Ask the Pastors S8 E14: “Why is congregational singing important?"
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Welcome to Ask the Pastors, a segment of the West Hills podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host, one of the pastors, and I'm joined today by our lead pastor, Will.
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What's up? And we're Thadless.
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Thad’s out on vacation. I hope he's having a wonderful time. Today we are not talking about a biblical view of hell. We're talking about congregational singing. Thought we'd pivot.
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The reason
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You- It's a big pivot.
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Said that for the person who's pulling this podcast up and-
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Excited to hear about hell.
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Years from now and didn't listen to the one right before. Anyway, you try and I don't know how many people actually make it at the end of the podcast for our preview of coming attractions.
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If you do to like it. Yeah. Like it and share it. Cool. The question is from Cody who wrote in, why is congregational singing important to a local church? We spend a lot of time on Sunday singing. Yeah. It's not the majority of the time that we spend together, but it's significant. 15, 20, 20-ish minutes.
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Yeah, even
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More
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Of this coming Sunday, Church and the Park.
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Yeah.
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Shout out.
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Five songs instead of four.
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Meet us at the park. Let's sing.
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Definitely. Definitely.
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Well, you are the singing pastor, so why don't you start and
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Maybe just
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Ping pong back and forth. A couple reasons.
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Sounds great.
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I got a bunch.
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I think it's a great question. Fun to reflect on why is it important to a local church? I think it helps us corporately and communally glorify the Lord. And there's many, many references in scripture to singing. I think I found online that it was 400, more than 400 references to singing. Wow. With over 50 direct commands to sing. Scripture just makes it really clear that the Lord is our audience and he receives our song before others is also an element, the horizontal element of Sundays, but first of all, to glorify God. Psalm 96 tells us sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name, tell of his salvation, declare his glory among the nations. His marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. It's a wonderful way of helping us to be moved in our minds and our hearts to enter into our corporate gatherings on Sundays.
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I think you might get there of why we sing before and after the preaching of the word. But it does something really wonderful in our gatherings to come before the Lord with Thanksgiving, to enter his courts with praise. Songs of joy all throughout scripture helps us to glorify him and does something really cool to make truth really kind of stick in our hearts,
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For sure. I was going to add, glorify the Lord in a unique way. Obviously Jesus said we're two more gathered in my name. I'm there with them. And I think when we are gathered in his name singing his name in his praise, how much even more so. But yeah, you think about you read Psalm 96, Psalm 95 just before verse one, "Come let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." And I mean, you could insert any number of, like you said, hundreds of, especially the Psalms that are written psalms. It was like written as songs and how many of them have that kind of plural pronoun language where you're exhorting and even singing. Even as you're singing about singing, whatever the melody we don't know would've been, O come, let us sing to the Lord.
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It's fun to think about what the melodies were. It's kind of fun. Yeah. But Psalm 149: one, praise the Lord, sing to the Lord a new song his praise in the assembly of the godly. So that's one of those many kind of commands that you're talking about, 50 commands, Brian, to sing, but specifically not just you singular, go sing,
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But y'all, us, let's praise in the assembly of the godly and then Hebrews 2:12 in the midst of the congregation, "I will sing your praise." So there is obviously the individual personal element. I will sing your praise, but I'm going to do it. The author of Pebrews says in the midst of others in the midst and because God gets a unique kind of glory when his people join together to sing his praises as one. I
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Was thinking of like those song of a sense in the Psalms where people are headed to worship the Lord with the throng and just the excitement to be there and to worship him. Lots of those that come to mind as well. We're commanded to do it in scripture. Like you said, many, many places. Lift up a song to him. Psalm 68, sing praises to the Lord for he has done gloriously. Clap your hands, all peoples told to clap. Shout out to God with the loud songs of joy. Psalm 47, sing the Lord new song. I mean, just kind of everywhere like you were saying in the Psalms. And a lot of it's corporate. A lot of it's, "Let's do this together." Definitely. And there's a good amount of it that's personal too, personal, but never private. But the corporate gatherings on Sundays helps us in a unique way to glorify God.
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I love that clarification too.
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A second reason that you alluded to already is I think corporate singing in general, but congregational corporate singing in particular really does help prepare our hearts to receive God's word and that's why we do it before we even open God's word and then it also helps us to respond. It gives words to our response to having heard and hopefully receive God's word in a way that I think is designed by God, not just like us as the people planning a worship service every week, which we do, but designed by God the way that he made us and built us to be the creatures we are, that music we know just even we were talking before we started, but even secular music or
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Just
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Any music in general has a, as a matter of fact, I was just listening to an NPR thing as I was driving on the way here in this morning and they had some researcher scientist who was talking about, they've just published some study, I guess, about the benefits of the fine arts. I think it was both music and sounded like visual art and ballet and this and that and dancing, whatever, but basically that their researchers are starting to be able to quantify some of the health benefits of those that are immersed and really deeply engaged in art and creativity in that way. Some are even saying that it's not totally incomparable to the health benefits of like physical exercise, which I thought was crazy to think you can sit in a studio and paint all day long and might do as much for your longevity and your health actually is working out or this or that.
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God designed that to be like that. God designed us that way for that part of our ... And I would just say within our worship service, how that functions is it's almost like to me a heart tenderizer. I think it's Brad Young, one of our elders, every time he leaves our pastoral prayer, he always ends his pastoral prayer by asking God would plow our hearts to receive
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The word of God. And so often in scripture, God's word is depicted as like a seed. The gospel, all kinds of parables that Jesus said, the gospels like kingdom of heaven is like a seed that fell on a certain kind of soil. And so this idea that we're praying, God, make the soil of my heart more fertile and rich to be able to receive your implanted word, but also God, just like he, in the physical sense, there's fertilizers and there's instruments, tools that you use to till up the soil and stuff like God has different ways of, I think, helping soften our hearts and open our hearts to what he wants to speak into our hearts and our lives. And I think the singing is a huge part of that. And so I mean, just on that note, like for me, I would put a quick plug in.
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We've both talked about, Brian, like at our nine o'clock services here recently, especially since we've been in Westminster, it seems like people are just getting late to church, whether it's getting the kids in the car or whatever it is, but nine o'clock it's like we might have 50 people in the theater
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By 9:10, it's 100, by 9:20 when I'm starting to get up to preach, then it's 150, but it's like, man, just to put in a plug, you really lose out when you miss that time of set aside singing with the body in particular to glorify God like we already talked about, but also to prepare your heart to receive what God wants to do through his word later when I get up and all that. So Colossians 3:16- Yeah, I was
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Going to read that.
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... says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." There it is, let the word sink deeply and richly into your heart, but then what does he say immediately after that? Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, but then right after that, yeah, the word's got to be taught, it's got to be admonished, that's my part as the preacher. But then right after that, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So you can't divorce both those things. If you want the word of Christ to dwell in you richly, you need the teaching and admonishment, you need the preaching, but you also need the singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs
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With thankfulness.
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Yeah,
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Absolutely. You need the one another of that verse, the building up one another and reminding ... And that's a big part too of what people are missing out on of the corporate encouraging one another of like, "Hey, these things are true." I know one worship leader, Bob Coughlin, who very, it's kind of off-putting if you don't know him or what's going on, but he just looks around all the time when he's singing. He'll look behind him, he look to his right, he look to his left, he look up, he'll look around. It's like, "What is Bob doing? What's going on with that? " But I think he's really taken the one another things pretty seriously. It's not just stare at the team, let's acknowledge that there's other people in the room of brothers and sisters singing to one another, teaching and admonishing one another.
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It's
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Not just me and
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Jesus.
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Right. I think that's why we value lights up because we want to see each other. We take the one another's really seriously. We want to equip the church to see each other, to know each other and we do that by trying to keep our lights up. Now, Westminster, it's darker because we can't take them up much higher than that. But yeah, the teaching and admonishing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, that's a really big one. This idea of building one another up as we gather, promoting unity I think is a big one. Serves as a reminder that we're not called just to sing and make melody to this vertical relationship, but also there's a horizontal element on Sundays. One Corinthians 14 calls us to strive to excel in building up the church, let all things be done for building up verse 12 and verse 26. Just this acknowledgement of what we do during our gathering, there's a one another, we see each other elements.
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It needs to be building up in what we do. We gather to lift high the name of Jesus and we also gather to build up one another and we are. We're reminding one another, "Hey, isn't this good news? We get to enter into salvation through what Jesus has done and this is amazing."
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Hebrews 10:24, stir one another up to love and good works, but then what does he say immediately after that? Not neglecting to meet together, but encouraging one another. And like you said, I mean, I think one of the best ways that we do that, encourage one another is through singing and lifting our voices up together. And yeah, I just think of that you mentioned, but a third kind of reason that we sing to me is the encouragement and just I think about even for myself, I mean, there are some days when even I'm showing up and I'm struggling and I'm getting ready to get up and preach and hearing brothers and sisters behind me declaring loudly, boldly with conviction, the truth of the gospel through song just has a way of encouraging and emboldening you. And I just think about others. I know if I'm struggling how much more so a lot of folks that it was all they could do to get themselves to church that day and frankly, they're not even sure if they do believe maybe some of the things that are going to be sung and preached, but when you hear 150, 250 other people all around you
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Singing with passion with that kind of conviction, you can't help but be struck and encouraged by this has to be true because even when I doubt, yeah, I'm part of a faith community that's there to pick me up and remind me of that. It's interesting James 5:13 says, "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray." So you might be there and worship praying, but then is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. I just think you've got both of those on a Sunday morning. You've got some folks who are there and they're suffering and they're hurting and they're there just praying, "God, I need to hear from you. I need to believe in you and be reminded that it's true and whatever it is, I need you to come through." And then you've got others that they're just in a different place in life at that particular moment and I think that's God's, I know that that's God's design for us is that we pick one another up when we're down and sing it is a huge part of that.
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Carry one another along.
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Yeah.
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I was thinking about that this Sunday with Christ your hope and life and death with those in our church family that have passed away really recently and seeing people who I know have recently lost people close to them and being like, "Wow, this ... " And that's what's beautiful about a church family too, where you know one another and you're deep entering in a deep way and you have unity, you know the stories of each other and you can enter in and speak the truths of the songs over each other like you're saying. Well, these things are true, but we're not in a place to joyfully declare that that day. Maybe they're praying and really sorrowful, you're able to carry them along with your song.
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Absolutely.
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So good.
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The flip side to that that I also would add, I think it was Spurgeon, maybe one, he always gets credit for it, but one of the great preachers who said that the role of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and I love that, but I would extend it and say not just the preacher, but I would say corporate worship in general and that then includes singing. And again, as much as there are folks there that are afflicted that need to be comforted, encouraged, lifted up by the voices and the reminders and all of that of those singing around them, that's just kind of like a warm hug when you hear the melody. There are also those there on Sundays that are frankly too comfortable and need to be a little afflicted and that might be that, I don't know, we all have a tendency.
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I mean, being a Christian is always swimming upstream in terms of our own sin that lives in us and what and Satan and the world all conspiring to try and move us downstream away from the Lord. And there are weeks when we have more losses than wins and you show up and the flesh is strong and anyway, maybe you're newer to all this and whatever and we're all prone toward or predisposed initially before Christ toward self-centeredness. And there's a thing about congregational singing that's like, "I don't like this song." Well, you know what, that's fine because it's not for you. It's for God and it's not about you and you didn't get to pick it and your vote really doesn't matter that much because we got 500 people at the church and so you can deal with it. And there's I think a really sanctifying aspect to that and yeah, anyway- It's
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Good to mention the flip side too.
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Yeah.
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That's good.
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Yeah. And I mean, how many of our songs too are our songs at West Hills? Now again, this is, I mean, frankly, quick hot take, I think a lot of the songs that passes Christian songs these days and there's maybe a place for it, but you can go to other churches and hear a whole set of four or five songs and every single one is, there's more I, me mys than there are you and what you've done or the Lord and Jesus is in the song and that's a problem. So many of the songs that we sing are gospel rich, gospel centric, which means you don't get the gospel without speaking of sin and speaking of what Jesus has done for us. And so again, every time we sing that, it's a humbling in addition to whether or not you like the song and you not being central, like that's humbling, but also just what we're actually singing, the words they ought to be humbling.
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They keep us even when you feel like, "Man, I've had just a really great week and what a great person I am." And then you come and you're, "No, you're going to say the call to confession with the rest of us. I'm sinful. I need to savior. You're going to be singing these songs with the rest of us. I once was lost. Now I'm found not because I'm great, but because Jesus is great." So anyway, it has that effect as well of afflicting the comfortable and reminding us that we shouldn't ever be too self-assured because we all need Jesus just as much as the next person beside us. So what else you got?
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That's good. What about you?
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Well, you already touched on cultivating unity
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And so I was thinking even more great Psalm that I love, Psalm 133: one, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. But right before that, you have the intro to it, a song of a sense. You mentioned that already, the song of a sense, but this is sung corporately. This was a song David wrote to be sung by the community of faith to God but about one another. We're singing like it's so great when we get together and dwell in unity and it's the singing that does that and that bonds us together. And it really is. I would say prayer, singing, these kinds of things and as much as I'm the preacher and love the preaching and all that, it's easier a lot of times depending on what's being preached, I guess, but it's easier to maybe you can sit there and be a little passive and hold grudges against your wife sitting next to you or whatever it is.
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But man, when we're praying together out loud, when we're singing together and I hear her voice or I hear that other brother, three rows behind me that said that thing that got me a little bit out of shape, it really is. It's hard to maintain that kind of divisiveness. It has a unifying effect. I would say beyond that, and you kind of touched on this already, Brian, but to get even more specific about it, it really is in a different way singing other than really Lord Supper, I would say, and baptism, I mean, it is more so frankly than the preaching and then the hearing of the preaching of God's word. It's something that you have to be together. I mean, yeah, you can pull up a YouTube video on your own, you can pull out your guitar, but I think we all just realized that in a very palpable way during COVID when it's like ... And frankly, remember there was a while there where we before we tried doing ... And it was just always awkward.
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It was always awkward the singing portion of it, having a team or having Scott Clayton come up and sing by himself on the camera. It's as awkward as it was for me to preach into a camera with an empty room, it was way more awkward to sing into an empty room and it was way more awkward, way more for people at home to be sitting on their couch, standing whatever and-
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Enter in. ...
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And sing with just me and my wife or just me or just me and my family. It was very weird, less weird the preaching because it's inherently a litle bit more passive as much as I'd like to think that the hearing of God's work should be active and taking notes and thinking over questions and this and that applying as we go like, "Yeah, but at the end of the day, I'm talking and you're not. " But with the singing, we're all active. We're opening our mouths, we're singing out. And so it's special in that way in terms of what we do together on Sunday mornings. The other two that I had to add to our list and then we'll wrap up. So this is number four for me. It serves as a powerful witness to unbelievers.
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I love that.
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Who may be there in our midst. So you think on any given Sunday, there's wheats and there's tears, there's those who belong to the ... There's the visible church, but then there's the real city of God, spiritual church, those who are saved, and then there's those who are not. And a big part of what we ought to be concerned with on Sunday mornings is praying and proclaiming and pleading, that those that are tears and not yet wheat that are there, that they would repent and trust in Christ and be saved. And I just think that it's one thing, like Psalm 105 says, "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people, sing to him, sing praises to him, tell of his wondrous works." And that's what we're doing. When I'm preaching, I'm telling us of his wondrous works.
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But again, all these exhortations in the Psalms are mostly plural. They're for the community of faith. All of y'all, David sang, all of you tell of his wondrous works. Well, how do we do that? We do that. He just told us by singing praises to him. We sing his praises and we proclaim, "Hey, this is what God has done for me in his son, Jesus." And again, as much as it encourages the downhearted, downtrodden brother or sister that are there, it really does ought to convict the non-brother, non-sister who's there, who again, whether they're self-assured or not, or they're just there checking out what's this Christianity thing all about. And then all of a sudden you're hearing these 200 whatever voices just passionately proclaiming and then hopefully in their mind is going off like, this is such a microcosm of there are two billion Christians all around the world doing this right now, this morning on Sunday singing God's praises, telling the wonders of his good works and there's got to be something to that.
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I mean, they can't all be delusional, right? And so I think that's powerful.
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The only other place would be a concert or, I mean, where else would people sing?
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Yeah.
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Maybe when you know a song in a concert.
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Yeah. And you got a couple thousand voices all passionately singing Taylor Swift's lyrics about how terrible her ex- boyfriend is and it's like, okay, well, I guess all these people either just whatever they ... But yeah, it's just-
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Much more wonderful and eternally meaningful is the gathering of God's people on Sundays as we remember the gospel and sing truth to God and to each other. I mean, it's beautiful.
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Man, I think of Acts 16:25 when the council, I think it's the Sanhedrin round some of the disciples up and says they inflicted many blows upon them, threw them in prison, having received this order, and then it put their feet in the stocks. And then it's at about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to them. And you just think about that, what was going on in those prisoners' minds and hearts thinking at midnight these guys that just got beat, their wounds are still fresh, like blood oozing out of their bodies and their response is to be singing praises to the God in whose name they're there. The reason they're there is because they wouldn't shut up about Jesus and they still won't shut up. What
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A witness.
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Those prisoners, those prisoners had to be convicted. All right. My last one is
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Why do we sing congregationally because it's good practice for eternity because we're going to be Singing around the throne of the lamb with the angels together for the rest of eternity. That's our future. Revelation five, when he'd taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp. And they sang a new song singing, worthy are you to take the scroll and open it seal for you were slain and by your blood you've ran some people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You've made them a kingdom and priests who are God and they shall reign on all the earth. And it's just a picture. God is giving John a vision and a picture of heaven and what is going on there even now for those who have departed to be with the Lord and what will go on for all eternity.
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And so I love that.
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I can't remember if we've actually even dealt with it and asked the pastor questions, but people it just kind of makes me sad when people ask the question about, well, won't heaven be boring if it's just singing. I don't even like singing that much or whatever. It's like, well, you just don't have much of a glimpse of God yet then and just how worthy of your song and all that that he is. And so yeah, to me it's a beautiful ... I love some of our songs. I can think of a couple different songs that we have that have specific lyrics about then forever this song will sing, hallelujah, what a savior. Or for the rest of eternity, this will be our song. And so anyway, and usually hopefully a lot of times when people will write that kind of lyric into their Christian song, they'll try and make it biblical because otherwise it feels pretty self-promotional if it's like, yeah, we're going to be singing my lyrics for the rest offers.
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No, let's go to Revelation and see what is it that we're going to be singing for, worthy, worthy, worthy, is the lamb who is slain. So anyway, but I love that. Rehearsing for
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Eternity.
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Rehearsing for eternity.
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I love that.
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So
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Show up, sing loudly on Sundays, be there on time.
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Yep. Stay all the way to the end. You don't need to run out early. Yeah. You need that last song too. It just helps it
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Sink
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In deeper and make it real and personal.
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And you just a lot of times go home singing the sermon some point from the sermon, which is a beautiful thing about congregational singing too.
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Yeah. And you mentioned that, Brian, and that's a really important one too is just that quickly is that the church will not remember my three sermon points probably by Monday morning, but they may still be driving into work the next day humming the tune of one of the four songs that we sang the day before because like you said, music has a different way mnemonically of getting it to sink into us.
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I remember who said it, but it makes truth sticky.
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Yeah.
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It's like, yeah, I like that.
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Yeah.
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Not that well communicated truth doesn't make the truth sticky, but something about melody. It does. Man, it sticks with you
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A
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Different way.
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Maybe I should just sing my sermons from now on. But if people weren't singing along, it wouldn't be the same.
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Right. That's right. Yeah. It's so good. Thanks, Cody, for your question.
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Thanks, Cody.
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Enjoy Will and Thad next week. They're going to talk about a biblical view of hell. That's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. You could submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by submitting them online through our website at www.westhillstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe, share it with a friend, leave us a review. Thanks so much for listening and hope to be with you in two weeks, but listen next week. See then.