Episode 104: Music Ministry in the Local Church

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

Christ Is King and the Church Is Not a Democracy

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, and 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, and 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, Alan 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 Crago, 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.

Why Rural Church Worship Can Become Hokey

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.

Music as a Powerful Tool That Can Misdirect Worship

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 hadn't I 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 want to 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've worshiped.

When, by the way, let the hearer understand, you may have worshiped.

But it wasn't God.

But it wasn't God you were worshiping.

Yeah, 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, right, 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 back seat. 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.

Context, Culture, and the Need for Reverence

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 familiar to them.

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 this 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, but both, so we don't want to, yes, I'm agreeing with you guys, but I don't want to draw too big of a wedge there.

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 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?

Excellence Without Professionalization

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 you got.

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.

Yes.

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.

It is.

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. 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, 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 grace that covers, as you begin to try to push toward biblically healthy worship, there's grace. Like you're not necessarily gonna 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. 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 going to go to heaven. Not, I'm going to 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?

Right, right, right.

All the, I know I'm cutting you off.

What did you want to get at?

Well, I was going to 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 the, 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 church, 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.

Singing Psalms in the Local Church

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, in spiritual songs. So one of Gunnar's favorite theologians 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.

I'm just gonna tell you, there's a couple things.

I told you.

How am I gonna look at my hymnal if all the lights are off?

Then put all the words on the screen.

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 want to hear you hit that octave. I don't want to hear your soul, it's not a concert. 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. 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, because teaching's happening. You know, 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, 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.

Emotional Worship, Corporate Worship, and the Role of Women

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 in 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'll 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.

The Psalms as a Model for Worship and Lament

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, it's not a good hermeneutic. 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, but as just a, 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 want to 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?

Yeah, they're from the scripture, yeah.

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 song.

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.

Planning Weekly Music Around Expository Preaching

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 a really general way I handle it. First, I'll just, I don't, 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 we try to, 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, this is 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. Like 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.

That's, 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 Quadro, 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 which, 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.