Aleethia!

Q: Is there any true/biblical difference between hymns & praise/worship songs?

That is our question for this week. But I have to ask a couple of defining questions before answering this one.

1) What defines a hymn?

2) What defines a praise/worship song?

By definition a hymn is merely:

a religious song or poem, typically of praise to God

This means that a hymn IS a praise/worship song.

So the question really is,

“Is there any biblical difference between what we consider to be traditional hymns, and modern/contemporary worship music?”

In one sense the answer is a simple “No.” But in another sense, there are some differences. To explore them, we should begin by learning what God has revealed in Scripture regarding the use of music in worship to him.

I say that very carefully, because I want us to begin with the understanding that music is not the totality of worship. There are other aspects of worship than just the music.

John Stott in his book The Living Church defines true worship as being compromised of these four things.

1) It’s biblical

He says that true worship is a response to the biblical revelation of God to man. Based on this characteristic he concludes that reading Scripture and expounding on Scripture, otherwise known as preaching, are indispensable aspects of worship.

2) It’s congregational

Of course we can worship God individually in private, but scripture stresses the importance of congregational worship above private worship.

3) True worship is spiritual

What he means is that our worship shouldn’t be empty ritual without meaning to the worshiper.

What he doesn’t mean, is that emotional weepy music is more God honoring that densely doctrinal hymns. In fact, quite the opposite!

What is essential…is the biblical content of the hymns and songs. Then we shall avoid excessive repetition, which can easily degenerate into the “babbling” which Jesus condemned in the Sermon on the Mount (battalogia in Matthew 6:7). Battalogia seems to denote any speech in which the mouth is engaged but the mind is not. ¹

In his excellent book on the subject of worship, Worship Matters, Bob Kauflin couldn’t agree more.

Being emotionally affected by music and actually worshiping God aren’t the same thing…²

Let us be careful here. Emotionalism may not be God honoring, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage our emotions when we worship. Here are a few other brief quotes from Kauflin on this subject.

Music stirs up and expresses God-glorifying emotion. – p98

…the problem is emotionalism, not emotions. – p99

Emotionalism can…view heightened emotions as the infallible sign that God is present. – p99

So, our music, when offered as worship to God, should engage both our mind and our emotions.

Vibrant singing enables us to combine truth about God seamlessly with passion for God. Doctrine and devotion. Mind and heart. – p99

…people need songs that feed them, not simply songs that feel good. – p101

Our songs should be biblically faithful for a multitude of reasons, but here are two important ones that come to mind.

1. We remember what we sing, so our songs should contain biblically faithful truth. This means the lyrics are more important than the melody.

2. Our songs instruct us. Because we remember what we sing, and because we’re singing words, they sink into our minds and instruct us about God. Which means that songs are theology set to music.

It is this reasoning that leads Gordon Fee to state.

Show me a church’s songs and I’ll show you their theology.

Of course, our songs should still be musically excellent. We shouldn’t sing a systematic theology textbook. We should sing songs that are musical. Here’s another warning from Bob Kauflin.

…that doesn’t mean all our songs need to be theological treatises. But if our primary criteria for using a song has to do with whether it’s popular or enjoyable to sing, we’re going to have a hard time persuading anyone that truth matters more than music. – p101

Back to John Stott’s marks of true worship.

4) True worship is moral

What he means by that is that our worship shouldn’t by hypocritical. It should be accompanied by a God honoring lifestyle.

Remember the lesson of 1 Samuel. Honoring God with obedience is better than sacrifices, including the sacrifices of praise.

This idea of obedience as part of our worship is driven home by

All that being said, let’s talk more specifically about musical style.

Does the style of music matter?

Absolutely! Let me explain.

The Bible doesn’t designate one particular style as preferred. In fact, if we were to sing the style of songs they used in the Bible, our music in church would look quite different. Here’s a list of the instruments we’d be using if we only used the ones listed in scripture.

• singers (1 Chronicles 15:16)
• harps (1 Chronicles 15:16)
• lyres (1 Chronicles 15:16)
• cymbals (1 Chronicles 15:16)
• tambourines (1 Chronicles 13:8)
• trumpets (1 Chronicles 13:8)
• flute (1 Samuel 10:5)
• stringed instruments (Isaiah 38:20)

Nine times we are told to sing a “new song” to the Lord, so we would have to continue writing new material.

The recent “Worship Wars” should more rightly be titled the “Worship Style Wars.” And they’ve been going on for a long time.

Martin Luther and the reformers, in 1500s, fought worship style wars with the Catholic church. It was the practice at the time to sing in Latin, which most of the parishioners could not understand. In addition to insisting that the people should have scripture in their native tongue, Luther also insisted on congregational worship in the common language.

What this amounts to is something we call, contextualization.

Again, in the early American colonies, a conflict arose over singing by ear verses singing by written music.

In Britain the debate of the day was the singing of Psalms verses the singing of hymns written by men such as Isaac Watts, who we now consider traditional. At one time he was cutting edge.

Going back to the idea contextualization, we should remember that most of our “traditional” hymns were written first as lyrics and then set to already existent popular music such as bar tunes. The purpose for this was that the people would know the melody and be able to readily sing the song.

The idea is to take something from the culture and redeem it for the use of the church in worshiping God Almighty.

So when we face the question of traditional hymns from the hymnal, verses contemporary songs, we should consider the people we attempting to lead in worship. Our song choices shouldn’t be so foreign to our people that they are completely out of their element and unable to worship.

This doesn’t mean that we should stop doing the hymns, but that we should simply contextualize them. Performing them with guitars, keyboard, and drums sufficiently does so. At times, melodies could even be changed if the existing melody is too dated.

It doesn’t mean that all hymns are good. They’re not. Some are more biblically faithful than others. Some are more accessible to the modern worshiper than others. For the most part though, they are in the hymnal because they have stood the test of time and we should give them serious consideration when developing our worship sets.

This also doesn’t mean that all modern praise songs are good or bad. Some are well written, but their theology isn’t as good as it should be. Some are too simplistic to stimulate our minds to worship. Some are emotionally moving and theologically sound and should be part of our repertoire of worship songs.

We should also consider the idea of stylistic variety in our worship music. Using simply a piano and singing a familiar hymn could be very powerful at times.

Both

And

Command us to sing the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We are told to do so with thankfulness in our hearts to God.

The point is, there should be stylistic diversity in our worship. Bob Kauflin agrees.

God is too great and the human experience too complex to think that one kind of music will always best express the dynamics of our relationship with a living God. – p104

He then goes on to caution us to consider our motives for using variety in our music.

We don’t use different music because we want to keep everyone happy or because we’re aiming for a “blended” service. It’s the gospel that blends us together, not music. – p105

And again,

Scripture doesn’t mandate that we push the envelope, artistically speaking, on Sunday mornings. – p106

The best thing we can do in our worship is to be culturally relevant, honest, obedient, and biblically faithful. This should include singing time honored, biblically faithful hymns, alongside newly written, but also biblically faithful and musically excellent, modern songs.

¹ John Stott, The Living Church (IVP Books) p.43

² Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters (Crossways) p.97