October 25, 2018 Show with Timothy Shafer and Dr. D. G. Hart On “Spirit & Truth: The Protestant Reformation & Worship Today”

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 25th day of October 2018.

I'm delighted to have two first -time guests today. The first guest for the first hour will be

Timothy Schafer, a professor of piano at the Penn State University School of Music and an elder at Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

And in the second hour, we're going to be joined by Dr. D .G. Hart, Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Both men are going to be speaking on the theme, Spirit and Truth, the Protestant Reformation and Worship Today.

We're also going to be promoting a Reformation conference on that very same theme that will be held on Reformation Day, October 31st at Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

But first, let me formally introduce our first guest. As I mentioned, Timothy Schafer is professor of piano at the

Penn State University School of Music. He's an elder at Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania, music consultant for the recently published

Trinity Psalter Hymnal and an active performer and master class teacher, having taught and performed solo recitals, concerts, and chamber music throughout the

United States, Brazil, and Asia. His writings on music appear in several periodicals and in two volumes of The Pianist's Craft.

He has recently recorded a CD of newly commissioned hymn arrangements for two horns, soprano and piano, with hornists

Lisa Bontrager and Grace Salyards, and I probably mispronounced both of those names, and I'll find out, and a soprano,

Sarah Schaefer. The album will appear under the MSR Classics label and is due for release in late 2018, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Timothy Schafer.

Thank you, Chris. It's very nice to be here. So did I butcher the two names of the hornists? Your pronunciation was perfect.

Really? Okay, that always surprises me whenever that happens, and it does happen more than I believe.

Well, tell us something about Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

Well, I'm glad to. We were begun in 2011 under the leadership of Pastor Jeremiah Montgomery, and we began as an

Orthodox Presbyterian Church plant, a daughter church of Westminster Presbyterian Church of Altoona, and we were a church plant for about three years,

I believe. We particularized, and for non -Presbyterians, that means we became an independent standing church of our own about three years later, and we're now led by Zachary Simmons, who's a wonderful new pastor we have at Jeremiah, left to be on the mission field.

We boast having two campuses for our morning services. We're at one location, and for our evening services, we're at a second location.

So we're a portable church, a sort of mobile version of church, but we are trying to make an impact here in State College for the

Gospel. Well, you've got to explain more what you mean about the mobile church there. Well, we don't have a building of our own, so we're renting in two different locations, one location for the morning service and one for the evening.

Okay, great. Now, tell us about this upcoming conference on Reformation Day, Spirit and Truth, the

Protestant Reformation and Worship Today. Yes, the conference is taking place

Wednesday evening on October 31st, and it includes both myself and Daryl Hart as speakers.

Zach Simmons, our pastor, will also give an introduction. We're looking back to see what the roots of Reformation worship are, and how we can learn from those roots about reforming our worship today to scriptural norms.

And Professor Hart will be speaking on the topic more from a historical perspective.

I'm going to be speaking about the impact that music has had, both in the

Reformation and how music is used today in churches, and what

Scripture describes about how music should be used in our worship. Great. Well, we're going to be giving this information later,

God willing, but for those of you who want to attend the Spirit and Truth conference on Reformation Day, go to resurrectionopc .org,

resurrectionopc for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, resurrectionopc .org, and you can find out more information about that.

It's immediately on the screen when you go to that website. Well, now

I'd like you to do something that we normally have our first -time guests do, if they are

Christians. The vast majority of time, I guess, are Christians, but once in a while, I do have somebody on who's not.

But if you could give a summary of your coming to faith in Christ, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, and what providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. Yes.

I was raised in a Christian home. My family attended and were members at St.

Andrew Presbyterian Church in Pinch, West Virginia, and that church began as what

I would say is a faithful church. I look back over my Sunday school materials as a child, and I see that those were

Reformed materials, strong Biblical preparation.

But at about 1973, that church went to PCUSA, and the materials changed.

I still have many of those materials at home, and I would say strayed from the

Gospel in many ways. So over time,

I attended various mainline denominations.

My wife and I found ourselves in the Methodist Church for a number of years, almost two decades in the early part of our marriage.

Was that a mainline, more liberal church, or was it one of the few remaining truly

Biblical, evangelical, conservative Methodist churches? It was a mainline church, and I would say that for a time that the wool had been pulled over our eyes, we were not really aware that the

Gospel was missing from the services. And it happened at a time when our oldest daughter was set to be catechized in that church.

They asked me to teach, and I looked over the materials, and I thought, this is not what

I believe. And it was very evident from the materials. At the same time, my wife had purchased just,

I think providentially, two books by R .C. Sproul. We began to read materials by R .C.

Sproul, and we moved from the mainline Methodist Church to a

PCA church, and we were there for seven years, and that was a local church.

And then from the PCA, we moved into the OPC where we felt more at home in terms of the worship style.

When did Reformed theology actually take root in your life, especially since that didn't seem to be a part of the reason you joined the

OPC initially, but now since you're an elder, I'm assuming that you are theologically Reformed? How did you discover and embrace

Reformed theology? It was largely through R .C. Sproul's writings and radio show, and that happened in about the late 90s.

We made a transition at that point to, like I say, the local

Presbyterian church, where the first time we went to that church, I could just give you a brief little story here.

We went to an evening service, and my family all came away. We got in the car, and my oldest daughter, who was 11 at the time, said,

Dad, that's the first time I've heard a preacher explain how to get to heaven. Wow.

Wow is right, and we just felt like we were snatched out of the spider's web. So it was graceful, the

Lord's mercy that we began to hear this true gospel preaching with faithful exposition of scriptures on a regular basis.

Well, praise God. Well, how long has music been a part of your life? When did you realize that you had a gift in music, specifically the piano?

And tell us about the journey that you were on, excelling in that field.

Well, my earliest memories are from around age five. My mom was a church pianist, and I came alongside her around age five and tried to play along with her, and she gave me lessons for the first year, and she moved me to some local piano teachers throughout grade school and high school.

The last teacher I had was very influential, and I ended up preparing auditions for conservatories, and I was accepted and attended

Oberlin Conservatory, which is an extremely liberal school. I had no awareness at the time of how liberal it was, but it was a school where Finney, Charles Finney, was one of the very first presidents there.

Oh, yeah, right. I remember seeing a documentary on Finney and hearing about his connection with that school, and also a very eye -opening documentary about how far from the gospel he truly was.

Absolutely, yes. But my wife and I met there, and we got married shortly after we graduated, and my journey with the piano continued into grad school.

I went to Indiana University, where I earned a master's and a doctorate, and right out of the doctorate, auditioned for it and got this job here at Penn State.

I've been here at Penn State for 34 years, and it's just ideal. It was just wonderful to find someone who would pay me to practice and play the piano and to teach, so I'm just overjoyed with the time

I've had here at Penn State and look forward to many more productive years. Now, for someone who is an elder in an

Orthodox Presbyterian Church and someone who is also involved in music in the secular realm,

I was wondering how broad your musical tastes are, not only in regard to listening, but also playing and performing.

I have a very wide spectrum of music that I listen to, but having said that,

I am fairly reserved and strict as to what

I believe is appropriate for worship during the regular gathered assembling of the believers on Sunday.

Now, I have a broader even spectrum of music that I listen to and enjoy that is

Christian outside of the confines of that. For instance, I even enjoy when it's done well and when you can understand the words and the words are actually biblically deep.

I actually enjoy occasionally hearing Christian rap. Having said that, I would never ever want that to be a part of a worship service.

So just tell me about yourself in that regard. Well, I would say I follow very closely how you just described yourself.

I like a wide variety of music. Of course, in my teenage years

I was listening to a lot of secular pop. I have those words and melodies still ringing in my ears to whatever effect that might have.

I also really enjoy bluegrass. Oh, so do

I. So do I. The Kentucky Colonels and the Whites. I love the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou.

Yes, Dora Lawson, Quicksilver, groups like that. Really great. I can enjoy country music also.

Of course, I listen to classical music. It's part of my job, and I'd say that's my first love.

But I do listen to a lot of things. I would say also southern gospel and the quartets is one of my great...

I really enjoy listening to that too. Now this brings me to a question that seems to divide

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, even very conservative ones. I happen to believe that there are melodies and rhythms and beats that are inappropriate for worship because there are certain melodies and rhythms and beats that are purposefully intended to create a mood and an emotional atmosphere that is not conducive of worship.

I think that there are melodies, rhythms, and beats that are purposefully created to emote sexual desire or at least the imagery of that.

And there is obviously melodies, rhythms, and beats that are intended for humor.

I mean, there's a reason that the circus uses certain kinds of music that would not be appropriate in a church service.

There is reasons why the military uses music to evoke certain moods in regard to the military and so on.

So I think that it is a fallacy. There are Christians, there are many, and maybe you're one of them, I don't know yet, but there are many

Christians that I've spoken to who believe that any melody, rhythm, or beat is completely fine in a worship service.

It's the words alone, the lyrics to the music that matter. I disagree with that because I think that you would have to be denying reality to deny that melodies, rhythms, and beats create moods.

And you would have to be insane to believe that any mood is appropriate in a worship service. So what do you have to say to that?

Well, I would follow along your lines very closely. Music has a kind of magic about it that evokes and sometimes creates emotion.

And if we look at that word emotion, there's a word embedded in the word emotion and that is the word motion.

And if you look at the etymology of that, the word emotion is describing a kind of psychological feeling that, as Webster's puts it, that is manifested physically.

So that our emotions have physical manifestations. And music taps into that physical manifestation by imitating those physical motions that we experience when we have these feelings.

So the sounds, for instance, of a lament might sound very much like what we look like when we feel sad.

If you see someone walking down the street and their body language has a downward trajectory, if their voice is soft, if their movements are slow, those are things that might very easily tip the casual observer off to say that this person is sad feeling today.

And if we look at music that describes sadness, it has many of those same characteristics. The melodies descend, the performances are often softer, they're smoother, they're slower.

Those same characteristics that apply to the physical manifestation of sadness are manifested in sound when we hear melodies.

And so that's the way, that's sort of the conduit between sound and emotion, is that motion that we experience bodily.

And there are churches that gravitate on occasion to one mood or emotion over and above all others.

You have the Charismatic and Pentecostal churches that might only sing and play music that evokes joy and excitement and exuberation and so on.

And you may have some of our Reformed brethren who go overboard on the solemnness and you never feel like you are outside of a funeral parlor when you're in the worship service.

I know that that is a caricature of all of us who are Reformed, which is a slanderous caricature when you broad brush the entirety of the

Reformed churches. But we have to admit that we can be guilty of that, at least certain congregations can be.

But what is your opinion on that? What kind of a mixture do you think that the sermon should dictate the moods of the hymns, or should there always be both at least?

I mean, I don't have any problem with having a worship service on occasion or even frequently where the music is predominantly joyful or emoting that kind of an emotion, but I don't think that the somberness should be excluded entirely always.

Just curious what your opinion is on this. Well, Martin Luther famously said that music is the handmaiden of theology, and so as the pastor structures a service, he looks to the

Scriptures to see what those Scriptures are saying and what is the emotional content, or what is the emotional tenor of the propositional content of the

Scriptures. So if you look at a passage that is full of lament, a passage of Christ's Passion, for instance, the music that day when you're describing a passage from the

Passion might be more somber. Myself, I think that the

Gospel should always be presented, and the Gospel is always a joyful response to what we need.

But I'd say the short version of it is that the music should be word driven, that the

Scriptures and the sermon and the theme of the service for the day ought to dictate the emotions that the music presents.

And if the hymns that are selected and the psalms that are selected are also word driven, then we will have a worship service that will be driven emotionally by the content of the text of the

Scripture. Now as far as the lyrics are concerned, one of my great heroes of the faith, modern day hero, who is now with the

Lord for eternity, Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, former pastor of 10th

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and also very well -known author and Bible conference speaker, and happens to still be used of our

Lord through his writings and through his DVDs and CDs. He is still being used to lead people to salvation that I have met personally and also lead people into the

Reformed faith. Even pastors have been led to the Reformed faith that I know personally through hearing and reading

Dr. Boyce. But I remember him on a number of occasions being very vociferously opposed to Christian hymnody or Christian music that contained lyrics that were little more than mantras.

The repetition of a few lines over and over and over again and almost to bring the singers and the listeners into some kind of hypnotic state.

I can remember, and I'm not exaggerating at all, and I hope that some of my friends, if they're from this church and they're listening,

I hope that they're not offended. But I was invited to an Assemblies of God congregation, and I love the people there,

I love the leadership there, friends of mine. But I sat in utter amazement, or should

I say I stood in utter amazement during the opening song, and after a while I stopped singing it.

I got so angry I stopped singing it. But the only line in this song for about five minutes was, this is how we worship him, clap your hands.

This is how we worship him, clap your hands. And I remember thinking that I would have been upset even if I had a young child in some kind of Christian daycare or children's worship service that was segregated from the major population of the church.

If the youth leaders or the caretakers of these children were teaching, if I had a child, if they were teaching my child to sing in that way,

I would even be upset then, let alone a room filled with hundreds of adults. So that was a long -winded way of saying, what about the lyrics?

Don't we need to be careful about that kind of thing? Oh, absolutely. The mantra -like repetition that you're describing is,

I think it falls into two basic categories. It's, on the one side, it's a little bit like we read of what

Finney did in whipping up the attendees into an emotional frenzy so that he could get more converts.

And this is very similar to that. It's, you know, there's a lot extended what they call a worship set at the beginning of a service where the whole purpose of it is to whip up a sort of frenzied emotion.

And those repetitions serve to do that because they're easily accessible and quickly learnable.

So that's one side of it. The other side is that repetition is, excessive repetition like that, vain repetition, is also a way that the commercial music industry uses to sell music.

So that by the time you've heard a song one time, if enough repetitions are built into it, you'll feel by the end of that one three -minute song that you know the piece.

And then the second time you hear it, it's very familiar to you and you want to go buy it. So we have to be careful not to invite commercial music in to lead our worship services.

Now, of course, repetition is not bad in and of itself because even some of the psalms have repetition in it.

It's just when it comes to the point of being ridiculously excessive and so on. Exactly. Repetition is a vital part of music making, particularly.

But with good compositions, it's regulated and carefully chosen and repetition is done for a reason.

All right, we're going to come back after this first station break. If you have any questions for Tim, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own congregation's choice of music or something and you don't want to identify yourself.

That's completely understandable. But if it's not a personal and private matter, please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We may even have Tim play something for us on the piano. If we reach that point,

Tim, and I'm going to leave that up to you, please put the microphone of whatever you're using, a phone or however you are conducting the interview, as close to the keys as possible so that we can clearly hear what you're playing.

Don't go away. God willing, we are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are now back with today's guest. And as I said earlier, we have two different guests today.

During the first hour, we have Tim Schafer, Professor of Piano at the

Penn State University School of Music and Elder at Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

And coming up in the second hour, we will be joined by Dr. D .G. Hart, Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.

They are both speaking at a Reformation Day conference on Wednesday, October 31st at Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania, on the theme,

Spirit and Truth, the Protestant Reformation and Worship Today. If you have questions for our guests, go to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Tim, do you have time now to play some music for us and give us the reason that you wanted our listeners to hear these bits of music from you?

Sure thing, Chris. Thank you. You mentioned the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, which was published earlier this year.

I think that there were about 40 ,000 copies printed, and those copies were all sold out.

We're now on our second printing. Wow. So we're very excited about it. And one of the things that we sought to do in the

Psalter Hymnal, it's unique in a number of ways, but one of those ways is that it contains a complete setting of every psalm, all 150 psalms, set to one tune.

And that's with the exception of Psalm 119, which of course is 22 different psalms.

But our charge from the General Assembly of the OPC was to set these psalms in metered, rhymed verse, which is a sort of Protestant Reformation tradition.

And musically, we sought very consciously to create a tune pairing with text, where the text drove the kind of tune that we chose.

And not only on a syllabic level, and by that I mean that the number of notes matched the number of syllables in the poem, but also on an emotional level, so that if it was a psalm of lament, that the music was congruent with that affect.

Or if it was a psalm of praise, that the music represented something very different and was more joyful.

So I'd like to give you a couple of examples of that. Maybe the first one is a psalm of...

I hope this translates well to the radio. The piano is about five feet away. But I wanted to play a couple of phrases from Psalm 19b.

The heavens above declare the glory of our God, and what his hands have made the skies proclaim abroad.

Just listen to these opening two phrases. I'll play the first phrase with no harmony, so that you can hear the contour of the melody and hear how it ascends rapidly by leap, and how it represents this idea of the heavens above declaring.

And then the second phrase is the same melody, but I'll harmonize it the second time with the harmony that's in the psalter hymnal.

So this is the first two phrases of Psalm 19b, the heavens above declare.

So you can get an idea there for what we're seeking to do is to represent the text in a way, in sound, that supports the text of the psalm.

Was that audible? Yes, it was. Can you hear me, Tim? Yes, it was audible. Yes, good.

Okay. We can also listen to one of the laments to hear how differently it is set.

Psalm 88 is a very dark lament song, and we set that to a...

Listen to the opening words of it. Lord, you are the God who saves me.

I cry out both night and day. May my pleading come before you.

Turn your ear to me, I pray. So you're going to hear a very static kind of melody.

The melody is stationary. It doesn't move much at the beginning, and then when it pleads, you'll hear a musical kind of pleading, and when the text talks about turning, you're going to hear a very sharp kind of harmonic change.

So there's a very one -to -one relationship here in this first stanza between the text and the musical setting.

So this is Psalm 88. Lord, you are the God who saves me.

The psalm continues in a very dark manner, and we believe that these kinds of melodic structures set to these harmonies are things that would make you want to move or feel in the same way as the text of the psalm, so that the music is amplifying the text of the psalm and that the music is word -driven and not style -driven.

And what you just said, I think, is key to the conflict in the church over music in regard to worship versus entertainment.

I mean, it has, I think, a place in what you're saying. I mean, do you agree with that? Yes. Like, one of the reasons, for instance,

I mentioned earlier that on occasion when it's done very well, I enjoy sometimes hearing a very biblical rap song.

There are some very talented hip -hop singers who are Christian who have very deep theological lyrics and so on, and they do their raps very well, and I enjoy that.

But I don't want that in a worship service. I would probably be tempted to walk out of a worship service doing that because the entertainment aspect of that kind of art so overrides worship to me.

In fact, I'm an enormous, for lack of a better term, fan of congregational singing and congregational worship.

And I think that even classical Christian music, very well done, can become entertainment and override the call and biblical duty of the congregation to worship.

That if you could just glue those things together for us from what you just did.

Yes, I totally agree with what you said. The Lord calls us to make melody to Him, not to make rhythm to Him.

And so I think rap is precluded because it is largely a rhythmic art, and it's not a melodic art.

Melody was the primary means of music making for centuries before harmony, as we know it, developed in about the 9th, 10th century.

So I think on that basis alone, but certainly entertainment is not what we're there for.

We're not there to be blessed. We're there to bless the Lord. We're there to worship the

Lord. And if we are blessed as a part of that, then that's a byproduct. But it's not why we attend church.

Our call, our command is to worship God, not to seek a particular feeling.

I think entertainment -based worship is a needs -based worship, where we want to be

God -centered, Christ -centered in our worship. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I have heard that Martin Luther borrowed melodies for his hymns straight out of the tavern.

Is that true, and is that an acceptable thing to do? That's a myth. And the myth derives from a misconception about the terminology.

Martin Luther's hymns quite often fall into bar forms, what are musically called bar forms.

That has nothing to do with a tavern. That's right. It has nothing to do with a tavern. These are musical structures, and they're

Germanic. They have their roots in Germany. And when Luther borrowed a bar tune, we're speaking about a tune that has a certain melodic structure, and that structure is a small phrase, and then a repetition or a variation of that small phrase, and then a contrasting phrase that's twice as long.

A bar tune is an AAB melodic structure. It doesn't come from the tavern.

Now, let's say for sake of argument, it did, or some of the songs or one of the songs did.

Does that innately remove it from acceptability as the melody for a hymn?

I mean, as I was saying before, I believe that melodies and rhythms and beats produce emotions, and very often those that compose them will be very open and detailed, explaining the very thing that they are trying to produce as in regard to emotion.

Many composers are very clear that I intended to produce a sensual, seductive sound or whatever the case may be.

But if you find a melody to a secular song, for instance, that is just a beautiful melody.

Let's say, for instance, somebody took the melody to a very horrible song when it comes to the lyrics.

I think Imagine by John Lennon is a horrible song as far as what the lyrics teach.

But the melody is a captivating melody. There's something quite beautiful about it, and I think that that's why many people love the song

Imagine without even really paying attention to the lyrics. I'm amazed at people who have chosen that song for a funeral, especially the funeral of a young child.

And I've seen that happen and heard that happen where after the death of a child, the parents have chosen

Imagine as one of the songs during the funeral. I'm thinking to myself, imagine there's no heaven, you want to imagine that after the death of a child?

But anyway, is what I'm saying, does it make sense? It does make sense.

I don't think it automatically precludes whether the origin of the song is from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or from a

Sibelius Symphony or from a Scottish folk song. One of our new psalm tunes is called

Tarwaithi. It's for Psalm 23. And as I understand it, it comes from a

Scottish wailing song. So I don't think that they're precluded, but I think that we have to be very careful with the associations that we bring in.

Music communicates not only in this manner from its sound constructs, the melody and the rhythm and the harmony and so forth, but it also communicates on an associative level.

In other words, what we have learned about this. Right. For instance, a 16th century tavern song, few people today would recognize one.

Exactly. Right. It would not have strong associations today. But if we were to take a pop song that has strong associations for the culture and incorporate it into the church,

I think we have to be very careful about that. We're called to be a set -apart people, and what we do in worship is a set -apart thing.

And to import the music of the culture and to allow the culture to shape our worship services,

I think is the opposite of what we ought to be doing. The worship services ought to be shaped around the

Word, and that culture of the liturgy, the culture of the service itself, ought to be shaping our culture instead.

Let's see here. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, can music itself, no matter how beautiful and biblical it is, dominate a service where it far out times, excuse me, far out times,

I guess he means the length of time, the actual preaching of the Word? I think we can find examples of that, yes.

You can find examples in the Bible, or do you mean just historically? I mean, I think in even current modern -day worship practices where music has taken over, it ought to be a

Word -centered service, not a music -centered service. Well, thank you,

Arnie. Keep listening in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and spreading the Word in Perry County and beyond about Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We have C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, I think far too often when we sing the beautiful hymns that we have come to love in our faith, at times the hymns contain words that neither the pastor nor the song leader define for us.

Don't you think that we should know what these words mean, such as, bring forth the holy diadem and so on?

Shouldn't we know what these words mean before we're singing them? Yes, I think absolutely.

In preface to our Trinity Psalter hymnal, we have encouraged pastors to make the hymn choices available one to two weeks in advance that people might go over the hymn texts and tunes, and if the tunes are unfamiliar, to learn the tunes at home, to prepare for worship.

And certainly looking up unknown words would be part of that preparation. We have

R .J. in White Plains, New York, who says, could you list a few of your favorite contemporary

Christian artists? Well, at the beginning of our conversation,

I mentioned that my texts run toward, I'm from West Virginia originally, so it's kind of the music of my people to enjoy country and bluegrass.

If I think of contemporary Christian artists, I mentioned

Southern Gospel, so I enjoy the Gaither Vocal Band, I enjoy Sandy Patty.

I'm not a big fan of what might be called Christian pop or rock.

The style itself is pretty repetitive. I mean, the same thing could be said of some bluegrass and some

Southern Gospel, but I have associations with the pop rock genre that sort of preclude me from doing much listening to that style.

Now it's interesting that you said that because one of my favorite contemporary Christian artists, I don't know if he would fit in that category, but sometimes his music certainly drifts into that category.

Michael Card has always been one of my favorite contemporary Christian artists, and sometimes he's got some real hard electric guitar jamming in there, and many other times he's just got very tranquil music accompanied by piano and so on.

But he does seem to utilize both styles, but he happens to be one of my favorites.

Keith Getty and his wife, they have written some really wonderful modern day hymns that, in fact, the congregation where I'm a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, which is a very traditional Reformed Baptist church when it comes to worship, you don't get too many very upbeat contemporary songs sung in that congregation, but we do sing quite a bit of Keith Getty's music.

Are you familiar with him? Yes, yes. If I'm looking to be spiritually moved,

I quite often listen to hymns, hymn arrangements sung by good choirs, or classical music,

Bach, Mendelssohn, the Bach cantatas are full of the gospel, and often they're set in another language and you have to have a translation next to you, but if you want to hear timeless settings of the gospel, listening to Bach cantatas can't be beat.

Well, I want you to have the next three minutes to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners uninterrupted before our time is over for this first hour.

I would say that, you know, Philippians encourages us to think on the things that are lovely, true, excellent, pure, noteworthy.

You know, I certainly have my listening habits that tend toward things that are less pure and excellent, and we all do.

We're all sinners, but I would encourage listeners to explore really the truly great music of the faith, which is quite often found in the great hymns and, as I was mentioning, the music of Bach and other

Reformed musicians. In there, we hear music that is not style -driven, but music that is more driven by the word.

When Bach sets words, he sets them with this notion I was describing, where the sound is attempting to recreate either a particular word, place, time, thing, event, or the emotion that's associated with that word, and he tries to do that with sound.

We need to take a little bit of a break from the drums and the vernacular music of our day to hear that music in a fresh way.

We get so desensitized by the ever -present drum kit that it's hard to listen to music for us without that drum kit, and I would just encourage listeners to take advantage of listening to the great music that is available there.

And to say that as we think about music for worship, we really need to think not to what our preference is, what our likes are, what our desires are, but what does the word say, and what is the word that we're hearing from Scripture and from the sermon, what is the emotional content of that word, and how can that emotional content best be represented in sound?

I think that would be my prayer musically for the

Reformed Church especially. Well, let me remind our listeners, if you are interested in attending the upcoming

Reformation Day conference, it's actually being held on Reformation Day, not Reformation Sunday, but Wednesday, October 31st at the

Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church of State College, Pennsylvania, featuring Timothy Schaefer, who you just heard as our first guest, and also our second guest,

Dr. D .G. Hart. That's Wednesday, October 31st in State College, Pennsylvania.

You can go to the website of Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which is resurrectionopc .org,

resurrectionopcfororthodoxpresbyterianchurch .org. Thank you so much,

Tim, for being our guest. I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.

Tell Daryl that we're really looking forward to his visit next week. I will do that. Well, God bless you.

You too. Bye -bye now. And don't go away, folks, because as I mentioned, after this midway station break, we're going to be joined by D .G.

Hart, a .k .a. Daryl Hart, who is the Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.

He is going to be continuing our discussion on Spirit and Truth, the Protestant Reformation and Worship today.

If you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Hello, my name is James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

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G for group, dot org forward slash podcast. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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For details call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

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That's liyfc .org. James White here, co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted that my friend Chris Arnzen will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 Conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Speakers include John Piper, Steve Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Josh Weiss, yours truly, and many more.

I hope you all join Chris and me for this phenomenal event. For more details go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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That's cvbbs .com. Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And you can call cvbbs .com at their toll -free number 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

Mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and you will receive not only free shipping on your order of $50 or more, but you'll also receive the book

Everyone's Luther with a purchase of a minimum of $50 worth of merchandise, and by mentioning

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We have a few announcements before we move on to our second guest,

Dr. D .G. Hart on Spirit and Truth, which is our theme today. First of all, next month,

November 9th and the 10th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town. I hope you join me there.

The theme is The Glory of the Cross, and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn.

If you would like to join me there, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click, or should

I say scroll down to Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. Then coming up in January, from the 17th through the 19th, that's a

Thursday through Saturday, the G3 Conference returns to the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

The roster is, as always, enormous and really impressive at the

G3 Conference. Dr. James R. White, John Piper, Stephen J.

Lawson, Voddie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many more are on the roster at the

G3 Conference. Go to g3conference .com to register at g3conference .com.

There is also a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference on Wednesday, the 16th of January, so tell your Spanish -speaking and bilingual friends about that.

But for the English Conference, that is the 17th through the 19th, Thursday through Saturday in January, and I hope you join me there.

I hope you also register for an exhibitors booth because they are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people there, so if you have a church, parachurch, ministry, or business that you want to promote in that crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people,

I highly recommend that you do just like I did and register for an exhibitors booth, and I hope to see you there at the

G3 Conference, January 17th through the 19th in College Park, Georgia at the

Georgia International Convention Center. Last but not least, if you love my show, Iron Trip and Zion Radio, you love the guests and the topics we cover, you love sharing the free

MP3s with others, well, please donate as heavily as you can and as frequently as you can to Iron Trip and Zion Radio to keep us on the air.

Go to IronTripandZionRadio .com, click support, then click click to donate now, and you will be able to donate instantly with a debit or credit card.

You can also send in a check via snail mail the old -fashioned way to the address that appears on your screen when you click support at IronTripandZionRadio .com.

My caveat every day that I announce to you is never, never siphon money away from your regular giving to the local church where you are a member in order to give to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for your family and church.

Providing for Iron Trip and Zion Radio is not a command of God, but if you're financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, and you love this show, and you don't want it to go away, please go to IronTripandZionRadio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now, or send in a check via snail mail. If you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line, and we would love to help you launch an ad campaign as long as whatever it is you are promoting is compatible with what we believe on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

You don't have to believe identically with me, you just need to believe or promote something, I should say, that is compatible with what we believe here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

That is, by the way, the same email address where you can send in a question to Dr. D .G. Hart. That email address, once again, is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and that leads me to introduce our second guest today.

Our second guest is Dr. D .G. Hart, Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, and he is going to be continuing the theme that we began with our first guest,

Timothy Schaefer, who is also speaking at the same conference, which is Spirit and Truth, the

Protestant Reformation and Worship Today, the theme of the upcoming Reformation Day conference being conducted by Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, Dr. D .G.

Hart. Thanks, great to be with you. What do you tell our listeners about Hillsdale College?

I know that Hillsdale College has become fairly well known amongst conservatives in America, regardless of their religious affiliation.

I know that you will hear occasional ads on the radio during the Rush Limbaugh program and other places promoting

Hillsdale College. Why don't you tell us about that? Well, we are a great books -like college.

We have a pretty substantial core curriculum that goes from the ancients to the moderns.

We have a lot of other majors that go with that, although not as much in some of the

STEM subjects, so sometimes we miss out on students who want to pursue engineering. But we have a lot of students that go into med school and other graduate degrees in the hard sciences, so our hard sciences are still pretty good.

But as I understand the history of the college, we've been part of the so -called conservative movement since roughly 1970 or so when

George Roach became president. Our current president, Larry Arnn, also works in those circles.

We stand to the right of center politically, and that's in some ways our reputation.

We do a lot of advertising on some of the conservative talk radio shows. But on campus, it's much more bookish and library -ish, and the politics just aren't nearly as prominent as maybe our national profile would suggest.

And tell us about the history course that you teach there. Well, everyone in the history department teaches, as part of the core curriculum, the

Western Heritage course, which runs from basically the Old Testament up through John Locke, which is a lot of material to cover, obviously, in 13 weeks.

But we do it, and I think it gives a pretty good grounding for the kind of resources that were available to the founders when they were thinking about politics and society and virtue and the like.

And then in American Heritage, another course required of all students, we go from the

Puritans up to Ronald Reagan. And we try to cover the main developments and themes, especially in intellectual life in America, to give students some facility with other courses that they may encounter here.

And then upper -level courses I teach intellectual history of the United States, religious history of the United States, Christianity and politics, colonial

America, anyway, a number of different subjects. Great. Well, if anybody has any further information that they'd like to discover about Hillsdale College, go to hillsdale .edu,

h -i -l -l -s -d -a -l -e .edu. Now, this is a very important subject that we are addressing at the upcoming

Reformation Conference being conducted by the Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

Spirit and truth are obviously two very important elements, vital elements of the

Christian faith. Tell us why, on a subject that is subtitled the

Protestant Reformation and Worship today, the two words spirit and truth are used in this theme.

Well, I think, I have to say, first of all, I hope I don't contradict any of the planners who are involved.

I wasn't in on the planning, and so the use of the titles is not necessarily foreign to me.

But obviously it's a biblical phrase. Oh, it is, for sure. It goes back to John 4 and Christ's encounter with the woman at the well.

Samaritan woman at the well, and where Christ talks about the changes in worship that are going to come on the basis of his coming and completing his work.

And so the idea of having to worship at a particular place like Jerusalem is not going to matter as much as worshiping in spirit and truth.

And worshiping in spirit and truth really captures also the importance of the

Bible to the Protestant Reformation, especially the Reformed side of it. Reformed standing for the larger phrase, reformed according to the

Word. If you look at the Westminster Confession and catechisms, you will often see

Word and Spirit always going together there, that the Spirit is obviously responsible for, the

Holy Spirit is responsible for inspiring the authors of Scripture and making

God's Word infallible. But then Spirit also illuminates believers to believe that Word, and the

Spirit then is also present in worship when the minister invokes

God's name and etc. to make worship Spirit -filled.

So I've sometimes put it this way, that the more

Bible there is in a worship service, the more likelihood that the

Spirit will be present, which is sometimes not the same way that people think of Spirit -filled worship.

Oftentimes the connotation is a kind of emotional or enthusiastic kind of worship, and you don't think about reading long sections of the

Bible or long sermons from the Bible. But the importance of Scripture for the

Reformers really did make make the Spirit an important element, person, agent in Protestant worship.

That's interesting. Could you give more detail on what you just said? Well, to restore the

Bible to, or to at least recover the Bible for Christian worship, and to make the sermon and the

Bible readings probably even more important than the Eucharist or Mass was for Roman Catholic worship in the

Western Church, is to recover both the authority of the

Scripture, but also the importance of the Holy Spirit. Because later on in the book of John, after Christ has talked to the woman at the well,

He also prays on behalf of the Church, and He tells His disciples that it's going to look like a bad thing that I have to leave you, that I'm going to be ascended, in effect.

But I'm going to send my Spirit, who's going to lead you into all truth. And one of the ways the

Spirit leads the Church into all truth is by filling out the canon of Scripture, by giving us the books of the

New Testament, but then also as ministers preach that Word and read that Word in worship, and then also as ministers pray and congregants pray for the blessing of the

Spirit upon that ministry of the Word. Again, the Spirit is going to be present in worship in ways that, again, a lot of times people who think about contemporary worship don't think of the

Bible as being central to Spirit -filled worship. But again, because the Reformation has depended so heavily on the

Word, and the Spirit is so bound up with the work of the Holy Spirit in leading the

Church into truth, it's actually the more Bible you have in worship, the more

Spirit -filled it will be. Yeah, there are many people in the modern evangelical realm who base so much of worship on emotion that they will deem something as either wonderful worship or horrible worship according to how they feel.

And you really have what they think is worship guided by the

Spirit, where we who are theologically Reformed, and of course

I'm not saying that the Reformed Church is not immune to this symptom that I'm talking about, but it's predominantly modern evangelicals outside of the

Reformed faith that seem to be most prominently involved in worship that they think is being driven by the

Spirit, not Spirit and truth, although they might not ever admit that. But if you remove truth from the equation, you're really not worshiping according to the

Spirit. Right, no, exactly. I mean, you can't, it would be, I don't, we shouldn't try to put limits or constrain the

Spirit in any way, but the only way in some ways that we can know where the Spirit is present is by looking at what

God has revealed in His Word, the Word that the Holy Spirit has inspired. God can work outside of that.

There can be extraordinary displays of God's grace, but ordinarily,

God doesn't work that way. That word ordinarily is pretty important to Presbyterians, partly because we're so protective of doing things in good order, but also ordinarily emphasizes the ordinary means of grace, that is the

Word preached and read, the sacraments and prayer as being the ways that God blesses

His people in worship. Now, a part of this theme of the conference,

Spirit and Truth, the Protestant Reformation and Worship Today, the part of the theme that I want you to address right now is worship today.

Why are you comparing and contrasting and tying in together the Protestant Reformation and Worship Today?

Well, partly it's probably because the organizers of the conference were only a year away from the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation, so a lot of people are talking still about the Reformation and why it matters.

Then also, Tim Schafer had probably said a lot about this, but was very involved with the new

Psalter Hymnal that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the

United Reformed Churches have put together, and so I think the congregation there in State College wanted to call attention to that Psalter Hymnal.

And one of the remarkable things about that Psalter Hymnal is

Presbyterians, anyway, in the United States, those who were in the so -called mainline church, the

PCUSA in its various iterations, never really had a complete

Psalter. And even going back to 1831, the first hymnal produced by the

Presbyterian Church, it had a large collection of psalms, but I'm not sure that it had a complete Psalter.

Some Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Presbyterians only sang psalms, which was the pattern of Calvin's churches in Geneva, and was also the pattern for a lot of Protestants in the

English -speaking world up until the awakenings of the 18th century when hymnody and the hymns, especially of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, became much more popular.

So the recovery of the Psalter in congregational singing also points back to what the

Reformers, especially the Reformed branch of the Reformation, tried to do. So I think that's partly why people are interested in the

Reformation when it comes to worship, which is trying to figure out what the Reformers did and why they did it.

And it's not as if we only do what they did. We're Protestants.

We don't simply follow tradition, but if they have good reasons for doing what they did, we may be able to learn things and recover elements of worship that they instituted and may protect us from errors that have grown over time in our churches.

Yes, and very often we who are Reformed, or if we include in the mix even fundamentalists and so on, like to beat up on contemporary artists and music.

But there is a lot of music that can date back 100 years or more that is really unbiblical and appeals to sentimentalism and things like that, sometimes even bizarre lyrics.

You're wondering what is actually being meant by some of the things that are being sung. And just because it's an old -fashioned melody, people can think, well, this must be

God -uttering and it must be biblical because it's old -fashioned. But that's not the case, is it? Right.

Especially, I mean, the hymns of Watts and Wesley are even older than some of those

Victorian hymns from the late 19th century. And I would, in my estimate, that the hymns of Watts and Wesley are superior to those.

Generally speaking, the closer you get to the present, the less desirable the text of the songs may be.

But still, I go back and forth on whether I would only sing psalms.

I guess my preference would be to sing psalms primarily because if I want to figure out what a text means in a song

I'm singing in worship, I'd rather go have it lead me back to the Word of God than have it lead me to a biography of Isaac Watts or John Wesley.

I mean, Charles Wesley, excuse me. There's something wrong with the biography of Watts or Wesley.

I'm a historian and I write biographies, and so that's a good thing. But still, to know what

God intends in a certain text, I think, is more fruitful, more edifying. And this is,

I mean, so the more you can get the Word of God involved in worship, the better.

The Psalter being part of the text of Scripture that was designed to be sung.

I think if you, I mean, I think the Reformed tradition could have also tried to sing certain texts, maybe from the

New Testament, like the Prayer of Mary, the Magnificat, or the

Song of Simon. I mean, Simeon, in the birth narratives, there are also some hymns that Paul might quote in some of his epistles that might also be set to music.

So it wouldn't necessarily have to be the Psalter, and there are a lot of debates in the history of Reformed churches about whether to sing outside the

Psalter or not. I'm not as strict about those arguments, but I do think singing texts from Scripture is superior.

Yeah, I think, I'm not an exclusive Psalm singer either, but I think that it is wise to include the

Psalms in your worship. I'm glad that the church where I'm a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we have

Psalters in our pews, and I'm glad that the Great Commission Publications has this new

Psalter hymnal available, the Trinity Psalter hymnal. It really connects us with the people of God of all ages, even the

Old Covenant all the way up through the present day. When we sing the Psalms, we are connecting with the entirety of the universal church, aren't we?

Right, and if you've gone to services even in England, which the

Church of England has its problems to be sure, but sometimes I've found myself in Oxford for conferences, and there is the service of a morning and evening prayer, and oftentimes, well, they follow the prayer book for those services, but during certain seasons of the year, those services are sung primarily, and they chant the

Psalms, and it really is a glorious thing. I mean, chanting the Psalms is even closer to the text, because what we have with metrical psalmody is, these are paraphrases, these are ways to make the text fit rhyme schemes and meters, and so not only are you one step removed by translating the text from Hebrew into English, but then to make it into verse, you're also doing something different with it, whereas with chanting, you're not having to worry about rhyme schemes or meter, and it's something that the

Covenanters, a very conservative Presbyterian tradition, do sometimes. Would that be something that requires acapella singing?

Not necessarily. I've seen congregations and choirs,

Presbyterian ones, actually have four -part chanting accompanied by an organ and or piano, but it would be a stretch to introduce it into a congregation not used to chanting.

So I understand the wisdom of not necessarily doing it.

You'd almost have to practice it to get used to it, but it is really a great way to get even closer to the text of the

Psalter by chanting it. We're going to our second to last break, actually.

We're going to have one right after our current guest D .G. Hart leaves. He has to leave 10 minutes early, and then we're going to be joined by Pastor Zachary of the

Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church in State College, Pennsylvania, for the last 10 minutes.

But we're going to a brief break right now. If you have any questions for D .G. Hart on spirit and truth in regard to worship, give us an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Stephan Lindblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our churches and our people need to be well -grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

My name is Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown

Manhattan. You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc

.nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

.nyc. Have a great day. and it is it's a great conference i love it and chris arnson was there last year he's been there i think every year it's great to see him there you and i actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place which is a highlight tons of stuff going on tons of great speakers and no matter where you are in the building you will hear chris arnson's laugh and that's worth the price of admission alone if you would like to join phil me chris and a cavalcade of great preachers so it should be a cavalcade of great preachers and me g3 conference .com

g3 conference .com chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio here i want to tell you about a man i have personally known for many years his name is dan buttafuco dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer but not the type that typically comes to mind dan cares about people and is a theologian himself recently he wrote a book titled consider the evidence for the bible ravi zacharias wrote the foreword dan also has a master's degree in theology dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states he represents many christians in serious injury matters all over the country dan is an exceptional trial lawyer he wrote the test for the national board of trial advocacy and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for 1 million dollars or more and in approximately 10 different states in illinois his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history in new york his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the law journal if you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state i recommend that you call dan consultations are free there is no fee unless you win dan buttafuco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878 1 -800 -669 -4878 or email me for dan's contact information at chris arnzen at gmail .com

that's chris arnzen at gmail .com hi i'm pastor bill shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m

eastern time on wlie radio www .wlie540am .com

we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back we are now returning to our interview with dr dg hart who is one of the speakers at the upcoming reformation conference on wednesday october 31st at the resurrection orthodox presbyterian church in state college pennsylvania the theme is spirit and truth the protestant reformation and worship today if you'd like to join us with a question i would do so immediately because we're rapidly running out of time our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com we have an excellent question uh from uh john and bangor maine and john and bangor maine says will dr hart please give us three primary things that he would say if he was sitting in a pastor's study with people on both sides of the music divide when it comes to worship those that are staunchly defenders of what would be considered traditional worship and those that are passionately wanting to introduce if not dominate the church with modern contemporary music how would you biblically drive these two sides to some kind of harmonious agreement obviously this may never happen but what would you use as argumentation to at least attempt to bring about this agreement uh well um i don't have the um smoking gun proof text to end that i've often though joked which is in some ways my my style and it gets me in trouble a little bit but if if you only sang psalms in that church neither side would be happy uh the traditionalists generally like to sing hymns and the the contemporary people like to sing praise songs so if you just went with psalmody you everyone would be unhappy but then everyone would be united um and union is a good thing but i do think um that the question is how how faithful to scripture are the songs um i mean that seems to me pretty basic and some some contemporary songs have um maybe phrases from scripture but do they overall reach for um the truth of scripture are you trying to make that truth uh plainer or or or more moving in some way or are they playing more on emotions and a certain personal relationship with jesus which oftentimes some songs do um so that would be one criteria is how faithful are they to scripture um i think a related concern though i i've become actually sort of less less uh opposed to praise songs um i can when i visit other churches i can go along and sing them although i really can't sing them because i don't know the melody and it would be useful to have music at least to give me a clue about how to sing um and so i mean it's it's odd because the contemporary music was designed oftentimes to bring in outsiders visitors seekers to the church and make them feel more comfortable but if you don't know a song and there's no music to help you sing it okay that may assume that people can read music but still for one or two times through that song you're just going to be have to listen to hear people see how they do it and then maybe you can join in so that's that is that is a concern as well but i would also say are you devoting a just one section of the service to song which is usually how it happens you have all your song going on between 15 and 30 minutes during part of the service and then you turn to the speaking part which is reading from scripture in the sermon and i think following up an order of service coming out of um the reformed pattern of of beginning with prayers of invocation beginning with prayers of adoration beginning with prayers of confession and some kind of reassurance pardon uh then prayers for god's blessing upon the reading and preaching of the word and moving in later in the service if you're observing the lord's supper to to have songs accompany those elements of of worship rather than simply having song and then bible and and sermon so that would be another thing i think that i would be concerned about with the use of either hymns or praise songs but that's not three points i apologize to the listener for not um boiling it down to three points that's all right um one of the things that concerns me when i hear christians who advocate contemporary music uh and obviously uh contemporary music can be just as biblical and wonderful as centuries old music like i was saying in my first hour i love the music of of the gettys and so on which is contemporary uh but but sometimes you will hear the argumentation is if you want the lost to come to your worship services and you want them to stay there you don't want them to be bored you've got to have contemporary music and it really bothers me when people make that argument especially christians who make that argument because i don't think that we in fact i know we are not supposed to be uh drawing people in to the the worship of god with a lore that appeals to the appetites and tastes and desires of those that are goats those that are lost those that are still in darkness we're not to like entice people with something that pleases them before they're even regenerate into the church uh and so even though there are some remaining fundamentalist and reform churches that might not care at all about what christian young people would like to sing uh and what kind of worship they would like to be involved in in the modern church i think it far more dominates the the modern evangelical scene where christians do not care at all about older people they could care less if some old folks senior saints are offended by some of the more raucous and loud contemporary music in fact i think they would be happier if they were all driven out anyway uh and i don't think i'm exaggerating what are your thoughts on what i just said well i'm old enough now to have been around when contemporary worship started to come into reformed churches um and that's actually what piqued my interest in thinking and studying more about worship um but i've also i mean contemporary worship has been around now for almost 50 years uh at least 40 years so it's not as if if you're trying to attract 20 somethings today you're going to use music from the 70s or 80s to get those people in i mean so you we've hidden the next generation of contemporary music conceivably i don't i mean i listen to the radio online some and and have some sense of some contemporary music i there was an assumption i guess and i think was partly because contemporary music was novel compared to hymns back in the 60s or 70s or even into the 80s so contemporary music seemed like oh that's going to be a signal to visitors that you're that kind of church and not the other kind of church but by this point it seems to me again if you're signaling to people that you're not that kind of church by using music from the 80s you're not exactly on the cutting edge and i've been in some churches that have used sometimes a praise song here and there in a more liturgical service and it's like the women in the 60s that are raising their hands it's not the young people we've we've got it we've got a generational divide now even within the contemporary music scene yeah you're right i guess i would just say you know find that the the texts that are good find music that is singable for the whole congregation from young to old and and try to work with that and and you know i think this goes back to your original question or the point of your your question which is how much are you trying to lure people in how much is it kind of uh a statement you're telling non -believers about who you are and i you know i think you want to show on believers you care about them and you want to be sensitive if they've never seen a bible and if they don't know where the books of the bible are in a pew bible to help them get there and there are all sorts of ways to do that but again simply to to act as if you want to show that you i don't know are relevant somehow by by featuring less the kind of worship that your your older people in your congregation have been used to i just think that's not caring a whole lot for that that part of the flock because worship can be evangelistic it is evangelistic that's what the spirit uses to to bring people to christ but worship is also for edification of people who already believe but above all it's supposed to be pleasing to god so if you want to actually please someone in worship you should think somehow about how do you please god in this amen and we are out of time for your portion i know that you had to leave early right so i uh hope and pray that you have a wonderful time that edifies all and blesses all at the reformation conference uh coming up in state college pennsylvania great well good to talk to you and i apologize for having to leave early but i appreciate your letting me do that so my pleasure brother all right take care and uh by the way we're going to be joined by pastor zachary coming up in just a matter of a couple of minutes uh pastor of the resurrection orthodox presbyterian church of state college pennsylvania he's going to conclude the last 10 minutes of the program approximately and we're just going to go to another brief station break so don't go away we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith 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that's batterydepot .com paul wrote to the church at galatia for am i now seeking the approval of man or of god or am i trying to please man if i were still trying to man i would not be a servant of christ hi i'm mark lukens pastor of providence baptist church we are reformed baptist church and we hold to the london baptist confession of faith of 1689 we are in nofork massachusetts we strive to reflect paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how god views what we say and what we do than how men view these things that's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the apostles priority it must not be ours either we believe by god's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of christ in truth and love if you live near nofork massachusetts or plan to visit our area please come and join us for worship and fellowship you can call us at 508 528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us listen to past sermons worship songs or watch our tv program entitled resting in grace you can find us at providence baptist church ma .org

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welcome back we are now being joined by pastor zachary simmons of resurrection orthodox presbyterian church in state college pennsylvania and he's going to wrap up the program to give you more information and more reasons why you should attend the upcoming conference on reformation day october 31st at resurrection opc in state college and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to iron trip and zion radio pastor zachary simmons hi chris well uh we've only got a few minutes uh why don't you let our listeners know why this is such an important issue why this is something that they should perhaps even cancel previously scheduled plans to come to the resurrection opc to attend this conference on spirit and truth the protestant reformation and worship today you know chris often we think of when we think of the reformation we think of the five solas that salvation comes to us by grace alone through faith alone in christ alone to the glory of god alone and we've come to know this through through the scriptures alone the fact is that the reformation was very much a reformation of the church's worship as well and we worship in those five same ways we worship by grace alone we're greeted by god at the beginning of our service uh he takes the initiative we worship by faith alone in a very unornamented simple way um we worship in christ alone not through another priestly mediator we worship according to the scriptures alone that's the classic reform regulative principle that we worship according to the word of god and the way he instructs and we worship according to the glory of god alone not not for our own glory and and those are key reformational principles that really ought to be shaping the church's worship and those are the sort of sorts of things we feel burdened about at resurrection orthox presbyterian church here in state college and we're hoping that this conference will be an opportunity to um make those biblical ideas known um in our community and to others in in central pennsylvania um we're really excited to be able to have uh dg joining us um his book uh reverence and awe that he co -wrote uh with john meeters that have been a big influence on me personally and my understanding of reformed worship seeing the regulative principle as a protection on christian liberty not a violation of it so we're delighted to have him with us the um the publication of the trinity paltry hymnal by the opc and urcna is a major milestone in reformed worship in the 21st century and having the privilege of having timothy shaffer talk about the publication of that book and the reformational principles behind it that went into its creation is going to be a great opportunity for anyone who comes so we warmly invite everybody and hope that it'll be a great opportunity for us to honor the lord together and learn and grow together in in our worship um in all of our churches now let me ask you a question although you may have many in the modern evangelical church who put put far too much emphasis on aesthetics and the quality the sound quality of music because in reality they are really intending to entertain people as much as they intend to worship uh god but the aesthetic part the beauty aspect and the skill and the talent with which we worship that is not altogether unimportant is it it's very important uh worship biblical worship ought to be to be simple it ought to be word -centered uh but it also ought to be excellent we want to give the lord our very best and another principle besides excellence is the idea of fittingness we should desire for the musical forms that we use in particular as well as as other forms of our worship to fit the content that the lord has given to us and he's given to us a beautiful message a weighty and glorious message and and we should strive as we're able and as we have opportunity to have the the forms we use in worship complement those great truths amen and that does not mean that people who have horrible singing voices should not sing worship to our lord it's kind of interesting how when when you have especially with a larger uh group in a congregation when when we are all singing together people like me who don't really have the greatest voices in the world it seems to all blend together uh in a beautiful way doesn't it it does we encourage one another in those psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as paul says in colossians the ephesians and it's a way that we build one another up as we worship the lord together and with a variety of skills and allowing those more skilled among us to help to serve the rest of the body with their gifts amen and you know uh just speaking about this uh this as far as the skill and quality of the music is concerned uh i don't understand why some of our churches uh who do not have a talented and gifted and skilled pianist uh they have to throw anybody in there that has any kind of uh ability more perhaps more ability in their minds than they actually possess to play the piano or other instrument during a worship service even if it's horrible it's so distracting let me think that even for those who don't believe in exclusive acapella worship that sometimes acapella is better than having somebody who is not gifted playing a piano or another instrument if they are not at all skilled at that that instrument sure there's definitely a place for acapella singing and that can be a very uh rich experience and and a a fitting form for uh for the kinds of music that we ought to be singing in our churches and particularly when there's uh when there are not musicians available with the with the skill to be able to serve uh god's people um with with skillful accompaniment um on the other hand you know when when there's someone less talented than perhaps a professional would be but uh there's an opportunity for us to bear with one another and love and be grateful for for the gifts that that they may be bringing to the congregation particularly a congregation that um may not be as gifted uh musically to be able to sing acapella so there's a balance and a lot of pastoral concerns that go in with that as we help various people in our churches to serve and help all of us to be patient with one another and to grow in love right right i didn't really mean that we should only allow somebody to play an instrument if they are on a professional level of skill but what i meant is that somebody who clearly has no talent that maybe have have been given some lessons as a child and they have some rudimentary uh remembrance of how to play the instrument and they're distracting everybody from worship because it's really just abysmally bad that's what i was really talking about but no doubt no doubt but uh we are out of time now but i want to make sure again that our listeners have the website for the resurrection orthodox presbyterian church and state college pennsylvania it's resurrectionopc .org