Music used in corporate church worship should not seek to amuse, entertain
or manipulate congregations, Ken Puls stressed recently.
Music used in corporate church worship should not seek to amuse, entertain
or manipulate congregations, Ken Puls stressed recently.
Instead, every text and tune should be carefully and thoughtfully
informed by Scripture, said Puls, who teaches church music at Dallas Baptist
University and serves as music director at Heritage Baptist Church in Mansfield,
Texas.
“I know of no other ministry in the church that has so
great a potential to help or to hinder the pastoral ministry of teaching and
preaching in the church than music,” Puls said in an address at the recent
2001 Southern Baptist Founders Conference.
Music often competes with preaching and teaching for supremacy
in the contemporary church – when it should serve as an underpinning for
the proclamation of Gods Word, Puls explained.
“The music in your church has the potential to become
an obstacle to worship (by) amusing, distracting, entertaining the people and,
as a result, minimizing and trivializing the preaching of the Word of God, or
worse, contradicting the pastor who is trying to be faithful in preaching the
Word.”
Scripture clearly is foundational for the presence of music
in a worship service, Puls said. Songs and spiritual songs particularly are
found in Psalms and should inform the words sung in worship, he said.
Puls listed various roles Scripture assigns to music – praise
of God, giving thanks to God, prayer, proclaiming the truth of Gods Word,
exhortation, confessing ones faith and enriching worship with beauty.
A hymns text should be of primary importance, because
it voices the content of a believers worship, Puls said. Therefore, the
words must be faithful both in context and theological truth drawn from Scripture,
he said. “The text conveys and sets forth truth as we sing the words of
Scripture, as we teach and admonish one another through music with the truths
of Scripture.”
Much of todays praise and worship seeks to minimize theology
and doctrinal content while maximizing feelings and subjective experience, Puls
observed. Some of the newer music should be used, but he cautioned leaders to
ensure that all worship songs are filled with doctrinal truth.
“If you are … trying to (reform worship) with praise
choruses and short little songs, youre going to have a very difficult
time doing it,” Puls said. “We need church music that has substance
to it, that keeps us focused on the truth of Gods Word.”
Texts and tunes should not be framed according to pragmatic,
man-centered, feel-good methods, since Gods Word sets guidelines for worship
and places worship under the authority of Scripture, Puls said, citing John
4:23, Col. 3:16 and Eph. 5:18-21.
“The passages in Colossians and Ephesians must be considered
together,” Puls said. “In worshiping in spirit and in truth, truth
is inseparably tied to the work of Gods Spirit. It is the Spirit who indwells
us, who illuminates our hearts and our minds that we might grasp and understand
and respond to the truth of God and his Word. What we sing before God matters.”
Puls urged music leaders to ask careful questions of the text
regarding quality, purpose and message.
Also, while the tune of music often is dismissed as a matter
of personal taste, it is another critical consideration in singing God-centered
worship songs, Puls said.
Indeed, the issue runs much deeper than mere taste, he suggested.
Certain styles of music are always inappropriate for worship,
Puls said. Heavy metal rock is one example, because its discordant and violent
style fails to promote the dignity, reverence and seriousness that should accompany
worship, he said.
“I find the disregard for music disturbing, because music
is wed so closely to desires and emotions,” Puls pointed out. “Not
all music or musical styles are appropriate for worship. There are musical gestures,
inflections and movements that will always be out of place in worship.”
That does not mean other types of music are illegitimate, Puls
said. “Music provides an accompaniment for almost every activity in human
life. … Music does not have to be sanctified and used in public corporate
worship in order to make it legitimate or within Gods pleasure or will.
There is music that God gives us to accompany a great many activities that we
partake of in Christian liberty outside the context of worship. …
“(But) it shouldnt surprise us that not all music
will be adequate or suitable to accompany those activities that God calls us
to when we gather together in corporate worship,” Puls said.
It is vital to give the subject painstaking consideration because
the tune is the incarnation of the text; helps worshipers to interpret the text,
providing an emotional context; and identifies the text, he added.
Different styles of music lead to different interpretations
of the words being sung, Puls noted. He used an example of an opera singer extolling
the virtues of another character in song with a serious, sincere tone of music
underlying it, thus showing the sincerity of his adulation. However, if the
accompanying music were whimsical and circus-like, the audience would interpret
the singers tone as mocking and sarcastic.
In much the same way, the tone of the tune beneath church music
sends messages ranging from sorrow over sin to exalting worship of a holy God,
Puls said, urging a congruency between the text and music.
“Do both the text and the tune communicate the same message?”
Puls asked. “Are the music and the words equally yoked to communicate a
clear message suited to the purpose of worshiping God and edifying the church?
When choosing songs for worship we must carefully consider both music and words
and how they fit together.
“Tone affects how we take the words,” Puls concluded. “The music
should undergird and strengthen worship, not distract from it or confuse it
or call attention to itself rather than the content.” (BP)