by Alden Powers, Music Director @Roosevelt Community Church
When I was asked to contribute to the blog, I wasn’t really sure how I could contribute. I’m not much of a blogger. I try to spend as little time on the internet as possible. I’ll check email, glance at my Facebook, check email again, maybe back to Facebook, read a Bob Kauflin blog and call it a day. Maybe when I’m really bored I’ll actually check my Myspace page (does anyone actually do that anymore?)!
So I thought this blog would be a great place to share some of my thoughts about the music ministry at Roosevelt Community Church. My plan is to share insights into the songs we do from week to week during Sunday Worship. Hopefully I can share with you the biblical and theological reasons for singing the songs that we sing. So this week, I’d like to share with you some of my philosophy on why I lead worship the way I do.
With all of our Sunday services, my goal is to:
“magnify the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit by skillfully combining God’s word with music. Thereby motivating the gathered church to proclaim the Gospel, to cherish God’s presence and to live for God’s glory.” (Quote by Bob Kauflin).
Whenever we come together as the gathered church, we are called to proclaim the greatness of God and worship Him for who He is, and what He accomplished on the cross through His son Jesus Christ. Doing this can take many different forms and look different from week to week. We can do this with any style of music, and I think we should do this with as many different styles as possible (Col 3:16).
RCC’s style seems to be contemporary choruses, traditional hymns done in a modern way, quasi-country and some gospel and rap. While it’s important to be diverse because God’s kingdom is diverse, I try to stay within genres that I feel our worship team can do reasonably well. We have been blessed with musicians from all different backgrounds and styles that love the Lord more than the music that they play.
However, we can’t all be good at everything. We stay away from classical or traditional styles because we don’t have those kinds of people in our church that can play that well (i.e., an organist). We also don’t sing in Spanish for the same reason. With our limited instrumentation it’s difficult to do Gospel all the time. Gospel tends to sound best with a large band and lots of singers. Because we are limited in stage size, it’s difficult to have a large group or a choir.
God has given us what we have and it is important to be faithful with that. God does not need our voices or instruments to glorify Himself, but he does enjoy our worship and I praise Him for that.
We also want to be diverse with the content of the songs we sing. There are many great hymns that are very theologically rich. There are also many contemporary songs out there now that are rich in this way too. There are also very simple songs that allow us to rejoice in the Lord without thinking too much about the words. I think it’s good to have a balance of both.
I think it’s important to sing songs with a lot of theology because we can learn from them. Sometimes it’s easier to remember a song than scripture or the sermon. However, too much of these kinds of songs can be overload. They tend to be hard to learn and if we sing too many of them then the congregation spends too much time thinking about the words and not entering into God’s presence.
The simple songs are a good antidote for the more theological songs because they give us a chance to simply rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise from the depth of our hearts. But if we get into the habit of singing too many simple songs, then we miss a valuable opportunity to learn about the character of God.
I always avoid choosing songs that are theologically vague or inaccurate. Sadly, there are many songs being sung in the church today that are like this. “Jesus is My Boyfriend” songs are unacceptable at RCC. If a song sounds like they took a love song and replaced “baby” with “Jesus” then we won’t sing it.
For the opening set of singing, we try to follow some kind of progression from acknowledging our sinfulness, being assured of our salvation and rejoicing in our Lord for the Gospel. This can be accomplished several different ways. We might do this with one or two songs that emphasize one of each category. We might do one of these with a scripture reading. Sometimes one song might cover all three. We also try to frame these songs within the context of that week’s sermon text. Sometimes this is easier to do than other times. But in any event, the goal of the first set is to come into God’s presence and Worship Him. We are called to do this regardless of the sermon topic.
We usually reserve the singing we do after the sermon to respond to the sermon we just heard. In scripture, we see numerous examples of God’s people worshipping after hearing the word of God (Neh 8). I don’t think it’s enough to hear a sermon and just go home. We should respond to what we have heard and worship God for the message that His word is delivering to our particular church community at this particular time.
If you want to learn more about worship, I recommend visiting worshipmatters.com. There are tons and tons of great articles about all aspects of worship and leading worship.
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