Image: Wikimedia Commons user Trounce

Whether or not your agree with who should be responsible for picking songs in your church, I think there are some helpful things you should keep in mind if you are responsible for it in your church. He breaks it down to three main points, which we can use to question ourselves and help guide us as we make choices.

1. Singing is teaching

• Are the songs we sing helping us to teach and admonish one another?
• Do they allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly? Songs taken directly from the scriptures allow us to easily store God’s word in our hearts.

2. Music is culture shaping

• Do the songs lead people to engage with The Word of God actively?
• Do they reflect a full spectrum of appropriate responses to God’s word? Which is to say do the songs only focus on happiness and joy, or do they cover the grief of our sin, and repentence (to name a few)?

3. The whole service serves the word

• Where do the songs encourage people to focus?
• When the sermon starts, have people been inspired by the music to be thinking about the passage that’s being preached?