Sing the Psalms…With Vigor!
Okay, so you are a Pastor or Music Minister at the local protestant church and you are struggling to keep up with what is happening with “Music in Worship.” This contemporary movement is hard to keep up with. You have songs that were very fresh 5 years ago that are now considered second-rate and aged. You don’t have to fret with this any longer.
Sing the Psalms! Why mess with “contemporary” songs when you have a hymnal already embedded in the Bible. Trouble is, most people think that singing the psalms means a boring and monotonous sound that will only contradict what you are doing. Well, to that I say, you need to revisit your understanding of Psalmody.
Forget sappy, emotional, or lilting singing in churches. We need to sing like we are a forgiven people. We need to sing with the Saints. The Church has sung the Psalms at different times with varying emphases. The modern church really doesn’t even regard the Psalms as Worship Music Potential. That is really quite unfortunate. We need to sing victoriously in a way that represents our faith in our God. It communicates a good bit about who we say our God is when we sing. Do we sing of the same God we preach from the pulpit? We want to be unified in our worship, work, word, and deed. Our Music just doesn’t measure up.
There is a place for hymns, but it should come AFTER the Psalms. Put the “Hymns” we sing now on the shelf for a while. Learn the to sing the Psalms and recover some lost ground, then add some appropriate hymns. Make no mistake, we don’t want a boring music service. We want loud, vigorous, robust, joyful, and biblical music in worship. That isn’t being done by most churches. We need to be revisiting the Psalms. They don’t go in and out of style like our hymns and praise choruses do. The Psalms have stood the test of time even though we have abandoned them in our worship. They are the stability and unifying music for the Early Church Saints and the Saints that will follow after us. We should sing the songs our grandfathers in the faith sang and leave that legacy for our grandchildren in the faith to sing. The Psalms are the Psalms. They aren’t changing and reworking themselves to be “relevant” to the World and to the Culture. The Psalms will rework us, the Church into a more glorious bride for our husband and Savior, Jesus.
Please get rid of the stereotype that singing the Psalms is boring and dead. That doesn’t have to be the way of the Church. The Geneva Psalms are a good start for a vigorous psalmody. It can and is being done well by some, we all need to be on board and revive Psalm singing in Worship.