Center For Church Music, Songs & Hymns

Music & Worship

Songs, Hymns and Spiritual Songs

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Over the past 100 years, the church's attitude toward music has changed dramatically. The ability to "personalize" music via a variety of electronic media has been the catalyst for this dramatic change.

The advent of the 20th century (and Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph!) allowed for personal taste and individualism to gradually become the norm regarding music used for private entertainment--and for church music.

In the past, music's ability to enlighten the various aspects of corporate worship was the determining factor for its usage. Hence, St. Paul's admonition to the church at Colossae was driven by his desire to have the congregation support one another in the conduct of their spirituality. He expected the Colossians to encourage and admonish one another as they worshiped from Sunday to Sunday.

But for today's church, spiritual unity is, most times, not in play; for in reality it is "all about me...it's what I like...or what ministers to me." Our culture has enthroned the individual to such an extent that personal taste and subjective discrimination have become the driving factor for music selection in the church.

"I like green, you like blue--so what? One is as good as the other. There is no good or bad music." To state that the latest Christian contemporary musical style is better than that of, say, J.S. Bach, stretches the modern church to its limit of incredulity. The contemporary belief that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" has led the church away from an objective musical perspective.

But, this was not a part of the Apostle Paul's theological (and musical) lexicon. Music had a distinct spiritual purpose: personal (individual) enjoyment was not to be a part of the musical equation. As the "Word of Christ" indwelt a believer, it produced a song that was distinctly biblical, a song to be used for "teaching and admonishing one another" spiritually!

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