Choosing Appropriate Praise Songs and Hymns for Corporate Worship

"The church possesses two books to aid in worship: the Word of God and the hymnal. The Scriptures stand as the perfect and unwavering revelation of God throughout the ages. It is our rule, and the only infallible word on all matters of our faith and practice. The hymnal exists in submission to the authority of Scripture and assists the people of God in singing truth. Its songs are an ever-flowing stream, sung by people responding to God in worship.

Choosing hymns for the local church is a sacred task. Even when the hymnal used is electronic and lacks binding and pages, the practice of Christian singing remains vital. As Colossians 3:16 says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

In this text, Paul teaches the Colossians the importance of singing in the local church. The hymns and praise songs we sing are not to be chosen clumsily, but with intentionality and with care. Hymns have the ability to teach us, to admonish us, and to provoke our hearts to worship our Savior with thankfulness.

CHOOSE HYMNS THAT TEACH

The hymns of the church ought to be built on, shaped by, and saturated with the Word of God. While the New Testament is silent on many of the specifics of corporate worship, Scripture is clear that the Word of Christ must be central. When the hymns we sing are aligned with the Word of God, our souls are nourished by its truth. Singing is a unique way to “let the word of Christ dwell richly” in us. One reason our songs should be closely tied to the Word of God is their didactic effects. Singing for the Christian is formative and responsive, and therefore must be informed by Scripture. We learn what we sing.

The Key To Making the Most Out of Congregational Singing

"It’s good to go to a great Christian conference or a worship concert and to sing with hundreds or even thousands of strangers. There is something majestic and soul-stirring about gathering with other believers and using the common language of song to join together in worship. But I believe it’s far better still to go to a local church—to your local church—and to sing with fewer people who make that church their home.

To understand why I believe this, we need to establish a key premise: that singing is not just a vertical act, but also a horizontal one. Of course we sing to God, but we also sing for one another. God is the object of our worship, but our singing is also a means of mutual encouragement. In our singing, we all have equal opportunity to proclaim truth. When we open our mouths to sing, we all take on the role of teacher, of encourager. My words go to you—and your words come to me—as challenge, rebuke, edification, comfort, encouragement (see Colossians 3:16).

When you know their story, you know their song.  Christian singing is an act of community and fellowship, and the key to making the most of singing is to know the people who make up that community. This means your enjoyment of singing as an act of Christian community varies with your knowledge of the people around you. The better you know them, the more they can challenge and encourage you—and you can challenge and encourage them—in this way. When you know their story, you know their song. Let me show it to you.

Over there is that man who has told the church how he has battled long and hard to overcome an addiction. He’s told you how he has often grown weary in the battle and how he has sometimes suffered serious setbacks. But he has repented and persevered and seen victory. And as you glance in his direction, he is singing of the assurance he has: “Still the small inward voice I hear, / That whispers all my sins forgiven; / Still the atoning blood is near, / That quenched the wrath of hostile Heaven. / I feel the life His wounds impart; / I feel the Savior in my heart.”

Gathered Worship: Make It a Top Priority

It is God's will that every believer belong to a local church (1 Pet. 4:10-11).  By "belong" we mean faithful attendance (Heb. 10:24), service (1 Peter 4:10-11), and giving (Prov. 3:9).  This is so, in part, because the church is central in the purpose/plan of God for this present age (Matt. 16:18; Acts 20:28).  Despite the church's many spots, blemishes, and wrinkles- Jesus loves the Church dearly- and so must we!

By God's design the ministries of a Word-centered assembly help believers grow and mature in the faith (Col. 1:28-29; Eph. 4:11-16).  In this regard the local church is like a spiritual umbilical cord.  

It is sinful for a professing believer to forsake the regular assembly of the gathered church (Heb. 10:24).  The Holy Spirit would never led a Spirit-filled saint to act in a manner contrary to the Word He inspired.  Family bible study or a home care group is no substitute for full fledged involvement in the life of the local church.  Anyone who suggests otherwise is reading a different New Testament.

"Preparing for corporate worship means making time and making choices. Worship, especially corporate worship, takes time. It takes commitment. We must set aside time to come. We need to guard our schedules and consider times of corporate worship a priority.

Listen to what the Word of God tells us about gathering together:  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Hebrews 10:24–25).

Here the writer of Hebrews highlights the importance of regularly meeting together with the church. He also acknowledges that “neglecting to meet together” was a problem in the early church, and had even become a habit of some. The word used here in the Greek for meeting is episunagogen. We are not to neglect the “coming together,” “assembly” or “gathering” [synagogue].

Though we should daily encourage and pray for one another as we have opportunity to invest in each other’s lives, there is a measure of encouragement, participation and life in the church that cannot be attained or replicated apart from the regular assembly of God’s people in corporate worship. We need to hear God’s Word read and proclaimed together. We need to pray and sing God’s praise together. Listening to sermon recordings or broadcasts can’t replicate it. Singing worship songs along with your iPod can’t match it. We need to see and hear and know and feel the testimony of lives changed by the power of the Gospel, covenanted, unified and gathered together all in one place, in the same room, for His glory.

The Word-less “Church”

The Wordless Church

Many American churches are in a mess. Theologically they are indifferent, confused, or dangerously wrong. Liturgically they are the captives of superficial fads. Morally they live lives indistinguishable from the world. They often have a lot of people, money, and activities. But are they really churches, or have they degenerated into peculiar clubs?

What has gone wrong? At the heart of the mess is a simple phenomenon: the churches seem to have lost a love for and confidence in the Word of God. They still carry Bibles and declare the authority of the Scriptures. They still have sermons based on Bible verses and still have Bible study classes. But not much of the Bible is actually read in their services. Their sermons and studies usually do not examine the Bible to see what it thinks is important for the people of God. Increasingly they treat the Bible as tidbits of poetic inspiration, of pop psychology, and of self-help advice. Congregations where the Bible is ignored or abused are in the gravest peril. Churches that depart from the Word will soon find that God has departed from them.

What solution does the Bible teach for this sad situation? The short but profound answer is given by Paul in Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We need the Word to dwell in us richly so that we will know the truths that God thinks are most important and so that we will know His purposes and priorities. We need to be concerned less about “felt-needs” and more about the real needs of lost sinners as taught in the Bible.

Paul not only calls us here to have the Word dwell in us richly, but shows us what that rich experience of the Word looks like. He shows us that in three points. (Paul was a preacher, after all.)

First, he calls us to be educated by the Word, which will lead us on to ever-richer wisdom by “teaching and admonishing one another.”