Episode 104: Music Ministry in the Local Church

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Well, Gunnar, it's good to see you again.

I knew you'd really appreciate that. I am back with Gunnar and Jeff from last week, and we haven't even moved, have we?

No, it's been a whole week. We've been in the same spot. We didn't even take a bathroom break. You guys good?

I'm good, I think so. I think I'm good, I'm gonna get another sip of coffee. I think we're good. We're so committed to this podcast, we don't even take a bathroom break.

No. Okay. You guys can speak for yourself. I'm still sitting, but I have taken a bathroom break.

No, that's, stop. That's not, come on, bro. Welcome to, you gotta know

Gunnar. Welcome to Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Allan Nelson, and with me again from last week, although we haven't moved, we're just straight recording, straight through recording here.

Gunnar Madewell, and he leads our music here at Providence Baptist Church, and then Jeff Crego, who leads the same position, essentially, at By the

Word Baptist Church in Hazel, Texas. Last time, we laid a foundation for worship, and so today, what

I wanna get in specifically is the musical aspect, and this is what

I really wanna talk to you guys about anyway, but y 'all walk me through the musical aspect.

Well, let me ask this question first. We talked about, last time, we used the word hokey.

When we say sometimes the worship, the musical worship of a rural church is hokey, what do we mean by that?

What do you hear me saying when I say that? You can go ahead first, Jeff, if you want.

So I think when you say hokey, I think what happens is the music gets tailored to the flavor of the people, like what the people wanna hear, and then what happens is the worship kinda gets conformed into the desires of the people rather than being conformed to the word of God, and then you can,

I mean, once that happens, all bets are off as far as what's gonna be sung and how the music's gonna go, or even where the attention's placed during the singing of the music, if it's drawn onto the one singing, so on and so forth, or on the opposite side of that is it can be dry and lifeless, and it can be almost void of the spirit because there's no emotion, there's no, it's just something we gotta do to get done, to get through it so we can get to the preaching, so the preaching can get over so we can go home and get back to what we really wanna do.

I think there's both sides of those that happens a lot in rural churches, and I've experienced both of it, and it's my aim and my goal in our church to make sure that everything that we do is conformed to the word of God and points people to the word of God and to Christ.

Amen. I would say something a lot simpler, actually, the reason why

I think worship is a. You're a simple man. The reason I think worship is hokey, specifically in the rural communities and it's in the

South, is because that's what the music, the people like. That's like, they're Southern people, they like folk music, they like country music, and so what happens, what

Jeff said I think is helpful, we don't, we tailor the music to the people and what they like.

The theme of the music, the tempo of the music, the, you know,

I guess you could say the flavor of the music. I think it's a lack, I don't,

I'm trying to be wise and maybe pastoral in how I say this, but I just feel like it's a lack of maybe, we have lost the reverence for the worship of God in singing and in music in a lot of our churches.

Yeah, so first of all, let's be clear, the human condition, music is a very powerful tool.

Very, yes. We were doing this last night, New Year's Eve, but all of a sudden we were playing different songs and maybe songs you hadn't heard in 20 years.

These were certainly not worship songs, but you know, like songs that we grew up with or whatever and like, why

I hadn't heard that in 20, and all of a sudden you play and you're singing and what, the words come back to you. Or you're watching a commercial and there's certain music background that's trying to elicit a specific emotional response.

So music in and of itself is a very powerful tool and this has crept into churches and so there's this kind of nostalgic type of worship where it's like,

I wanna hear this kind of song in this kind of way, sung this way, and that elicits a specific emotional trigger whereby

I feel like I have worshiped. By the way, let the hearer understand, you may have worshiped.

But it wasn't God. But it wasn't God you were worshiping. Right, right. And maybe what you worshiped was yourself.

Or an invention of God. Or an invention of God, yeah, that's good. Jeff, what were you gonna say there? Yeah, I was just gonna say that God has given us creativity.

He's given us talent, he's given us ability, and because of the human nature, it's so, and then not only that, but the world at large, it's so easy to take that and to make it our own and to use it for our own glory.

Even if you're not seeking to do it that way, God kind of takes a backseat. We're taking the creative and the imagination that God has given us, we're supposed to give that back to him through worship, whether that's singing or whatever.

But primarily in singing, whatever that imagination that God has given us, we ought to give that back to him to glorify him and to draw attention to him and away from us.

And because of the commercialization and the professionalism that's been dragged into the church, that's the opposite is starting to take place.

Somebody said one time, I didn't come up with this, but they said to the pastor, you know, I just didn't get a lot out of the worship today.

And the pastor said, that's okay, it wasn't about you. Yeah, exactly, right. So. Well, and here's, I want to be understanding and I want to be, like, here's the deal, know the context of your congregation.

If you're in a place, let's say in the North, where you sing differently, that's good, sing differently.

We're not gonna sing sea shanties in our church because that's not the people we got. It's okay, it's okay if the way that you do your music sounds a little country, that's fine.

But the point is of being hokey is that we don't worship to, we don't design the worship, first of all,

God's designed worship, but the way we do worship is not so the people have a sense of nostalgia.

We want to be biblical, first and foremost, but we do want to be understanding of the congregation.

If we did something that was different, like we sang sea shanties in our church, which some churches do that, that's fine, but the people would be confused.

The people would not, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be familiar to them. Yeah, I was gonna.

That make sense, first of all? No, it does because there's a cultural aspect to worship. Our worship, it is impacted by the culture in the sense that our worship doesn't look like worship in Africa.

It doesn't look like worship in China or Russia. There is a cultural aspect to worship that you need to be sensitive to because if you're trying to drag something that's unfamiliar or uncomfortable into your church that is not culturally relevant, it's going to be awkward and rigid, and it's going to, again, detract from the worship of God rather than add to it, so there is an element of that.

So I would just clarify, and I think you're both saying, but let me just say it for clarity's sake. There is, yes, there is a cultural aspect, but it's not as big as maybe what some people want to make it.

Yes, it doesn't drive the worship. Yes, well, what I'm saying is when we go to Mexico, yes, there is some things culturally a little different, and they sing different songs, and also their songs are words

I don't understand. They sing in a different language. They sing in a different language, but there's a lot about worship that actually does either transcend culture or, you might say, creates culture.

So we don't want to, yes, I'm agreeing with you guys, but we don't want to,

I don't want to draw too big of a wedge there with that. So here's what I want to talk about. Don't let me forget.

I want to talk about psalms. Should we sing psalms? The other thing I want to talk about is, and maybe we'll talk about this one first.

I want to talk about how do we balance excellence without feeling the need for professionalization, and I feel like what happens in a lot of rural churches is you only have what you have.

So you have, sometimes you have churches, you don't even have anybody that can play the piano at all. No piano, no guitar, they can't play.

Cancel church then. No, no, so what do you do? So I'm asking you guys, what do you do with that, and how do you avoid professionalization, which should not happen at any level of the church in terms of like we talked about in the last episode, but how do you strive for excellence though?

The way you strive for excellence is you use what you have to the best of your ability to the glory of God.

You don't have a piano player, guess what? We got a person who can sing, maybe a person who can't even sing that well, but he can read and he can try to sing.

You do it to the best of your ability so that you can lead the people in singing. And so maybe you're not trying out the newest

City of Light song. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay, start with some of the songs.

And here's the deal about our church, and Alex is another man in our church that helps me, and here's the deal,

I'm not the best singer. Alex is not the best piano player, but this is what happens.

That's all we got. And so we're using what we have to the best of our ability to not bring glory to us, not bring glory to our church, but to bring glory to the name of Jesus Christ.

And what happens is too, you guys put work into it. Yeah. So there's people that's like, well,

I just can't play anything. And what they mean by that is, now I wanna be careful here, I don't wanna be too harsh. What they mean by that is

I'm too lazy. I know these five to seven to 12 songs. I'm too lazy to work, to try anything else.

I mean, at the end of the day, it is laziness. We got guys all over the world who wanna be better at golf, wanna be better at fishing, wanna be, and they put hours and hours and hours into these things.

But then when it comes to the spiritual things of the Lord, being better at singing, being better at an instrument, being better at corporate singing or whatever, it's, well,

I don't wanna put any effort into that because I'm putting too much time into learning how to fish or learning how to sew or learning a hobby or a skill or something like that.

And it's, where are you giving your time and attention to? And are you making God important in your home?

Are you giving your church the best that you have, even if it's bad? And believe me,

I've been there. Even if it's bad, are you giving your church the best that you got?

And I wanna say this again, because I don't wanna come across like, I'm not arrogant. I don't want to be arrogant.

I say I'm not arrogant. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I have been guilty of arrogance. I don't want to be, act like, well, we've done it this way for 40 years.

You know, like our worship in the last two and a half years now, maybe a little bit longer than that, but especially the last two and a half years has really taken.

Has reformed. Yeah. And there were some things we had to deal with in order to get to that point.

So this is not something that we've just, we're the experts. This is what.

Well, I just wanted to say, like there's grace here. So the difference is, so grace is, it's not a license to keep doing it bad.

Right. But it is, it is grace that covers as you begin to try to push toward biblically healthy worship, there's grace.

Like you're not necessarily going to be able to flip a switch maybe in your church and fix it all tomorrow, but you can.

Grace gives us the ability to press on in the work and to press toward the goal, press toward the prize.

So next Sunday, maybe you can't fix everything, but maybe there's one thing that you can begin to focus on as you move forward.

Does that make sense? So when we're talking about excellence, we're talking about like, you should put time in to thinking through words of the song.

Are these okay? Like death was arrested, don't sing that song. It doesn't make sense. And you'd be safe, any hill song, don't sing.

Don't sing hill song, right? Don't sing reckless love. Elevation worship, don't sing that. And look, people will say, well, they got some biblical music.

Right, but the sheer fact that you're using them and pointing people to them because of one song when a hundred of them are bad, it's unacceptable.

And I heard John Piper say this one time, we have so much sound and good biblical music.

Why would you ever go to something that's not? We got 150 songs in the

Bible. Amen, amen. But I want to say that, again, grace worked through these things.

Think through the words that you're communicating. That's where you should start.

That's right. Are the songs you're singing, are they pointing to man? Are they pointing to Christ? Yes, the tune should be, the tune is important, but it's secondary.

Yeah, forget skill, forget talent, forget ability. What are you, the words are primary.

Are we singing Christ -centered hymns? Are we singing, are there songs that we have that we're actually singing the entire gospel?

Not just about, oh, I'm gonna go to heaven. Not, I'm gonna see my mama when I die. Are we singing about Christ?

About the holiness of God? About the sinfulness of man? About the shed blood of Christ on the cross?

About his resurrection? All the, I know I'm just cutting you off. What did you wanna add to that? Well, I was gonna say, and there's a lot of good

Christian music that's not worship music that churches sing. And I'm like, yeah, that's a good Christian song, like, but it doesn't necessarily belong in the church.

Like, you had an example where you think it. Well, I was, you know, one song, and I don't know, I would think like. Shane and Shane's song, a lot of them?

Well, those are. Hard to sing. They're hard to sing, but I'm thinking of songs like, you know, I would say

The Eye of the Storm, I would say. Oh, yeah. It's a good, you know, I haven't worked through all the theology,

I guess, but it's on the forefront, it's a good Christian song, right? But I wouldn't sing that in corporate worship.

Yeah, that's good. I would say there's two elements to the music and singing.

If you're, I'll just talk to the people who maybe are listening that maybe lead worship in their church, or they have done it, and they're put in that position, you need to look at the words first, and singability second.

If the song is not singable, you can't do the song. Because this is what

I think, what the difference between a lot of people when they think of professionalism, it's not a concert.

You are not there to sing to people. You are not there to sing by yourself.

You are there to sing together. If the song cannot be sung in a congregational context, don't do the song.

Yeah, one of the classic texts, I'm turning to it now, but one of the classic texts for this is Ephesians 5, which says that, and do not get drunk, verse 18, do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the

Spirit, addressing one another, addressing one another, in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

So one of Gunnar's favorite theologian has this quote, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.

That's Buddy the Elf. But, in all seriousness, we should sing loud.

Not to spread Christmas cheer, to spread the joy of Christ. We sing to one another, and we sing loud, and let me ask you this, this'll get

Gunnar on a soapbox. We sing with the lights on. Yes, okay,

I'm just gonna tell you, there's a couple things. I told you. One, how am I gonna look at my hymnal if all the lights are off?

They'll put all the words on the screen, you got it. How am I gonna look, here's 519, addressing one another.

I can't see the person next to me if the lights are off. Here's another thing, the concert aspect.

You're not going to a Taylor Swift concert. You're not going to any other concert. You're coming together with the lights on to see each other, to see the cross on the stage.

I am singing to one another, worshiping Christ. So, it's not a concert, it's not a.

I don't wanna hear you hit that octave. I don't, yeah, right. I don't wanna hear your soul. I'm not, it's not a concert.

I'm not, corporate worship is not me looking at you and singing, corporate worship is me singing with one another and to one another.

I know this would be weird and we're not gonna do this, but in one way, if you took your congregation, divided it in half, and just made them face each other and sing, that would be healthier than,

I know that would be weird, but the thing is, that's what the text is getting at. We're singing to one another, loudly, and because we're reminding one another the hope we have.

Because teaching, I think teaching happens in singing, too. Yes. I think that's what happens. Yeah, that's why, another reason

I would argue that your music needs to be led by a qualified man. Right. Because teaching's happening.

Oh, that's not no big deal. But if Paul says in, well, let me just read it because we've mentioned a few times in last episode, for sure,

I don't know if we have this episode, but Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, 12, he says,

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

Rather, she is to remain quiet. So if we believe that, and he ties it in, by the way, for Adam was formed first, then

Eve. What's that tied into? Creation. Not the fall. It's tied, first of all, into creation.

There's a created order where God has ordained the man to be the head of the family and the man to be, men, qualified men, right?

Not just any man. Well, you're a man, come on. No, qualified men to lead. So if singing is teaching, and it is, it needs to be done by qualified men.

That's the argument. You can get mad about that. You can argue with that. But you can't say that we're not trying to look at it from a biblical perspective.

Yeah, and I would say, like with the lights and the performance aspect of it, you cannot get spiritual worship out of emotional worship.

Emotional worship is involved in spiritual worship, but just because you have an emotional response to the dim lights and the grand performance and all of that, just because there's an emotional response doesn't mean you've done any spiritual worship at all.

And I would say, at the end of the day, if you're walking away being satisfied whether or not the quote -unquote singing and the performance was good or bad, you've missed it already.

You've completely missed the purpose of worship. And a lot of people leave church, man, I just wasn't feeling it today.

The music wasn't that good, you know? And they're worried about whether the music was good enough and not what was preached, what was sung, you know?

And if that's your state when you leave church, you need to recondition your heart. Here's what

I would say, too, just to clarify. You should want to enjoy worship at your church.

If you come to your church and you say, man, the music wasn't that good, that could be true.

That could be true. There are some times we have had worship, like, man, that could have been better.

Man, there's something was off, that happens. But I think what Jeff was getting at and I think he says, you're coming to worship

Christ, you're coming for Him, you're not coming so that your, I guess your emotions will be satisfied.

You're not coming so you can get a pick -me -up for the week. You're going because one,

God has commanded you to do that, and we do, Hebrews 10, 25. But you're also going, it's because as a

Christian, you desire to worship Christ. You desire to sing to Him. You desire to gather with His people and sing to one another.

So the next thing I want to talk about. Psalms. There's more. I don't want to talk about Psalms, and then I want to talk, so I get you guys thinking.

I want to talk, I just want you guys to talk through a typical week for you guys as you think through these things.

But there was a couple years ago, I don't remember when this started for us, Gunnar.

I'm going to say maybe around this time of year, two years ago. It sounds to me like we were close, because I know where we were in Ephesians.

We were pretty close to this text about two years ago. Ephesians 5, 19.

Yeah, and we talked about, hey look, we don't really sing Psalms. And the problem we had was, we really didn't know what to do.

And so we just said, you know what? We think this text commands us to sing

Psalms. I mean, it's not any thinking about it. It does command us to sing Psalms. There are other people, though, that I have heard take that text as a whole and just says, only singing songs, hymns, spiritual songs.

They have said, it just means one thing, just singing. So I've heard the other side, but I agree with you, and I think our church.

But it's not a good, it's not a good hermeneutic there. There is an element.

Now, we have a great friend, a brother that we all love, and I respect, he's been on the podcast.

And I know there's examples, but he's in Port Arthur, Texas. Brother Jonathan Murdock, a dear friend.

Actually, one of my best friends. And their church has a bit of a issue with the translation because they sing in English and then they sing in Spanish.

So they have some problems there. So there are issues that are warranted.

But just as a general rule, I'm saying, I think churches should sing psalms. And so what we did is we just got a psalter and we sing psalms, we do a psalm of the month.

We sing one psalm during the service. We call it, right now is how we do it. We call it a psalm of the month, and we sing it to a tune that we already are familiar with.

So this month, for the month of January, we're singing

Psalm 87 to the tune of Come Thou Fount. And so what good psalters do,

I use Seedbed. If you guys that are listening wanna look that up, it's a really good tool.

Seedbed shows every psalm and it does the meter, what songs can be sung to it.

And it's not verbatim. We don't sing a song verbatim. I don't know if churches do that.

But the problem is you can't fit it to a tune because of how many words are in that structure.

Yeah, yeah. And like you said, there's liberty. But I would - Yeah, you can do that. Yeah, there's liberty. I would just encourage people to -

Sing the psalms. Consider singing the psalms. I think, now there's other traditions that you should sing only psalms.

I would disagree with that. But the psalms, I'm preaching this Sunday, Lord willing, from Psalm 87.

It's one of the most beautiful passages in all the Bible, Old or New Testament, about the glory of the church.

And it's right there in a psalm. And you think about Psalm 22 and the work of Christ.

Psalm 23, the Lord of my shepherd. Psalm 119 and the beauty and sufficiency and wonder of God's word.

So God has given us 100. So I just think it's a shame if we never consider the 150 songs that God has given us.

And there's a variety of... There's songs about... So we kind of have this idea that you always have to be happy, happy, happy.

Like a peppy song or something. Yeah, but the psalms remind us that there are times of lament.

The psalms remind us there are times of righteous anger. Doubt. There's times that we wrestle with doubt.

How long, oh Lord? Are you there? Are you hearing me? So the psalms help calibrate, if you will, our worship.

So again, I'm not saying tomorrow add a psalm. But consider how to think through that and have that plan of to incorporate.

I think it's clear we should sing psalms. And you don't have to worry about the words. Like, are the words good? Yes, they're from the scripture.

Now, with the arrangement, sometimes you want to make sure. Adjustments. Yeah, because sometimes you need to make adjustments, maybe.

But yeah, does God want me to sing this? Yes. Yeah, I would encourage any music minister to spend a significant amount of time just reading through the psalms constantly, like a daily digest or something.

Because like you're talking about, the mood and the emotion, those are things that the church experiences all the time.

It can't just be all as high and vibrant and boisterous as it can possibly be.

There are times where the music and the singing needs to match the sermon and the preaching. And those things need to work together.

But the psalms is a great place for a music minister to rest and to learn these experiences and these emotions through the text of scripture in order to be able to use that in psalm.

Yeah, we're not saying that every person who walks in the church and when we sing a song, like we're singing this

Sunday, what a friend we have in Jesus. There are some people that are coming into the church that have just lost somebody that week.

And they're thinking, what a friend I have in Jesus. Can they sing that song in an upbeat, happy way?

They can't, some of them can't. We have to deal with real emotions and we're not saying that we fake it.

We put on a face, we put on a smile. Because a lot of times, I'll just be honest, when you walk into the church, it's hard.

It's hard to walk in on a Sunday morning, the first day of the week, and act like everything's okay because it's not.

And it's okay to be that way. But what we are saying is, when you come together and when we sing, we're doing it for one purpose.

You may be dealing with something right then. You might not be happy. But when we sing, we're reminding each other, as Pastor Quatro said, what has been done for us in Jesus Christ, what the promises we have in the

Scripture, what hope we have, and that's what drives the worship. Not essentially the emotions, but the

Scripture and the promises of God in His works drive the worship. So walk through, and it's been another good episode,

I hope, and I hope it's practical and helpful. Walk us through how you guys address a typical week when it comes to leading singing.

I mean, so it varies week to week, but there's this one, there's really a general way

I handle it. First, I'll just, and here's the deal. I don't have a guru that I look to.

I just do what works for us. We have a set of songs that we have that we know.

We have a group of songs that maybe we're introducing. So what

I try to do is I think of songs that we haven't done recently. I think of songs, and I go through the hymnal.

What songs do people know? And so I have to pick three main songs.

I have to pick a Psalm of the Month. Like this month, I had to pick a Psalm of the Month. And I have to do a song of response.

So when the preaching happens, after the preaching, what song can we sing and we meditate on what's just been preached?

How to practically apply it? How do we respond to the preaching? What song best suits that?

So what I do is I spend time first in prayer. Lord, lead me into what songs would be helpful for our church this week.

And I just pick these, like here's the deal.

You don't have to be a, you know, spend 20 hours a week.

Like we have to pick, like if this song doesn't work, it's not gonna be true worship. What works for your church could be songs.

And here's the deal. A lot of people don't have a big song list. Like we only know five songs. Guess what?

Rotate it and maybe try to introduce some new things. But usually it's songs that we know. I pick some things that we're comfortable with.

And also I spend time before Sunday morning.

We spend time an hour and a half at least before the service starts.

Practicing, preparing, getting with the. And praying. And praying. We pray for our worship every

Sunday. I pray for worship throughout the week. But we come together as men. We pray for the worship because we want it to go well.

We want the people to worship. So I don't know if that helpful.

It's not something super crazy or like, you know. It's just what we, it's just something that works for us.

And I think our church has, I would say, I don't know about you Pastor Quatro, but I think our church has benefited.

And our church has been served well with the worship of our church. Amen. What about you Jeff? One of the largest benefits to preparing music each week is the expository preaching of the word.

I already know what's gonna be preached next. I mean, I have a, I've pretty much a good idea of the text, what's going on.

And Pastor Randall will send me, usually on Thursday mornings, he'll send me his text, his titles and things like that.

And then I can take a few of the songs that I've been thinking about already and decide what music we're gonna use that will fit with the text of scripture and the preaching.

And then if he deviates, he'll let me know, hey, I'm gonna be preaching somewhere else in the Bible or whatever. But having expositional preaching assists in that preparation tremendously.

Makes it very helpful. But we do four songs, so we do have a hymn of the month.

So that eliminates one decision right there. It makes it very easy. When you're hymn of the month, is it usually introducing something new or just?

Sometimes it introduces something new, but each year we have a theme for each month.

So last year it was basically suffering. The theme of the year was suffering. So each month was like suffering for Christ, suffering as a

Christian, suffering, loss, suffering. Different ways Christians experience suffering. And so we tried to pick songs ahead of time that the church, and we hand out, we give out a handout or like a booklet or whatever with the songs of the months.

They have a memory verse and they can prepare beforehand. Hey, this is gonna be the hymn of the month next month. I can start learning it now.

And we don't do that always at our church. Like we don't, you know, specifically choose songs based on every time

Pastor Quadro, Pastor Jacob preaches. Now they might text me and say, hey, this is what I'm preaching. This song would go really well with the sermon.

And I do that. I just like, here's another thing that I think a lot of worship leaders, directors like to do.

They don't view the pastor as the worship leader. They view themselves as a worship leader. That's a problem. The pastor leads the worship.

Your job is to submit to your pastor, but also if your pastor has put you in that position and in one real sense, he trusts you.

Hey, I trust you with the worship of our church. I'm ahead of it, but I want you to do this.

So when your pastor tells you to do a song, just do the song. He's got, he knows what he's talking about.

But yeah, I mean, I don't, I think the worship, it should be let the surgical in one sense, but like Pastor Quadro said, like it doesn't need to be a machine.

It doesn't, you don't need to be robotic. Every song we sing in this way, we already know the pattern.

It can change sometimes, but. And sometimes we've sang songs intentionally slower or faster, you know.

There is freedom. There is freedom in sobriety sometimes, somberness.

Sometimes you slow down a song, but sometimes you sing it in joy too. Anyway, Jeff, keep going. So you've got the expositional preaching, helps you with the song.

Yeah, so, you know, and then I, you know, when I first started back in 2020, I was very young in leading music.

I was in a church plant before I came to Briar or by the word Baptist Church in Hazel. And I'd maybe known only five or six songs, but over the course of four and a half years, we've got a song list of over 140 songs that I've been able to,

I can pick up a guitar and play any of them. Myriad. A myriad of songs. And that's not a boast, but that's just a putting in the work and the effort and being intentional about it and not looking at it as something as a task, but something that's a joy, something that the church has called me to do, the privilege of being able to lead the music in my church and taking the responsibility seriously and wanting to be able to bring more worship into the church through new song and new melody and things like that to add to the robustness of that part of our worship.

It's been a huge blessing, but it's also given me a lot more to draw from, a deeper well to draw from to have a bigger range of songs and different song types and music types.

And also it depends too, are we going to have piano that week? Are we not going to have piano? Are we going to have drums and piano?

Are we not going to have drums and piano? So I take all of that into account as well when I'm able to pick the songs because it matters.

It impacts people's ability to stay with the music and things like that. And then we end our worship with a response as well.

And I really try to make sure that that song reflects what we just heard preached and that it helps root that in song to kind of give somebody to think about as they're leading.

With instruments, I'd only say this. Instruments are there. They're beautiful.

God's given us instruments. They're there to assist and enhance the singing. Not cowbell.

I don't think it assists. So I would say we could have many arguments about how much music should be in whatever, but think through, is the music helping the singing?

Because if music is drowning out the singing, you need to eliminate a few instruments.

And sometimes I would even argue, sometimes you need to maybe have a more simplistic approach in order to encourage and enhance the singing.

So it's not about the playing, it's about the singing. And I'm not saying you can't have a transition riff or you can't have a, but we don't need solos.

You know what I'm saying? You know the difference, like a turnaround, a transition, and it's not wrong if you play something beautiful on the piano as you transition, like that's one thing.

But I'm just talking about like, you don't need the - We don't have specials every Sunday. The Tuesdays gone, you know, piano solo.

Like, okay, that's not what we're doing because the music is meant to enhance the singing.

And we don't, we don't do special music on Sunday morning. We may have a special hymn sing or something and allow that.

But like, I don't think quote unquote special music is, that's not singing one to another.

It's not conducive to the congregation. It's not the congregation. That's a different probably subject. We're not doing the iTunes versions of any song.

We, you know, there are a lot of songs that have long breaks in between the chorus and the verses or long breaks in between the verses.

I do my best to narrow all of that as much as possible, eliminate the tags and eliminate the bridges and things like that where I can, if it's all instrumental, so that we are focusing on singing.

We're continually singing and shortening any of the instrumental as much as possible in order that the singing may continue.

Yeah. So how long do you guys service last, Jeff? We start at 1045 and we're done by noon.

So an hour and 15 minutes. Wow, that's pretty good. Yeah. I don't even know when our service ends, honestly.

We start at 1030 and we typically get out about, we're typically walking out the door about 1205.

Yeah, an hour and a half. So, but I just noticed. That's with all those other elements. When you start adding all these elements in there, you know, of we want to make tea and all that,

I would just say it's really hard to boil all that down to 60 minutes.

I think, but I think though, if you could have the main, I think if you're, let's say your church is, let's say you're coming into a church that's, quote, unhealthy maybe.

Like we don't know a lot. Our church is not as far along as another church. Not unhealthy, but not maybe as healthy as you want it to be.

I would say the main things you need to add to your service are preaching and singing and prayer. But you cannot.

And Bible reading. And Bible reading. That's why I say this. The simplest thing. Let's say you're in a difficult situation.

You're like, I don't know what to do. But our worship needs to be reformed. Okay, I would say step number one.

And this is so simple. Start every service, whether it's yourself or maybe you and maybe some deacons.

Or maybe you and a couple other trusted brothers. We're just, and take the Book of Romans. Or Psalm 119's easy.

It's got 22 stanzas, eight verses each. We're gonna start every service reading from the scripture.

We're gonna remind ourselves that the first thing we do is we open up God's book and we read it.

Then I would, the next thing I would say is if you need to cut out a song to allow more time for preaching, maybe you could do that.

Or just make sure you hone in on the songs you have. Let's make sure we're singing

Christ -exalting songs. And then just, you're gonna have to just work from there.

Be patient, have a long -term vision. I mean, would y 'all add anything? Yeah, your goal,

I think your goal, and maybe you're not there right now, but your goal should not be, well, it works for us.

We just keep it. Your goal should just to be reforming all the time.

Always. Always. I wanna be healthy. Wow, we're fine. We're not even gonna think through this.

No, always. Our church isn't losing any money. We got people staying.

Just stay how we're at. We don't wanna ruffle no feathers or change, like your church needs,

I'll just be honest, and I could speak for every church, your church needs to be healthier than it is.

And I think it's good that - There's no perfect church. Yeah, there's not a perfect church. Our church needs to be healthier than what it is.

Our church is healthier than what it has been, and I'll just be, I'll just tell you this. The reason that that happened was the

Word of God. The reason why we were formed is because we took more seriously the Word of God. We took more seriously the worship of God.

Like, because changing your worship is hard.

Changing the way that you order your worship could really affect your church.

Let me just say this, because this is, I've struggled with this before. I can tell you this as a pastor. If I walk into your church,

I can tell a lot about where your church is just by the worship. So a lot of guys want to talk, a lot of guys think if their sermon is really great, banger sermon, polished, they're preaching like George Whitfield or whatever.

They think that if that's where they're at, they think their church is in a good spot. But I can tell you, and I can tell you that we can tell a lot about where a church is at based on its worship.

There is a huge, do you wanna, do you wanna say something? Well, I was just gonna say, when you were talking about making change, it's difficult for a church to make big changes.

Whenever I came to buy the word and started leading the music, it was most of the songs they were singing were from a red hymnal.

That's what we got. Yeah, and it wasn't until, it wasn't until I had taken over and started leading that we started incorporating more contemporary music and new quote -unquote modern music, albeit biblical, into the worship.

And there was some rigidity there. There was some uncomfortability there at first, getting people used to the new style of music.

And especially we had, there was a choir at one point. We no longer have a choir. We didn't have a guitar and now we have a guitar.

So there were things, there were changes, big changes that were made that took a while to get used to.

And in some cases, years. And I would encourage anybody who's in, you know, there's a beauty in being in a rural church in that it's more comfortable.

You're more free to make mistakes in a sense, not that it's, and it's easier to take your eyes off of yourself.

And I'll just say this, for the preacher, he never preaches a sermon as good as he wants to, right? But as the music minister, he never sings the song as good as he wants to.

And we make mistakes. Right. And I remember - But it's not a performance. It's not a performance and you have to remember that.

Sometimes Pastor Quatro, after a song that I've been horrible, he'll look at me weird and be like, dude, are you okay?

What's going on? Yeah, there were some humiliating times when I first began, but God worked all of that out of me in realizing it's not about me.

Amen. It's not about me. It's do I want to do good? It's so much weight off my shoulders. It's so much weight off your shoulders.

But if I'm being judged or I'm being ridiculed or I'm being glared at or whatever the case may be by somebody in the church, that's on them.

They have to work that out with God. That's between them and God. I'm not here to perform. There were some people that I have heard say negative things about me because of the singing or the worship, but I've also heard encouraging things.

And if you're listening to this and you're in a rural church, encourage those who lead. Encourage.

Oh yeah, that means a lot. It does. It really does. It's a big help to hear that you were encouraged by the singing.

You were encouraged by the song selection. These things are important to us to know that we're serving the body of Christ well.

Amen. Amen. Can I, I think there's, can we talk about the importance of singing?

Can we talk about that for just a second I wanna bring a text. Do you feel in charge? I'm asking, that's what

I'm asking, yeah. Well I guess so, man. So in, so there's a passage that I preached not too long ago on Psalm 73.

Psalm 73 was written by a man named

Asaph. Asaph is not somebody you hear a lot about in the Bible. But Asaph was a man who was put in charge of the worship of God by King David when the

Ark of the Covenant was brought to the temple. He was in charge of the singing.

He was in charge of leading the people. And this is in 2

Chronicles 5 verse 12 and this was when the Ark came to the temple and all the

Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, Judithon, all these other men were singing in the temple.

And I'm trying to find this passage that I just had. I thought you had, I thought you had. I know,

I just said it, but I. I'm leaving this on here. I'm not editing this out.

Okay, that's fine. I'm trying to find this passage. No pressure. Well, there's awkward silence.

Okay, anyway, this is what happens. David has such a serious view of worship that he has to appoint somebody for the worship of the people before the

Ark in the temple. Okay, I think the view that we take now is that singing can be done very haphazardly.

Worship and singing can be done very nonchalantly. It's not a big deal.

We'll do it hokey because God's really more concerned with the preaching. I would say that's a very unbiblical and dangerous view to have because when you,

I'll just tell you this. God killed two worship leaders in the Bible for getting it wrong.

I'm not saying that if you do it imperfect or that you mess up that judgment's coming upon you, but what

I can say is not paying attention to the way God has ordered you to worship him, not paying attention to the seriousness of worship, and I'm just telling you, you sing songs that are bad theology, you can lead the people astray.

You need to be very careful of that. When you come before, when you come on that stage, behind that podium,

I don't know if you sing behind a podium or a stand, but when you come in there, you are leading the children of God to how to worship him.

That's not a thing to be taken lightly. That's a thing to be coming before him and trembling, in reverence.

That's why it's so important that we don't think about worship as a concert, as a performance, because that's not what it is.

You're leading God's people in teaching. You're leading him to obey him.

That's what we're doing. In Psalm 96, it says, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the

Lord in joy. Worship in song is vital in the church, and it should be done in an orderly way.

If you are not, I don't think any people on the podcast that are listening are thinking that singing's not important or that singing is, that's probably happening in their churches, but I just want to reiterate and remind you the importance and the essentialness,

I don't know if that's a word, in the gathered worship. You are ordered and commanded and have a privilege to sing to the

Lord. There's scriptures, there's text in the Bible that says, the Lord sings over us. Even God sings, so it has a special emphasis on singing.

So I think it's good and it's appropriate and it's right and it's a joy to do is sing. I love the saying that you have an audience of one.

I mean, whether you're sitting in the pew, you're preaching the word, you're playing an instrument, you're singing from the platform, whatever the case, your audience is one.

Your audience, is this pleasing to God? That needs to be the question in your heart, the question in your mind, is my spiritual worship pleasing to God?

Forget everybody around you in that moment, whether what you think they may be thinking, if their heart is tuned to God and your heart is tuned to God, then you're in the right place.

And that's the real, that's where all of our focus needs to be. Am I doing this for God and is this pleasing to God?

And in the corporate gathering, I would say again, I said this last episode, but it's the pinnacle of the week. Yes. Psalm 87, the

Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Meaning there's something particularly unique and special about the gathering.

So don't look at it as I got an hour, I gotta check off my box, I gotta get through these songs,

I'm just gonna mouth these words, not even gonna think about them, just gonna be a routine. No, I'm singing,

I'm singing loud, I'm singing to the Lord, I'm encouraging my brothers and sisters, I'm genuine,

I'm real, this is not a concert, this is not emotional manipulation, this is not about,

I'm singing for an hour and I'm hearing a 15 minute sermon, you know, like this, all these things, you know, there's so much more that we could say, we could go on and on and on, but I just hope,

I wanted to record a couple episodes with you brothers about worship and hope as an encouragement, maybe a challenge, maybe just a practical teaching to help churches think well and deeply about worship because Christ is worthy of a healthy church,

Christ is worthy of excellence in worship and He's worthy that we think through these things well, our triune

God is deserving of all glory, worship, honor from the local church.

I'd say one thing to help encourage is that God is for you in Christ to worship

Him rightly. If you're trying to think through all these things and it's hard and you're confused and you're looking at different churches or different people in the

Bible, like how do I worship rightly? I would say that the Lord is for you, He wants you to worship

Him rightly, He will help you, you need to pray to Him, you need to seek Him, draw near to Him and He will help you.

Yeah, and for me, one last thing too is I would say that find somebody that you can relate to, you know, meeting

Gunnar and becoming friends with you and being able to learn music together and play music together and to grow together and the

Lord has been a huge blessing to me and has helped me tremendously to get over some fears and anxieties and things like that and to know that me and you deal and wrestle with like the same exact things.

Isn't that the Lord's providence bringing us together? Yeah. No, it's really lucky. It's the Lord's providence that He brought us together.

But you're not alone, we don't have to do this alone and there are a lot of guys who are maybe isolated or alienated, going through things on their own and unwilling or unable to reach out.

Find somebody that you can talk to these things. Reach out to Gunnar. Yeah. And I don't know if I can help you with much, but I'll try.

It's been a huge blessing for me, for sure. Amen. Well, thank you guys for giving us the time to go through this.

I hope that you guys listening to me have been encouraged, I've been encouraged just through the conversation. So you guys got anything else?

We'll see you on another episode of the Rural Church Podcast. Can you say it a little more masculine?

I'm just doing the best with what I got. All right, we'll see you guys next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.