Church Music
Forrest Keener
There is a need in our day for returning to Bible principles for the music that is offered in our churches. It needs to be scripturally sound in doctrinal content as well as worshipful in its presentation. "I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also."
When I was a child, we referred to church music as sacred songs. By that, we meant that the song had a message in it and a Spirit about it that was sacred. It also meant that we didn't sing the song in an atmosphere of worldliness and profanity, even though there was an abundance of worldly, cheap, and even profane music. It seemed to be an unwritten law that the two didn't mix or mingle. I can remember frequent objection, with which I agreed, to the closing of a hillbilly or country music show, with "Hymn Time." At "Hymn Time" all the entertainers who were making their living, writing and singing songs about drunkenness, adultery, murder and lust, all gathered around the "old microphone" and closed their shindig with a hymn. To me it always seemed like "a jewel of gold in a swine's snout." (Proverbs 11:22).
Well, today things have changed. The music of the world is no longer mingled with sacred music, it is mixed. Not only can you hear the Lord's Prayer with a rock and roll beat and a hillbilly whang, you can hear it at "church." If God were subject to emotional reaction toward human folly, this would no doubt nauseate Him.
This results, I think, from two basic problems. One: A mixture of professionalism (in fancy more than quality) and ignorance on the part of the singer, and Two: An absence of scriptural taste and conviction both on part of the person responsible for what is sung in the church service and of the listeners. This destructive flame is of course fed by the pitiful fact that many churches today are infinitely more interested in relating to youth, exciting the public, pleasing the world, or appealing to the lost, than they are in glorifying God in the church.
I am appalled at the fact that a group "Singing' Gospel Music" traveling around the country on church money (whether it is given by their home church or entertainees) can appear in a "Baptist Church?" with hair like granny's sheep dog, wearing clothes like Porter Waggoner's night mare, and can sing Old Dog Tray, Daddy Sang Base, or Keep On Walkin', and if they have the right P-zazz and religious flavor the whole "church" is shouting Glory over the great "Scriptural Experience." This kind of religion is cheaper than a six dollar tour of Europe.
How I long to see the time when in Baptist Churches we insist that first of all the songs we sing and listen to have a scriptural message and that the message is clear, pure, and doctrinally sound. Secondly, we need to purge out performance an entertainment from our services. Let us insist that our singing be worship, not performance. Let our songs glorify God not the singer. "Unto Him be Glory in the Church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end." (Ephesians 3:21).