What Musical Instruments Should Be Used in Church, if Any?

Moore's Corner Church

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Hello, and thank you for listening to this podcast. We're going to be talking about the question, are we supposed to use musical instruments in church?

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That's the question. And I'm going to read from this article and give you my own thoughts on the issue.

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Now it's going to seem like a strange thing for some people, like why would that even be a problem? Most people are aware that there are some churches that don't allow any musical instruments.

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For example, the churches of Christ. This is a restorationist group that came out of the 1800s from the

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Campbellites. And they believe, they're especially common in the South, and they believe that no musical instruments should be allowed in church.

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I was just talking to a pastor last month, and he said, any church that has a drum set, nope, don't want nothing to do with it, he said.

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So these ideas are out there. So there's a lot of churches that have a contemporary service, and they have guitars and drums, and then other churches that are more traditional.

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Our church would be more on the traditional side, although from time to time, people have played guitar, and that's not a problem.

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I prefer just kind of giving you my idea, my belief up front, just knowing what

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I know about the scriptures. There's no explicit command against it, so I don't want to make a law where there is no law.

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But let me just read from this article. It says, in all the examples of believers meeting together for worship in the

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New Testament, we have no clear instance of musical instruments being used. Most churches today utilize musical instruments of all kinds, but some use none at all.

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The lack of a biblical example of a church using musical instruments have led some to believe that musical instruments should not be used in the church, but that our singing should be done a cappella.

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And like I said, the Churches of Christ or the Church of Christ, not the UCC, not the

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Congregationalist Churches UCC, but the Church of Christ, they would be the most well -known that holds to that position of no musical instruments.

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I think a guitar like this, even in a traditional church, you know, it's electric, that's true.

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But it's somewhat respectable looking, you know. I think most people, if you're playing with a clean tone,

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I think people would be okay with that. Drums, you know, drums, people have opinions on.

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And then again, for some people, this is, it's ridiculous that we would even be talking about this. But let's read from the article some more.

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And by the way, this guitar, like I said, would be okay if you had these clean tones.

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But if you had this guitar with some distortion, you know, using the whammy bar or something, like I don't think that would go over as well.

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What do you think? So while people are going to have differing ideas, we should look to what the scripture says, not just the

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New Testament, but also the Old Testament, because the Old Testament is still the word of God. So there's no explicit command against instruments in the

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New Testament. So I think the Old Testament is worth looking at. The article continues that musical instruments were not only used in the

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Old Testament, at times they're even commanded. For example, Psalm 81 verse 2,

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Psalm 98 5, and Psalm 150 verse 4, several of the Psalms were intended to be played with stringed instruments, as well as the song of Habakkuk, Habakkuk 3 .19.

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Instrumental music accompaniment was a common part of worship. David commanded the leaders of the

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Levites to appoint their fellow Levites as musicians to make a joyful sound with musical instruments.

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So it's very clear the Old Testament says that musical instruments were good.

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Stringed instruments and, you know, the piano, contrary to what some people think, is a stringed instrument, as is the guitar, even the electric guitar.

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But you know, whatever your church thinks is good and appropriate.

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I do have reservations, obviously, this should be obvious, a church service should not look like a heavy metal concert, okay?

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When Andy Stanley opened up his church service with Led Zeppelin, like, if you like Led Zeppelin, hey, that's up to you, but, you know,

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Stairway to Heaven, it's not actually a Christian song. So to open up a church service with that, it's, to me, that's outrageous, that's going way too far.

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But long story short, let's just keep this very simple. If a church wants to use musical, if they want to use musical instruments, that's totally fine.

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And if a church wants to sing only a cappella, that's totally fine as well.

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But those churches like Churches of Christ, some of them are kind of fanatical about it, to where if you use a musical instrument in church, you're not a true church.

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I think judging someone's spirituality or judging their salvation based on whether or not they use this instrument or that, it's wrong.

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I think it's wrong. My name's Michael Grant. Thanks for listening. Until next time, may the Lord be with you.