popular radio station that I know of is

01:02:27

K -Love. Their tagline is positive and encouraging. They don't even mention the name of Christ at all in their purpose statement.

01:02:35

Would you say that consuming that sort of positive, encouraging, but mostly sort of watered -down could actually produce in a

01:02:46

Christian that sort of culture when actually a different kind of song, a different kind of music might produce something more robust and more vibrant and better?

01:02:57

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good point. The whole

01:03:05

Christian music industry is largely imitating what the world is doing, so that if it's not a particularly bad song, a love song that's on the top 40 or whatever, we have top 40 or top 10, whatever's getting played, whatever's popular, even a song that's not particularly bad is usually just an individual's feelings for one thing or another thing, and then that idea of sort of a fundamental individualism then is imported into Christian music, and so then your worship expression is your personal feelings about Jesus.

01:04:09

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. We should love the Lord. We should find the

01:04:14

Lord beautiful, to one degree or another.

01:04:20

We should find all our satisfaction in Him. But what's lacking is the corporate expression that we're doing this as a body, as a church.

01:04:40

And frankly, when it comes to getting the guys to sing that, it's like, well,

01:04:45

I mean, if you're using a lot of bridal imagery or whatever, it's like,

01:04:58

I don't want to see myself like that. What is meant by that is the church is prepared as a bride for her husband.

01:05:07

It really only stops. I mean, that's really as far as that goes.

01:05:15

So I guess to consume and to listen to that sort of thing, it sort of trains you, gets you off into weird directions.

01:05:24

And we've been at that for a long time. It's not just stuff that's come out in the last, say, 25 years.

01:05:33

But I mean, our whole individual response culture, Christian culture, that was probably at a point of zenith in tent revivals in the 19th century.

01:05:48

You're making a personal decision to have a personal relationship with Jesus. We've got to mature beyond that.

01:06:00

Because in fact, that fracturing of the church into just individual believers, then it's easy just to pick us off.

01:06:09

And all the woke stuff is doing that to us as opposed to a strong corporate identity where we're a little harder to target that way.

01:06:28

Just having the wrong theological focus doesn't set us up for the culture war as we're experiencing now.

01:06:40

Yeah. Oh, that's such a good point. I didn't think about it in that way. But yeah, that makes so much sense.

01:06:46

The way I was asking the question was, if you're on your car ride, what's the best thing to listen to?

01:06:53

Oh, right. But I hadn't thought about it in the way that you put it. And I do think that recovering corporate singing is so important.

01:07:03

So thank you for mentioning that, because that's such a good point and so needed. Right. I don't know what

01:07:11

I would... People are commuting. They should be listening to the broadcast, probably on the commute. You know what? Fair point.

01:07:18

Fair point. But I don't know.

01:07:26

I don't have a strong answer for that. We just need to reflect and see about how we can redeem our time, even on our commute.

01:07:39

So whether maybe it's listening to your Bible instead of listening to the radio. Maybe that's a better thing to do, something on a certain basis.

01:07:48

But I'm not going to stop people from listening to Caleb. I mean, I don't oppose that necessarily.

01:07:55

It's just that if you find that defining who you are as a believer, that could be a problem to dabble in and to listen to this or that.

01:08:10

I think the way I think about it, and this is my personal conviction, so anyone who loves Caleb, I'm not just railing on Caleb by no means.

01:08:19

I'm glad that there's an option there, and I know it's blessed a lot of people. But I think about it like food.

01:08:26

What I put in is going to be what's going to eventually come out. And if I absolutely love hamburgers,

01:08:33

I think they're the perfect food in every way, from top to bottom, they are God's perfect food.

01:08:39

But if I ate hamburgers every day, I would look like a 700 -pound monstrosity, and I would be really unhealthy.

01:08:48

So what I want to do is I want to put in my body the kinds of things that are going to help me have the energy and the fuel that I need to serve

01:08:56

God in the way that he's called me to do it. I look at Caleb kind of like that, or Christian, big

01:09:03

Christian entertainment, radio, whatever, like that. I think that it's an option, and it will certainly give you something, but there are better options.

01:09:12

There are things that I can sing by myself even when I'm not with the body that will equip me to better sing when

01:09:20

I'm in the body. So what I do is I have a playlist of all the songs that we sing at church, and I sing those in the car, or I listen to my

01:09:32

Bible as well. But if it's music, I really do try to put those psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that I'm going to be singing in corporate worship on my playlist in car rides, so that I'm learning them, and now

01:09:43

I'm entering into worship joyfully singing the songs that we're going to sing as a body. So that's what

01:09:49

I do. Yeah, I think those are great things. It's just we're a busy culture, and we live by schedules and things.

01:10:03

If you've got an hour commute, or even just a 20 -minute commute, think about how you can use that time, because the commute is not just part of the schedule, but there's things inside that time that you can do to redeem the time.

01:10:23

Yeah, amen. One last question, brother. Thank you so much for being here. But one last question is, we've been talking about post -millennialism, and I think we've covered much of what

01:10:36

I wanted us to cover in the fact that if God is going to win, that means

01:10:41

He is going to multiply Christian culture outside of the walls of the church and into societies until every society and every culture is

01:10:50

Christian. That's sort of the whole point of post -millennial thinking, is that the world is going to come under the auspices of Christian culture through the

01:11:01

Spirit, through the church, and through things like music and writing and all of that.

01:11:07

So why is it now, if that's true, and music is a big part of bringing the world under the dominion of Christ, why is it also important for us to sing psalms or songs that have post -millennial themes?

01:11:27

It's important for us to sing all kinds of themes in our songs, but why is it important for us to actually sing that Christ is going to get the victory, that His kingdom is going to come and win and to multiply, and why is that important?

01:11:47

Well, I think as we were starting the conversation,

01:11:54

I was thinking about the idea of what does God require of us in terms of our day -to -day, that He intends us to go out and serve

01:12:05

Him faithfully, and that He will bless our efforts and give us the increase.

01:12:15

And frankly, I think we're prone to be discouraged that even if you plant a seed, what's going to actually be a long time and a lot of work cultivating that plant before it bears fruit, and then you have to harvest it.

01:12:40

It's actually quite a lot of work. So the post -millennial song, the optimistic,

01:12:52

Jesus wins in the end song, helps us see what the actual goal is.

01:12:59

And so it builds us up in the faith of that future event, that what we're doing is in fact not in vain, that we will reap that harvest and the grain will enter into the joy of our

01:13:15

Master. And so it is, at a practical level, it's encouraging for us to see that.

01:13:24

And in terms of our Christian walk, that we serve a risen and victorious

01:13:31

Christ who will have the final victory in the end.

01:13:38

And it reminds us to see Him that way, and to see

01:13:45

Him as ultimately victorious in time, also draws out our praises of Him all the more, really to see

01:13:59

Him as a full, complete and glorious King. So I think that's very important, both in terms of motivating us, encouraging us in our daily efforts, but then also that sort of thinking and habits of worship to a very full and glorious extent.

01:14:25

Right. Would you even maybe compare it to a chord? You know, a chord is what, three notes?

01:14:30

Is that a basic chord? Well, in the Christian's life, we have things and themes that we must, you know, think about.

01:14:40

So let's say that creation is one of them. God is Creator. The fall, we fell, we are broken.

01:14:47

Christ came and saved us. And there is a purpose for that salvation and a point that God is taking us to, which is the end of all things, the purpose for which

01:14:56

God made the world is to fill it with His glory as the waters covers the sea. So there you have four basic themes of the

01:15:05

Bible that really tell the full story of the gospel. Well, our songs reflect that story.

01:15:13

So why would we not also have our songs be a part of that chord, the gospel chord that is teaching our people who we are in Christ?

01:15:22

We should sing about the resurrection. We should also sing about the fall, and we should sing about the end for which

01:15:28

God made the world, which is to fill it with His glory. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Amen.

01:15:33

And again, singing the Psalms, sing the Psalms because we're rehearsing all those themes in Scripture, the whole of Scripture is right there, to a greater degree or lesser degree, but it's all there.

01:15:46

Amen. Brother, I cannot tell you how thankful I am that you came. And I know when the

01:15:54

Lord is working in my life because my mind is stirring and I have a million things going off and synapses connecting, and I'm like, oh, this is good.

01:16:02

So I'm having all of that. I probably won't sleep well tonight because you invigorated some things in me that I want to go explore and stuff.

01:16:09

But thank you so much for helping us to see it and helping us to see how music is culture making and how music is central to that sub -creational project that God made.

01:16:21

It's central to building a culture. It's central to our emotions and our joy. It's central to being

01:16:26

Christian. It's reformational even. So thank you, brother. You're welcome. You bet.

01:16:32

Glad to help. Yes, sir. Well, next time in Moscow, I'll look you up and we will sing something together.

01:16:38

All right. Sounds great, Kendall. God bless you, brother. Thank you for coming. Thank you. All right. Good to meet you. Thanks. Thank you so much for watching another episode of the broadcast.

01:16:46

And thank you so much to Mark Reagan for such an insightful episode. I'm so thankful for all of the things that he shared with us today.

01:16:54

I hope that it was encouragement to you. I hope it invigorates singing in your local church. I hope that we as a post -millennial people will be a singing people.