On Congregational Singing (Pastors Talk, Ep. 257)
What is congregational singing and why does it matter? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss why Christians sing as part of their worship of God and how much a pastor should know about music. They talk about what the Bible says on congregational singing and break down John Wesley’s rules for singing in church. They finish by walking through what congregational singing should look like in church and how it can vary.
- Why Do Christians Practice Congregational Singing?
- How Much Should Pastors Know About Music?
- What the Bible Says About Singing
- John Wesley’s Rules for Singing
- What Should Congregational Singing Look Like in Church?
Related Resources:
Podcast: On Singing, with John Piper, Music for the Church: Mark Dever Interviews Keith Getty
Journal: The Church Singing
Articles: Why We Sing by Jonathan Leeman, My Congregation Barely Sings; How Can I Help? by Jonathan Leeman, In Praise of Low-Budget, Non-Professional Music Ministries by Mark Dever, Sing to One Another by Matt Boswell
Subscribe and listen to this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcast
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
It really is. I can tell it looks like him and smells like him.
Jonathan Leeman:
How does that smell?
Mark Dever:
I really don’t have a sense of smell. I just use that as one example to verify that you are who you say you are.
Jonathan Leeman:
Excellent. That really is Mark Dever.
Mark Dever:
You can tell by the…
Jonathan Leeman:
joining us by the…
Mark Dever:
inimitable sense of humor.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. For another episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk.
Mark Dever:
The episode makes it sound a little dramatic. There’s a plot, a climax, things happen, and there’s a result. It’s really…
Jonathan Leeman:
What would you prefer?
Mark Dever:
For 20 to 25 minutes more just edifying meandering.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hopefully not too much meandering, but maybe a little like now. And if you want to learn more about it…
Mark Dever:
Go to 9Marks.org.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
And give us support. Help us do what we’re doing.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that’s where you learn how to do it. Mark, every once in a while, Alex and I think through.
Mark Dever:
Who is this Alex? Is this another name for Alberto?
Jonathan Leeman:
No. Alex Duke, managing… One of my managing editors in the background helps me to figure out what we’re going to talk about and he comes up with questions for me. Sam Emadi, another one-time editor,
Mark Dever:
A dear pastor in Louisville.
Why Do Christians Practice Congregational Singing?
Jonathan Leeman:
Said, you guys have never done one on congregational singing. We said, surely that can’t be true. So we looked. We’ve done one on corporate worship, planning Sunday gatherings, and singing with John Piper. We’ve not quite done one on congregational singing.
Mark Dever:
I bet the singing one with John Piper was pretty much what you wanna talk about.
Jonathan Leeman:
I bet you well, it’s gonna be a lot of John’s perspectives.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s true. Cause we’re gonna be… Yeah, he’s a guest and we wanna be… Okay, John.
Jonathan Leeman:
But if I’m… Look, I’m out there, I’m kinda scanning through the list of things you’ve done. I won’t see one on congregational singing.
Mark Dever:
Okay, yeah, with that adjective in front of the singing.
Jonathan Leeman:
So we thought it would be worth doing that.
Mark Dever:
I got a FaceTime last night from a dear brother in Texas trying to think through this more. He’s in a new church, he’s leading the music there. And he said, I just realized I have all these instincts from CHBC, but I’m just wanting to know –
Jonathan Leeman:
Was he at CHBC?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I’m just wanting to know, is there more? What else can I… So maybe this is the conversation we’re trying to have for him.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, in the future, we’ll like, hey, just go listen to that pastor’s talk.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I didn’t say that to him last night because this talk didn’t exist, but hopefully, this meandering now will be used by the Lord to be edifying.
Congregational Singing is Taken For Granted
Jonathan Leeman:
I think we take singing for granted as Christians. Like, oh, it’s one of the things you do at church. Right? But I remember one time, this was years ago. You came back from some trip, I wanna say in India or somewhere, and you said, you know, traveling around, it occurs to me that Christians sing, and Christians uniquely sing.
Like Hindus don’t sing, Muslims don’t get together and sing, Christians get together, Buddhists don’t. What is it about Christianity and the gospel that somehow commends singing, that somehow makes that thing we take for granted every Sunday when we get together inevitable?
Mark Dever:
I would just start rather than looking at its obvious appropriateness, which is your question, I would start by saying there’s a biblical command in Colossians and Ephesians that we Christians hear and have always taken on board, which is why from the earliest time Christians gather in any descriptions you have of them.
Jonathan Leeman:
So we do it because we’re commanded to do it.
Mark Dever:
We are. We sing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. So we know that the people of God in the Old Testament would chant or, you know, there were songs of Miriam songs, Moses songs, of Deborah.
What form they took exactly, we don’t, we’re not told. But we assume the Psalms were at least chanted and at least some of them sung. We know, you know, mentioned a choir, choirmaster, instruments to accompany.
So we have all of those things that are the background that for when the first Christians are gathering, it’s not gonna be a surprising thing for them to sing. And so we have little bits of hymns, perhaps the most famously Philippians 2:5–11 about Christ, that scholars guess by the sort of structure in the original language are hymnic and probably were sung.
Jonathan Leeman:
I still wanna push you on my question.
Mark Dever:
Sure.
Why Do Christians Sing?
Jonathan Leeman:
Why do Christians sing? Why would they be commanded, maybe that’s how I want to put it, why would they be commanded to sing? Why does it make sense in light of the good news we have and in light of the way God has created us?
Mark Dever:
Well, you just gave the two exact things I was going for. You look at Revelation and it’s clearly happening. Well, why is that? It’s when we see someone as glorious as God and the gospel as glorious as the gospel and he has made us as we are to be beings who resonate with, understand, and reflect verbally and even musically, then there seems to be, as Luther said, some sort of special gift that music is to the Christian, which is God’s greatest gift other than theology.
Jonathan Leeman:
Fair to say that music engages the emotional, affectional parts of the soul?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, and that emotional, affectional part, it’s more substantive and intellectual than people may first think. They may think it’s opposed to that, but it’s the remembering that happens when you attach a melody to certain words. Your words, Jonathan, are written down and printed around the world and in books.
And yet, last night I was recommending one young man read two essays you’ve recently published and I handed him the books and he sat there and read them. But my guess is other than some arguments you make he will remember more, a higher percentage of the words that he sang this past Sunday in church than he will of your words as well crafted as they may have been in true that he read.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I mentioned the fact that Muslims don’t sing Hindus or Buddhists.
Mark Dever:
Well, they may sing in their private life, but it’s not part of the public corporate gatherings.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what I mean.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, let’s go, but going to the private life, it occurred to me we were at some event. Oh, you know what it was? It was a Christmas tree lighting out in California, my family was out there with my in-laws for California and we were at a Christmas tree lighting.
And the guy up on stage tried to lead everybody in singing, but it was a typical public crowd and it was clear these people never sing. They never get together and sing. And I was thinking about when Americans…
Mark Dever:
Oh, say can you see…
Jonathan Leeman:
When do Americans…
Mark Dever:
At the ballpark
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what I thought of.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Or take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the ball stretch. That’s the only time I can think of. Typically most Americans today, there are probably other ones. If you’re from Kentucky, when you cross the state border going back in, you start singing, and the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t think most people do that.
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah. I know if you’re from Kentucky, you do.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m pretty sure they don’t.
Mark Dever:
Oh no, they do. You’ll be getting a lot of comments coming to those box tops. Remember your favorite cereal. Three of your favorite cereal. You can listen to the next five episodes of this podcast for free.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think it tells me more about your car driving into Kentucky.
Congregational Singing in Historical Contexts
Mark Dever:
We were talking about congregational singing. See what I said about meandering.
Jonathan Leeman:
There’s something sad… I wonder if in other cultures there is more singing or in historical forms. It seems to me sad that people will lose the ability to sing. And it seems to me wonderful and God-given that in the congregation, in this counterculture, these embassies of heaven were instructed and practiced and get to sing, learn to sing again.
Mark Dever:
As an undergrad, I studied medieval European history and it was interesting that one of the things that typified life in the medieval village, if you’re over in Moorish Spain or over toward what we now call Turkey, you would be as to the Muslims in power and the sound, the public sound you would hear would be the call to prayer from a minaret.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you still hear it when you go to Muslim lands.
Mark Dever:
But when you were in a land that was dominantly Christian…
Jonathan Leeman:
Church bells?
Mark Dever:
You would hear bells. And those bells, the sound of the bells became associated with Christianity and you would hear singing. And that too, whether it was done by a choir or by the congregation.
You would associate it with Christianity. It’d be one of those sounds that to us, we’ve commercialized and it’s just more generic, but there was a time when that was associated especially with the hope in Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.
Jonathan Leeman:
Revelation response is part of our response, it’s how we unite our affections and emotions to that response. It trains us in that. We’re being catechized in that. So much wonderful potential in all of it.
Mark Dever:
There’s a sparkling reflection, not merely in the resonance of the notes that we hit, but in the words that our lips form. And as we say them together, it’s not just hearing that note on a beautiful organ, or a saxophone, or a piano, or a violin, but it’s hearing a word shaped around that note.
These words are put together in sentences, often poetic, and beautiful, reflecting the truth of scripture, and it’s hearing multiple voices at the same time. Singing that same word, that same note, or at least in a chord where it all fits together, underscores that word.
Is the Voice the Most Powerful Instrument
Jonathan Leeman:
Which is to say, true or false, the most powerful instrument is the voice in the room?
Mark Dever:
Correct. That’s the sacred harp.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s uniting our lips, tongues, Lord willing, hearts.
Mark Dever:
Minds and hearts. Yeah. Minds, hearts, lips.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
And you grew up thinking about this. Your dad’s a minister of music.
Jonathan Leeman:
True.
Mark Dever:
Your dad, David Leeman, has done a hymnal. He has done…
Jonathan Leeman:
Several.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, a number of very thoughtful things. I love it when he visits. We always have good conversations about hymns and things.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Well, he’s the one who trained me.
Mark Dever:
L-E-E-M-A-N, David Leeman. Look up his stuff.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, and look it up on Amazon. My parents did a student’s hymnal with devotions in them, as well as a Christmas hymnal. Excellent. Yeah, no, they trained me to think about these things. Mark, if I were to say…
Mark Dever:
Why didn’t you ever become a minister of music?
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t have musical giftings. I did some, I mean, I did piano for a number of years. I did music theory in high school. I composed for a school musical, some music.
Mark Dever:
It sounds like a little more than average musical gifting there, man.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, not gifting, a little more than average lessons and training. But no clear gifting.
How Much Should Pastors Know About Music?
Mark Dever:
Does the average pastor need to know that kind of stuff?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, that’s where I was going with you. I wanted to ask you, how important is knowledge of music, just plain old music? For the guy selecting music.
Mark Dever:
Not essential, very helpful.
Jonathan Leeman:
So if I’m fresh out of seminary, I’m wearing my first church, I’ve got my MDiv, and I’m the pastor of this church, should I devote myself to learning about music?
Mark Dever:
Yes. I remember telling Aaron Menikoff when he was going off to Southern Seminary, to take a class in hymns. And he did and he appreciated it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Okay, so I want to learn hymnody.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Which is slightly different than music.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do I want to learn music, major chords, minor chords, different kinds of scales, and modulation?
Mark Dever:
Not essential, but helpful.
Jonathan Leeman:
How would one do that?
Mark Dever:
Take a class. There’s YouTube these days, man. Knowledge is omnipresent.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I would think listening to different styles of music can be very helpful in that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things I do as a pastor is I deliberately try to listen to albums of music that is sung. So not just performed music, but music that a congregation could sing. And I want to listen to traditional hymns.
I want to listen to that in different styles. I want to listen to that in Anglican style African-American style contemporary style or scripture choruses or various publishers around these days are composers, the Gettys, and City of Light.
I’m always looking to try to find what are… I literally will take an old hymnal…A Lutheran hymnal from 100 years ago, and I’ll go through it looking for… Are there good things in here that we don’t know that we could take and use?
Jonathan Leeman:
When you’re looking through, are you looking at the melody lines or are you looking at the lyrics?
Mark Dever:
I’m usually looking at the lyrics, but I will sometimes then look at the melody lines and try to figure out, ah, is this one that we should use? Often I hear the melody lines, somebody sends me something or I’ve heard it, and then I will go looking.
Right now I’ve been looking for good words to go with Mansions of the Lord, this 2003 composition for We Are Soldiers movie. And there’s this one piece that now choirs to it. And the first part of it is hymnic in its function, or in its form. And it’s called The Mansions of the Lord.
And while the words would not translate well into a Christian worship service, they’re not far off. And it may fit perfectly with Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past. And we’re thinking, you know, how do we do copyrighted music, so we gotta think through that.
But anyway, I’m always trying to hear tunes that I think would be captured well by the congregation and the congregation would enjoy, and then put good words to them, whether they have to be written or we grab them from an existing hymn.
Jonathan Leeman:
Much modern rock music, I remember my parents observing when I was I don’t know, a teenager, it doesn’t have much of a melody. It’s kind of a sustained note.
Mark Dever:
The accompaniment, the road takes center stage.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. And so I think to some measure that translates into the songs that are written for congregations, which rely on that accompaniment. Whereas a good song is going to have a melody that is more singable.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. One of the conversations we had with this friend who FaceTimed last night was specifically, there’s this one song they really want to do from Shane and Shane. But it presumes a very heavy accompaniment. And if you have a very light accompaniment, then there are these gaps in the music.
Because if it’s basically dependent on the voice, then you just all stand there and wait for a moment, and if you don’t have all the right instruments, there ain’t nothing going on for a while. And that doesn’t work with the congregation.
What the Bible Says About Singing
Jonathan Leeman:
I want to come back in a moment to that question of the congregation singing and what we can do to help facilitate that. But first, let me ask, I remember a number of years ago, you were preaching on preaching, and you said… Yeah, we’re talking about it, it was like a workshop or something.
Pastors, the Bible doesn’t call us to preach, it calls us to preach the Lord’s word. Okay, let me try my version of that. The Bible doesn’t command us to sing, it commands us to sing to one another. How literally should we take that to one another?
Mark Dever:
It’s not merely calling us to private devotion. I don’t know that it’s condemning private devotion.
Jonathan Leeman:
Certainly not. Let’s not assume that. But when the church gathers…
Mark Dever:
Yeah, then when we sing, it’s just like…
Jonathan Leeman:
We’re commanded to sing to one another.
Mark Dever:
It’s just like when we pray, we’re not praying to one another, but we’re praying with an earshot of one another so that our words when they’re formed out loud, part of what we have to think about is the effect our words have on those who are listening.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, I wanna think about their effect, fine. But to me, if I’m just taking those words, singing to one another, that means I’m looking at you and I’m singing to you. True, or false?
Mark Dever:
False. I think the fact that we’re all there in the same room and we’re hearing each other is gonna accomplish that proposition. So our ultimate goal is the glory of God and we’re doing it by means of edifying each other and we’re edifying each other as we sing these great truths that we’re reminding each other about, some of which are directly spoken by the author to Christians, so to us, to each other. But others are spoken to God, but yet we are encouraged by hearing God praised, hearing the truth about God melodiously and emotionally in varied tones, sometimes intensely, sometimes loudly, sometimes sweetly, sometimes joyfully, you know, expressed.
Jonathan Leeman:
I may have told the story before. I remember when Cheverly Baptist started our very first Sunday, somebody set out the chairs in straight lines. I went in 10, 15 minutes before the service and, and fed them a little bit. Well, that’s me trying to help us sing to one another.
Mark Dever:
And you’re exactly right. They didn’t sing to anything. Yeah. So I think there is value in looking around the room. True. Yeah. I mean, you can overdo it.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s not a private devotion time, as you said.
Mark Dever:
Exactly. It varies from person to person how much they’re going to feel uncomfortable or they don’t want to be distracting to others. But yes, I am encouraged on Sunday morning, not just with my eyes closed to hear everybody sing, but I’m encouraged to open my eyes and see people sing.
Jonathan Leeman:
I was leading services last Sunday and there’s a pattern in our church where the service leader or the person kind of walking us through will announce what we’re doing next and then kind of go back to his seat and not look at the congregation. At a couple of points in the service, I just know I’m going to keep standing up there and looking at them, sort of take advantage of my own opportunity to look
Mark Dever:
It’s like the way Greg Gilbert leads in corporate prayer with his eyes open.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s a little different and weirder. But I just like, I like looking at these people, you know, as I’m singing. Alex Duke, remember Alex?
Mark Dever:
He’s the guy who’s not Alberto.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right. He gave a little testimony. He said he grew up thinking the height of intimate authentic worship looked like eyes closed, hands up, drowning out everything in existence, but me and God, and he’s gotten older, he’s realized the exact opposite of my stay open. And I make sure to look around at all the people God has placed in my life who sing and spur me on.
Mark Dever:
Amen. I agree with Alex entirely. I’m sure Alberto would say something some more.
Jonathan Leeman:
Probably. He’s a little unpredictable. John Wesley has some rules for singing.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, he has great rules. Rule number four.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Comment?
John Wesley’s Rules for Singing
Mark Dever:
Yeah, Wesley has what? Are they 10, or 5?
Jonathan Leeman:
Seven.
Mark Dever:
Seven rules that he laid.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m gonna read two of them, that’s the first one.
Mark Dever:
In his hymnal. And they’re just good pastoral instructions. And I think it’s true that a lot of people will join in, celebrate… There’s just all kinds of things that people like to sing, you know, or in secular, you know, we are the champions. There’s tons of tunes that are in people’s heads. That if they’re with friends in a car, they’ll just blast out.
Jonathan Leeman:
Wedding reception.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. Wedding reception kind of stuff. But at church, they’ll just get all quiet or not do anything. And I’m thinking, I don’t want you acting like you’re, you know, in any inappropriate way at church. But I would like there to be some joy that you’re willing to bring out there vulnerably and put yourself out there in the singing.
What Should Congregational Singing Look Like in Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
How do you help a congregation to sing lustily and with good courage? Or let’s use the less awkward word, loudly.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think lust just means loudly. I think it means with feeling.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well said.
Mark Dever:
Engaged, fully engaged. I think by modeling it yourself, I think by trying to pick things that the congregation can sing.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you do model it yourself. I noticed that when I first came to Capitol Hill in 1996, you were there in the front singing loudly and with passion. And as a man, watching a man do, that was useful.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I’ve heard that from time to time from people.
Jonathan Leeman:
I interrupted you though.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think that we want to make sure that the things that we give people to sing are singable. There are some things that are just given to sing that are not very singable. You know, that’s where if more in the congregation knew how to read music, so we print the music to our and our songs and hymns, usually in all four parts in the bulletin.
Jonathan Leeman:
With notes
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. So that the, you know, the 10 or 15% of the congregation that might be able to read them is actually helped. And then as they learn a song more quickly and are encouraged to sing in parts, other people in the congregation who are not themselves musically educated, just hear and learn by hearing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
And jump into those parts. It builds a good musical culture.
Jonathan Leeman:
My sense is most churches do not put the music in the bulletins anymore and they’re using projectors. And let me just personally say, I think it’s so helpful for exactly the reasons you just said.
Mark Dever:
Well, families take those bulletins home and use them in family worship.
Jonathan Leeman:
Exactly right.
Mark Dever:
Or people use them in their quiet times.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re a pastor of a church. Almost none of the men do anything but whisper or sing. The women are belting out their hearts. What does a pastor do? And you know, I’ve been in those services, you look around and men are kind of mouthing words. Why?
Mark Dever:
You set a different pattern. And I would say you try to recover a less rock concert, lights down, volume up, it doesn’t really matter. So you just sort of skate along imitating like you’re listening to the radio in your car, swaying.
That kind of emotive response, I think is going to be more, yeah, adults are going to be, many adults are going to be reluctant to engage in that. And it’s traditionally, I think, seen that women will more easily publicly display emotion than men, which I think is true.
Sure, there are lots of individual exceptions, but therefore the music, if you can take into account using something more well-known, like “Jesus Paid It All”, where they’re not having to be dependent on listening to the person up front and just following them along, but they can themselves own it and sing it.
I mean, one of the things that people who’ve led music in our congregation note is that our congregation is, they kind of lead themselves. I mean, once you get them started on a certain song, they’re going to have a certain pace that they’re going to press to on that song. And you as the leader, you can get along and kind of help them, or you can get in the way and kind of get mowed over by them sometimes.
You know, there’s a… There’ll be a certain pace and a way things are sung. And I think that fixedness and commonality are going to help the men to participate. It’s corporate. There’s not a risk of it seeming like an individual artifice. Yeah, I just think there’s something about the corporateness of it that helps men musically.
On Men Singing in Corporate Worship
Jonathan Leeman:
It occurs to me that masculinity in American culture isn’t expressive, as you’re saying. Think of Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, and Denzel Washington. I mean, the expressions of masculinity that we have are often very…
Mark Dever:
Non-expressive.
Jonathan Leeman:
Non-expressive, that’s right. And there is a sense in which when you just put up the rock music with loud accompaniment, you’re just letting men be what men they are in our cultural context. Whereas when you’re teaching them to sing, you’re pushing against what’s culturally native to a lot of American East and Western…
Mark Dever:
I think you’re right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Context. I remember singing though in Africa.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh man, that was different.
Mark Dever:
It was beautiful too, wasn’t it?
Jonathan Leeman:
So beautiful.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I mean, I’d seen it.
Jonathan Leeman:
There was a call and response thing going on.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I’ve seen that certainly where you were in Zambia, I’ve seen that among the Zulu in South Africa. Yeah, yeah, it’s very encouraging.
Sing Modestly in Congregational Settings
Jonathan Leeman:
Beautiful. Another rule from Wesley, we talked about singing robustly. He says, rule number five, sing modestly. Do not ball so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation that you may not destroy the harmony, but strive to unite your voices together so as to make one melodious sound.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I mean, Wesleyan’s brother Charles, they were musical, weren’t they? They were the sons of a pastor. They knew what it was like to be around music all the time in the Lord’s house. The idea that you’re singing lustily doesn’t mean that you’re not considering how the whole is sounding.
So you don’t want to do anything to distract from the whole. And your own vigor and your own personal engagement with God is no excuse for you becoming distracting to others. And I say that as somebody who, as you’ve noted, by nature tends to sing loudly.
So I have to be careful about that. So everyone’s well, I’ve had somebody leave my microphone on and I’m like, no, I just won’t sing if you do that. You’ve got to turn that thing off. Because while I don’t mind being naturally loud, I don’t want to be amplified.
That’s just the be able to have a whole other instrument you’re playing to accompany the congregation. And that’s, yeah, that’s distracting.
Jonathan Leeman:
One advantage I had of growing up in a musical household was singing in choirs and did that through high school. And one of the things we learned to do is when you’re in a choir, you have to listen as much as you project. And I still do that sitting in church services. I’m working to listen and blend.
A lot of this conversation though does seem culturally located. We’ve used a few examples. Is the argument for congregational singing really just an argument for a certain style of music, a certain Western style? If not, why not?
Mark Dever:
Well, unless you’re going to call the ancient Greek world and the Hebrew world Western, no because they were doing it in the first century.
Jonathan Leeman:
Though we might find forms.
Mark Dever:
Well, sure, because Christianity has been dominant for the last 1,500 years in the Western world. And so, of course, what we call Western and Christian are largely overlapping when we’re talking about forms unless you’re talking about the last 100 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. How much do you encourage guys?
Mark Dever:
But there’s also Christian singing elsewhere. And so there are other musical forms to grab and use.
Jonathan Leeman:
If you go to a quote-unquote, 9Marks church, sometimes they can look and sound the same. So a young intern leaves pastors, plants, whatever, it can start to sound a little bit like CHBC.
How Does Cultural Location Affect Congregational Singing?
To what extent do you instruct and encourage or should you instruct and encourage guys to think about different cultural contexts and what’s conducive to the biblical principles of singing to one another, songs, hymns, spirituals, for all the reasons we’ve been talking about in your time and place. How much thought should I give to that topic? My cultural location.
Mark Dever:
Some.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Mark Dever:
Easy to overdo it as if there’s nothing universal, easy to underdo it. Like you’re just going to bring the songs you knew from your college fellowship and that’s what you’re going to do in this church you’re going to now in Iowa.
When maybe everybody there is over 50 and they just don’t know the songs that you love. You know, you wanted “10,000 Reasons” and they want to do “To God be the Glory”.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
You know, so the… I think the best thing, I tried to attend my church for a few months before I was responsible for planning the services so I would know what kind of songs they did know. And then I tried to use the best songs that they knew of the ones that they were already using and then slowly add to that number.
Should Organs Be Used in Congregational Worship?
Jonathan Leeman:
Final round of questions. Organs, pro or con?
Mark Dever:
There are pros and cons.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can you say anything more?
Mark Dever:
Well, if it’s so loud it overwhelms the singing, then that’s bad. I also don’t, I personally, with the amount of time we have, so limited being together as Christians on the Lord’s Day, I don’t want to take up much time being quiet, listening to somebody play an instrument.
Should Drums Be Used in Congregational Worship?
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark Dever:
Similar, you know, good and bad. I mean, if they can accompany, they can certainly get a rhythm, but if they become dominant, they start to overwhelm the singing. Yeah, it just depends on how they’re used.
Should Choirs Be Used in Congregational Worship?
Jonathan Leeman:
Are choirs a way to sing to one another?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, they are. I mean, particularly, in a more traditional African-American service, the choirs are very much part of a sort of call and response that the congregation’s involved in. In a more Anglican kind of setting, where it tends to be more performance that we’re appreciating, then the choir becomes like an instrument with words.
So it’s like a solo. It’s like, well, I would say it’s definitely good. I’d say it’s better than just an instrumental solo, but it’s not as good as the whole congregation singing.
So I wouldn’t want to say never, but I would just say, again, I’m going to be kind of miserly with how my time gets spent because I don’t have that much of it all together every week. And I’m just going to be a little reluctant to hand five minutes over right there.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Yeah, for predictable reasons, I think I’m a little more pro choirs, but my concern is the performance element. I do think it can help facilitate. I like the way you described the African-American church.
I think that does it well. And insofar as they’re used, I’d like to see more of call and response back and forthness, but the performance element inevitably starts, I often sets in. And perhaps even more so with soloists. Any final comment, brother, on congregational singing?
Mark Dever:
Well, it’s like a beautiful pool to play around in. There’s just so much good.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know.
Mark Dever:
It’s just wonderful. And if you’re at a church where you are encouraged by the singing, every Lord’s Day, praise the Lord.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
What a gift he’s given to you. And I pray the Lord will allow you pastor to sort of cup your hands as it were around that, protect it from winds that would blow it out, and help it burn brighter.
Should You Leave a Church that Feels Like a Rock Concert?
Jonathan Leeman:
If you’re a church member at a church where it feels more rock concert, would you say you should leave that church?
Mark Dever:
No.
Jonathan Leeman:
Would you say that’s a sufficient reason to leave that church?
Mark Dever:
No, no.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’d say stick it out. Even if it’s not your preference, stick it out.
Mark Dever:
Well, I can imagine some rock concert services have been really good.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, so I don’t hear… That’s not a trial visit.
Jonathan Leeman:
I guess what I’m saying is the music doesn’t do some of the things we’ve been talking about. It really is the people on the stage, they’re performing at me.
Mark Dever:
I understand. And that can be done though, brother, in a fundamentalist church with the 1950s style service as well. I’ve been to pastors’ conferences where they’re…
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, forget rock on. Let me just perform music.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. To me, unless they’re singing heresy, if it’s a Mormon Tabernacle choir or something if it’s not that… If they’re singing all orthodox stuff, then it’s a matter just of money being left on the table as it were. It’s like better things we could have had, not that we had bad things.
We had good things. I was so thankful for that wonderful solo when he sang, “Jesus Paid It All”, and he had a wonderful voice, great. Man, it would have been good for the congregation to sing that.
Jonathan Leeman:
But church members listening to this, they’ve heard all these principles, they’re in agreement with us, but they’re at a church where they feel like, what counsel do you have for that church member?
Mark Dever:
Oh, there’s so much more to the church. I mean, how’s the preaching? How’s your fellowship? How are the membership practices? Yeah, it’s just… We’re talking about optimizing a good gift of the Lord in our experience of it, and that’s all we’re talking about.
Jonathan Leeman:
And a prescribed means of grace.
Mark Dever:
Well, the thing you’ve described, they are singing, so they are doing that. It’s just we’re discussing how to best do it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. And that member sitting there can sing lustily. And modestly and in all the other ways that Wesley…
Mark Dever:
If they know the song, if they’ve done it a second time, if they give the music, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks for your time, brother.
Mark Dever:
Thank you.
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A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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