Worship - Songs, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

The following comments are to accompany Chapter 17 of Batsell Barrett Baxter's book, The Family of God.  This chapter is on singing as one of the five essential parts of Christian worship.

I can't let this opportunity go by without saying what great joy it brings to me that singing somehow got to be something we do every time we worship God.  I love music and singing, and I look forward to singing in church.  It is one of those things for which I am always thankful.

My path to the church is an interesting one.  Just before I met the people who taught me to believe in Jesus, I had been working for months restoring some old recordings from the Smithsonian for a grant project.  They documented the lives of people who lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and rarely ventured outside.

The usual practice of the swamp dwellers was to sit on their porches at night and sing hymns entirely a capella.  Imagine my surprise not too long after that to find a church that also kept this practice to honor the example of the early church and the directives in scripture, using a capella singing exclusively in worship.

We find authority in scripture for singing, and we should do what we see is called for, skipping--or we might say avoiding--any extra things that are not called for.  So, we sing with enjoyment and with purpose in worship, and we don't feel compelled or pressured to make a production out of it or play one or more instruments.

We do feel compelled to obey God, and that's really what it's all about.  Studying the New Testament, we come to the conclusion that singing was exemplified, encouraged, and reqested, only with voices, by God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the apostles.  The writing of historians also supports the conclusion that the church used a capella singing.

Having said all that, I will add that I hardly ever spend much time making speeches about the exact right way to sing.  We should learn it and practice it in the interest of restoring the New Testament church, but perpetuating an endless argument about it causes us to completely lose focus on the value of singing in worship.  The worship of God is a human activity, not a mathematical formula that can be distilled into ones and zeroes by scientific management.  I firmly believe there is some room for expressiveness in the song service, although we all understand that there are some things we will do and some things we won't do, out of respect for God.

So, let's move on to the positive things in Baxter's chapter.  He starts by mentioning that in Matthew 26:30 Jesus and the disciples sang, giving the early church the example that we follow today.  A topic that can become quite fascinating is what song Jesus and the disciples sang after the last supper, before going to the Mount of Olives.  Many scholars say that because the Great Hallel was an integral part of the closing of the Passover observance, it is most likely the selection.  Psalms 113 to 118 are Hallel (praise) verses, apparently sung from memory.  If it was the Hallel, we would know another major part of what was said (sung) at the last supper.

Some scholars say that it might have been a new, perhaps shorter hymn more closely fit to the occasion.  The reason they suggest that is because the group sang this hymn at the end of their supper, not the main Passover rites, and this could mean that Jesus intended to keep singing a part of worship in His church, and therefore might have done something different from the ordinances of the old covenant.

Regardless of what they sang, it is of great importance that we see Jesus singing as the events began to unfold that would lead Him to the cross.  We also see the disciples singing, even though this time was rather sorrowful for them.  Truly that set the tone for the church.

When Paul and Silas sang in prison, Acts 16:25, we see that singing was very much like prayer, something Christians turned to as a way of dealing with whatever came their way.  Writings of Paul and James show us the purposes of singing in worship and what our task is when we sing.  We teach, we admonish, we exhort, we praise, we adore, we give thanks, we dedicate ourselves, and we sing directly to God and to Christ.  That's a lot to do, so it is no wonder we often spend the second highest amount of time in our worship on singing.

Nearly everyone wishes they could sing better, but it's great and it helps our worship when we give up thinking about that and just let our songs go up from the assembly in a way that is pleasing to God.  One of our greatest blessings as a part of the family of God  is that we will never have to quit, ever.