The Radical Witness When Congregations Sing
Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious. (Ps. 66:2)
SINGING TOGETHER IS ALWAYS A WITNESS
When we sing, we witness to the people in our church who are yet to believe—to the unsaved spouse, the cynical teen, the intrigued friend. We witness to the outsider stepping through the door of a church and even, through the sound we make, to the outsider walking past the door of a church. The sight and sound of a congregation singing praise to God together is a radical witness in a culture that rejects God and embraces individualism. Our songs are the public manifesto of what we believe.
Singing together bears compelling witness to the truth.
POWERFUL WITNESS
God’s people have always witnessed to the truth through their singing. In the Old Testament, the faith of the Israelites could be clearly heard in their songs. And many of the lyrics of their hymnal, the Psalms, showed their awareness of other nations listening into their singing, and called them to praise God too. Psalm 117 says:
Praise the LORD, all you nations;extol him, all you peoples. p 89 For great is his love toward us,and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.Praise the LORD.
Given this heritage, it should be no surprise to discover the first New Testament church doing the same:
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46–47)
The congregational worship in their prayer, their praise, and their actions was a dynamic witness. As Paul put it to the church in Colossae, a church should always be “wise in the way [we] act toward outsiders” so that we can “make the most of every opportunity” (Col. 4:5). “Every opportunity” includes every time a congregation stands up to sing.
Since the dawn of the church, times of great church renewal and revival have been accompanied by (and, we might say, spurred on by) churches singing. As we’ve already seen, Luther and the Reformers inspired and enabled their congregations to sing together in their own language, in words that they and the people around them could understand. It was revolutionary.
Throughout the history of the British and American revivalist movements (for example those of John and Charles Wesley, p 90 D. L. Moody, and Ira Sankey), congregational singing has been a hallmark and a powerful testimony. Consider the Billy Graham Crusades. Although they were frequently criticized for it, Dr. Graham and his partners included congregational singing at each event so that everyone who gathered could sing the Christian message for themselves and not just hear it. Cliff Barrows, the music director, said, “The Christian faith is a singing faith, and a good way to express it and share it with others is in community singing.” There is something unique about congregational singing that is both invitational and instructive to people.
We see it still today each Christmas time. Many people who are yet to believe will visit our churches this December and join with us in singing some of the best and truest poetry ever written. And many of us will take those carols out into our communities to communicate the gospel in schools, malls, hospitals, and countless other local festivals.
SINGING THE GOSPEL
Communicating the gospel in a way that informs the mind and engages the emotions is. The gospel is the church’s central lyrical distinctive. We should not be shy about it. As you stand and sing in your church this Sunday, you do not know who is listening, and you can never imagine what the Lord might be doing.
A DAMAGING WITNESS
In Deuteronomy, God told Moses something remarkable:
“Write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them” (31:19, our italics). Some of Jesus’ fiercest words were reserved for religious people who, “honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain . . .” (Mark 7:6–7). Be careful that what you sing does not expose hypocrisy, and if and where it does, repent and seek God’s help to change, and sing the great gospel truths of forgiveness and renewal with all the more feeling in your heart.
Hypocritical living damages our witness and so does half-hearted singing.