Fifteen to twenty years ago, the Worship Wars were raging hard in the American evangelical world. I had just come out of a broadly evangelical, non-denominational context into the Regulative Principle corner of the Reformed world, where anything not directly commanded in Scripture is forbidden in worship. So, where music was concerned, I knew exactly what was correct for all people in all places at all times. I was, after all, a teenager.

Since then, I’ve experienced a wide variety of worship contexts for someone in her mid-30s. Though the vast majority of my experience has been in your “classic piano accompaniment of hymns” style, I’ve encountered professionally produced megachurch concert types, PCA with a jazz band, Anglo-Catholic-leaning ACNA with a worship team led by a formerly Pentecostal music minister, and both high- and low-church CREC services filled with robust hymnody and chant.

Woven throughout, you’d find my own development in musical skill. I grew up in a fairly musical family, where strains of Frank Sinatra or Rogers & Hammerstein floated regularly through the house. My siblings and I each learned an instrument in our youth, to varying degrees of proficiency. Then, as my natural abilities and interest in musical theatre developed, I eventually sought considerable vocal training at the then-nearby University of North Carolina at Greensboro. With each new worship context, I found new needs for my skills and fresh avenues of service. Given my brief and obnoxiously energetic flirtation with the idea that right worship music is exclusively contained in the book of Psalms, it’s only by God’s mercy that I’ve been able to find a vision of the good in each tradition I’ve encountered.

The Worship Wars of the early 2000s seem to have retreated to a wary détente. Each faction has taken hold of its own confessions, doctrinal statements, or lack thereof, and begun to either silently judge others from afar or ignore them altogether. Only the resurgence of the Psalms seems to cut across all lines. I have absolutely no interest in breaking this ceasefire. Since I intend to remain a lay musician in God’s church for the rest of my life, I am interested in the principles the non-ordained person with some musical skill or training might take into any context of Christian worship.

Before I lose my fellow doctrinal sticklers, let’s clarify the meaning of “worship.” Far from the modern Evangelical idea of music acting as a synonym for worship, I understand music to constitute only a part of worship proper. The regular corporate gathering of God’s people for worship consists, more broadly, of a dialectic of call and response in prayer, song, Word, and sacrament. This essay may target the music portion, but let’s not mistake the part for the whole. Though we can also distinguish the corporate act of worship from the everyday life of the church body, we ought never to fully separate them, nor can we. This essay will largely discuss the role of the musician in worship but must necessarily touch on other avenues of service beyond Sundays.

While I won’t be arguing for or against any concepts of Regulative or Normative principles of worship—to say nothing of contemporary or traditional musical styles—I will be drawing two bright and undefended lines of reproach for the sake of this essay. First, worship is a corporate act, so that refusing to sing is tantamount to declaring the body in question non-orthodox. This applies whether your conscience binds you to only sing the Psalms or your musical or theological knowledge really chafes against a certain song. Suck it up and sing, or go elsewhere.*

Second, worship is not a performance of the skilled on behalf of the unskilled—we dealt with that in the Reformation, if you recall. Whether slickly produced or cobbled together, worship team or little old lady organist, the responsibilities remain those of the lay musician, organized and amplified. All discussion of worship teams will flow from this premise.

What then, is the responsibility of the lay musician in worship? It corresponds with the triple end of worship itself: a duty we owe to God, a service we owe to one another, and a delight given to us by God himself. Of the first, the musical command is to play and sing skillfully and boldly (Ps. 33), “singing with grace in your heart to the Lord” (Col. 3). We will assume some skill of the lay musician and so leave this first part aside. Likewise, grace in one’s heart is as much a gift from God as the delight and rest he gives us in corporate worship, so we will leave the third part aside as well. This leaves the second part, making it the particular responsibility of the lay musician to serve the less musically skilled by helping the broader congregation to sing well and increasing in them both understanding and delight. This is the first half of Paul’s admonition in Colossians 3: “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

In a previous Theopolis conversation,, I wrote about my understanding of worship as the ultimate in musical theater, the only musical genre in which the music must drive the action. Composer, lyricist, and singer work together to ensure the audience finds the performance to be not only believable but, at its very best, compelling. Similarly, as skilled singers, we can imbue our words with the force of action, to drive home the sense of the musical selection.

We often take for granted just how difficult it is for the average churchgoer to sing any song or hymn, let alone learn a new one. For most, musical notation gives them only a vague idea of the shape of the melody—sometimes even the relative length of a note! For trained singers, however, reading music has become second nature, and we can devote our mental energy to how word and music interact and comment upon one another. Given word and music, we can then make dynamic and expressive decisions within each song, verse, or line to better “provoke one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10) in song.

But we need not stop at understanding. As an earthly glimpse of the beatific vision, worship should also bring us delight. One can enjoy a fine melody in and of itself, but when we enrich that melody with the adornments of harmony and variation, we crown that truth with a special beauty that resonates in the soul long after it’s done sounding. So, in any worship context, the skilled musician can and should strengthen the less-skilled in their own singing, drive home doctrinal understanding with dynamics and expression, and, where appropriate, enrich the beauty of the music with harmony and variation.

This is an exercise in wisdom, to be sure, and we will all get it wrong at some point. Nevertheless, in any worship context, you should be able to read the room. What does this congregation understand the role of music in worship to be? Feel free to riff to your heart’s content in a black church, but you’d better button yourself up a bit among the Dutch Reformed. What is the general level of musical engagement? By all means, bring the fortissimo in a group of robust singers, but don’t make a show of your strength among the weak. Furthermore, how skilled are those seated immediately nearby? The answers to these questions determine how we can both aid the unskilled in their song and increase the beauty of the duty of praise in any context.

Warning: this method contains much dying-to-self. Holy Scripture doesn’t command that we sing in harmony. The Psalmist tells us to rejoice in the Lord loudly and skillfully, with both instrument and voice. Even new composition is commanded, but not harmony, counterpoint, or improvisation. Sometimes the greatest service you can impart on a Sunday is to sing the melody with understanding and volume. It may chafe because the hymn has a particularly crunchy alto line, but everyone around you is struggling just to find the melody. Has God not promised to reward your sacrifice thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold? Strengthen the boldness of those around you with a melodic boldness of your own, and great will be your reward, both here and hereafter.

This method also requires great patience. I had the privilege to live in Moscow, Idaho for my years in undergrad. The musical culture there is so robust and overwhelming that everyone who experiences it wants to take it back with them. Each Moscovite seems able to read and sing the melody, if not harmony; throw a rock and you’ll hit a nearby choir or small choral group at rehearsal; parties either begin, end, or consist entirely of hymn sings; and psalm chant is a rule, rather than an exception. But when I attempted to carry any of the specific goods I experienced there to my home congregation, I realized the hard way that the culture in Moscow is the product of fifty years of generation-by-generation education.

Start small and be patient. Fill your own home with music when you have company over, organize a monthly hymn-sing or evensong, or start a music class if that’s where your gifting lies. Whether you are planting the seed of musical development, watering the shoot, or cultivating the young tree, you may only be around to see the next stage. The mature fruit may yet be generations off. Accept with grateful hands the work that God has given you to do and allow him to give the increase in his good timing.

Now that we’re committed to patience and selflessness in our principles of encouragement and enrichment, I would be remiss to leave you without some practical suggestions on how we might implement them wisely.

Practice

To whom much is given, much is required. Work with your minister or ministers to acquire the music before Sunday. Purchase a copy of your congregation’s hymnal or print out the music so you can mark it up with your own notes on dynamics and expression.

Sit strategically

This can even change from Sunday to Sunday: sit near weaker singers to strengthen their confidence, or sit near stronger singers so you can beautify with harmony or variation. Even in a strict RPW context, you can sit in the back to bolster the congregation as your sound carries forward. You might even collaborate with other strong singers to form a de facto choir at the back!

Pay attention

I made it a rule when cantoring in one congregation that I would sing straight melody on the first verse or two. But if the congregation seemed to be solid enough, I would let loose with a little harmony or improvisation, as seemed appropriate. In my most recent context, another member was a trained opera singer and professor of music at the local university. He would sing in a strong but (for opera) restrained manner until the last verse, when he would let his tenor loose, often ending with a terrific descant.

Offer your services

Just because you know your own musical skills doesn’t mean others do. Tell the appropriate minister where your skills lie and of your humble readiness to serve. Bonus points for suggesting ways your skills might best be used—especially if you play an atypical instrument.

Be creative

Frustrated at singing melody only or simplistic harmony? Or maybe your congregation limits itself to piano accompaniment but you play the cello. Suggest some of your favorite settings for preludes, offertories, or special events. This way, you don’t feel stifled and your contribution can serve as aspirational for the rest of the congregation.

Lead by example

There’s no use denying it. Every time we step into a new congregation, we automatically begin a list of things we would fix about the music if we were in charge. Instead, seek the peace of the church by conspicuously praising what your congregation is doing well (according to your measure, of course), participating enthusiastically in the musical life of the body, and being reticent to give your advice, even when asked. After all, “he that hath wisdom spareth his words,’ such that “even a fool who openeth not his mouth is considered wise” (Prov. 17:27-28).

This essay, purported to be about all skilled musicians, has largely skewed towards trained singers. This is simply a matter of where my own practical experience lies. The lay musician, rightly, is beholden to the ordained minister’s decisions in the context of worship, so it’s much easier to come up with examples for the singer in particular. I look forward to hearing from my respondents about how instrumentalists might implement the principles I’ve laid out, or any pushback they may have on the principles themselves.

Brittany Hurd brings a little musical theatre flair to Psalm chant at Canticlear. She lives in Michigan, where she is making her husband a better Thomist.

*It is good to remember, however, that this grace and rest can often be found in allowing others to minister to you in song during those times when you may be overcome. For the six months or so following the loss of my eyesight, I needed my brothers and sisters around me to proclaim the truth of “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” before I could take up the words, “Ye blind behold your Savior come” without blubbering. This is a good thing.