by Paul Tautges | March 28, 2020 1:47 am
I hope you enjoyed the reading for the first of our seven weeks together, as much as we did. One evening, I took out our copy of SING! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church[1] and read the Prelude and Chapter One out loud to the family after supper, and we talked through the discussion questions. In this post, I will summarize the reading by calling attention to key thoughts and arguments that we considered important.
Today’s church is experiencing a resurgence of congregational singing, thanks, in part, to people like Keith and Kristyn Getty. And this is a good thing! They rightly argue, “singing is part of what we exist to do.” Congregational singing, “though maybe understood, regularly a bone of contention, and often under-practiced…is one of the greatest and most beautiful tools we have been given to declare God’s ‘excellencies,’ strengthening His Church and sharing His glory with the world.” Therefore, “we need to not only to know that we ought to sing as Christians, but to learn to love to sing as Christians.” Recognizing the uniqueness of each local church, the aim of the Gettys in this little book is to teach us all to love to sing, to “be practical—but not prescriptive.”
God, the very first Singer, designed us to sing as part of bringing Him glory.
To sing is written into our human DNA; it is part of God’s design. Our desire to make musical instruments to accompany our singing is as old as our desire to fashion tools to aid us in our daily work (Gen. 4:21-22). Throughout Scripture and through history, we see God’s people using this gift of song to praise Him, the Giver of it.
Mysteriously, in the amazing creative design of God, music has a way of delivering the message of God into the recesses of our heart, where we are then moved with feeling and action. When gathered together as believers in Christ the singing congregation becomes the most beautiful confessional and testimonial choir in the world.
Echoing through our congregational singing is the communication the divine Author has written into this world. Melodies matter. Words matter. Our songs always say something. We have been created to use language, to reflect and meditate on His words, to remember over and over again His voice. Singing together organizes notes and words in beautiful ways to shine God’s dazzling truths into the relativistic grays of our culture.
Between now and Saturday, April 4th, read Chapter Two.
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