One of the sayings I tend to overuse is: “The right song at the right time for the right person can change your life”.  I say it so often because it says something crucial about what we’re doing when we sing in church.  I believe that singing is a pastoral ministry.  In a similar way to how preaching brings the word of God to bear on people’s lives, so too singing.

Whereas the average sermon might be 2000-3000 words in length, the average song is 200-300 words in length.  This gives songs the distinct advantage of being easy to remember, easy to understand and potentially easy to categorise (assuming they’re well written).

Singing can therefore be part of our teaching program.  A church’s life together will be greatly enhanced if its teaching through sermons and singing are well integrated.

Of course in Colossians 3:16, Paul challenges the church to “Let the word of Christ (the gospel) dwell richly”, and ties together the functions of teaching and admonishing with singing.  How do we actually do this?  Songs need their own space, but they are part of an agenda that is far bigger than just musical.

In part 1, I suggested that music has tended to take the place of liturgy in our churches.  Therefore, thinking a little bit liturgically about our songs is likely to reap rewards.

Set prayers and readings, specific instructions for how a service will run, and a 1 year or 3 year cycle of Bible passages are the stuff of prayer books.  Without becoming predictable and boring, we can draw principles from this that will help us to have a road map for what church can look like, and for the role of singing within our services.

In actual fact, I think that a lack of imagination and creativity in the way we plan services is more likely to lead to predictability and boredom than a lack of structure.  Structure simply shows us the opportunities for imagination, whilst at the same time helping us to stick to a planned course.  All forms of art depend heavily on structure.

I adopt a 4 part structure to our services, and then I select songs that will fit those 4 different parts appropriately.  I won’t tell you my song choosing process just yet – that will be the subject of a later blog.  But the 4 parts help us to think what is happening at different points in the service.  These are not rocket-science, but they are drawn from the pattern laid down in many prayer book services.

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Part 1: APPROACHING

This is the idea of “Drawing Near to God”.  Our people cannot remain detached when our service gets underway.  We are not Christians unless we come to God in the first place: the truths of the gospel need to be taken hold of, appropriated by each person.  Repentance is not a work by which we are saved.  It is a turning away from our godless life to faith in him and his gospel.

A repeated coming to God throughout our lives is what the Christian life to a great extent consists of.  Whether in repentance of sins, in prayer, in searching the Scriptures, and even in our good works towards others, there is a drawing near to God.

In the regular gathering of the people, we expect to encounter God in extraordinary ways.   We should anticipate every church service being a time when we hear the eternal voice of God and respond with thoughts, words and actions of our own that are renewed by that encounter.

Therefore, songs at this point in the service can play out that encounter with God.  We might choose a song that reminds us of his character or power, or infinite, eternal nature.  We would do well to remind each other that he is our creator and sustainer, and in fact the judge before whom we must all stand.

But I believe that ESSENTIAL to this time of “approaching” is the re-expression of the key elements of the gospel of Christ.  The message of Christ is the GROUNDS for our approaching God, so when we fail to mention it, we run the risk of giving people false confidence.

When we encounter God, we encounter him as our redeemer and saviour.  He is the Father of the prodigal son, who meets him on the way home, running undignified, determined to restore.  We need to tell people this message every Sunday.

This heading of “approaching” can include under it a range of songs, prayers, verses of Scripture, or words of edification.  It is a crucial part of the service, and not only shapes the tone of our meeting, but far more importantly, the establishes the validity of our meeting.  We meet IN Christ, under his banner of salvation.  Without that, it’s not church.

Part 2: HEARING

Where part 1 of a service restates core topics and ideas from the Bible that summarise our relationship with him, part 2 is about the word for the day.  When we hear the Bible read, preached, summarised, dramatised, or sung, we are hearing the voice of God.  This too is fundamental to church.

Most churches have a preaching program, and when that program is based around a systematic plan for working through the whole Bible over a given period of time, I believe it is best suited to hearing the voice of God on his terms.

Despite the fact that there are many difficult sections of the Bible, the words in it are his words to us, even if they often need careful explanation and application.  I strongly recommend that churches let the books of the Bible set the agenda for our preaching programs.  That is, rather than preaching on random Bible verses or ideas, we can benefit from structuring our program to make sure our congregations understand how the Bible fits together.  If we preach a series on a gospel, then a book of Old Testament narrative, then a New Testament epistle (for example), we have the opportunity to help people understand how that small section fits within the whole Bible.

Of course there are many times when our preachers need to help us through particular issues that are thrown up at us from life, whether relationships, politics, work life, or family, etc.  Also, there are times to try to help the congregation to get on top of key theological ideas, such as grace, holiness, wisdom, love, sin, wrath, heaven and hell, etc.  However I still believe that the priority is to hear GOD’s voice on all of these things, and so putting the Bible at the centre of the service is essential.

I often don’t actually choose songs for this part of the service.  We don’t need to have singing at every point.  But if a Bible passage for the day is echoed in a song I know, it will often be in this part of the service that we might sing it, usually before the talk or sermon.

We might occasionally put a performance item prior to a Bible reading or sermon to ask questions that are then answered by the word.  I don’t put secular songs in unless we’re going to make reference to them specifically.  And I want the word to come after the question.

Part 3: RESPONDING

Once we hear the word, we need to respond to it.  Without a response, we cannot say that we’ve properly heard.  But neither should a response be contrived, or vastly different from the call of whatever passage of Scripture we’ve been listening to.

When preachers are preparing, they first seek to understand the passage, and then to apply the passage to their hearers.  This “application” is really important.  For example, what does the story of the Good Samaritan mean for this particular crowd?  How should we understand the Exodus out of Egypt… should we be asking God to open unexpected paths for us, or should we be rejoicing in the fact that he used his mighty power to bring salvation for his people and we should put our trust in him for our own salvation?

The application of that passage of Scripture will lead to a certain call for response.  After we hear the word of God, we should be adapting our lives accordingly.  Depending on the passage, that response might be to trust, to pray, to rejoice, to give thanks, to share the faith with others, to repent of sin, to ask for wisdom in a situation, to grip more strongly to a particular promise of the gospel, or any number of other things.

This requires considerable wisdom, careful consideration and prayer on the part of those choosing songs to follow the hearing of the word.  It can be very helpful to ask the preacher beforehand how he would like the people to respond to his message.

But not only does this require a mature knowledge of the Bible, it requires a mature knowledge of the songs available for the congregation to sing.  There are hundreds of thousands of songs to choose from these days, and I’m not just looking for the song that will make the congregation feel the most intense emotion possible.  Nor am I trying to find a song that just says the same thing as the passage.  I’m after a song that puts into words the response that is called for by the passage.

So for example, in the case of the Exodus out of Egypt, there is a display of the Lord’s great power, through which he brings salvation to his people.  An appropriate response song will effectively praise God for his power and thank him for our own salvation.

In the case of New Testament exhortations to love and unity within the church, an appropriate response song might praise God for the wonderful eternal work he is doing in the church and exhort each other to love and kindness.

Since Jesus is the centre of our faith, I usually try to bring him into the picture too, somehow.  I would prefer a song that helps the people to see how things are shaped around Christ than one that didn’t.

Clearly this can be a complex task.  But if ever the right song at the right time was essential, it’s at this point of response to hearing the word of God.

Part 4: SENDING

The final part of the service is the interface between being in the church and being in the world.  People are about to walk out your doors and return to their lives.  So what do you want them to carry with them?

Our place in this world as Christians is to be lights in a dark place.  We shine the light of the gospel through our words and witness and through the way we live our lives.

People need encouragement at this point.  They need something that stirs them to this noble task of living for Christ.

There are a number of themes that work well at this end of the service:

• dedication to Christ’s service
• commitment to mission and evangelism
• reminder of the hope of eternal life
• re-centreing people on Christ
• expression of the joy of salvation

This list is not exhaustive.  The end of a service is a time for expressing our confidence, and reminding each other of the one whom we worship, and the one in whom we place our trust as we live our lives.  

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Well, I realise I’m suggesting quite a detailed approach to how a service can or should be structured.  But without some kind of plan for what we’re doing, services tend to become predictable in a bad sense, rather than reliable in a positive sense.  These are not rules, although I do believe they follow a Biblical pattern.

I’d love to hear of churches coming to grips with just how powerful a service can be, not just because of powerful personalities, but because of careful planning that makes God the main personality, and puts the gospel of our salvation as the main event each week.