By Pastor Joshua Kirk
On your first visit to Grace Church, or maybe even your second, third, and fourth visits, the music is probably going to strike you as odd. We don’t sing the songs that you will find playing on popular Christian radio stations. In fact, you may realize when you first come that you don’t even recognize most of the songs at first. Our song choices are intentional, but not in the way some might at first think.
On the one hand, we are not necessarily seeking to avoid popular Christian music. We don’t look at what everyone else is singing and try to do something else in order to differentiate ourselves from other Flathead Valley churches. There’s no hidden brand marketing at work. This is not a secret strategy to build our tribe. If that was the case, you might look at the church and think such efforts have failed.
On the other hand, our leaders are very intentional about guarding our music corpus here at Grace. Music is an incredibly important aspect of worship as music has the ability to reach out and touch the emotions in a unique way; it invigorates and energizes the soul. Just like all other powerful tools, music can be used powerfully to bring us to God on Sunday morning, or it can be used simply as a tool of manipulation. When we gather for corporate worship, we want to worship God in spirit and in truth, with our minds engaged and hearts aflame.
Our song choices flow from this conviction. We want to sing songs together as a unified body that are filled with rich scriptural and theological truths and that are melodious to the ears. This means we choose songs that are true, sing-able for the average person, easy to remember, appropriate for all ages, and drawn from all ages of church history. When we sing classic hymns, we join with the voices of godly saints who have gone before. Be Thou My Vision has existed in some form or fashion since the sixth century. When we sing it, we join with voices of other Christians who for 1500 years have proclaimed that Christ is their vision! What a privilege!
This next Lord’s day, whether you are a visitor or a long-standing member, think about the songs we sing. Consider the theology taught in them. Think about the God we are coming together to worship in song. Be encouraged and invigorated to worship in spirit and truth through the rich theology we have the opportunity to sing to one another.
For more information on this topic, see this article from Capitol Hill which more fully spells out our music philosophy.