Adam Burt, CEO at Vivlos a Christian communications ministry, tells us what he learned about music at a preaching course.
I’ve been lucky enough to attend the Cornhill program at Moore College. It’s an insanely good course. The quality of the staff and content is the perfect balance between academic rigor and practical focus. The purpose of the course is to give people the tools to prepare talks or Bible studies within a framework that facilitates a proper exegesis and audience-focused delivery. The Cornhill model uses a mountain analogy.
Going up the Mountain is all about ‘getting it right’ (exegesis). This is where time is spent following a 10-step process to analyze a Bible passage properly, to significantly reduce the chance of misunderstanding or misinterpretation.
Going down the Mountain is about ‘getting it across’ (packaging and delivery). This is where work is put in to consider how to make a clear and engaging talk/study, with relevant, practical, concrete and specific application.
I believe the model could possibly also be summarized as ‘accuracy’ (up the mountain) and ‘engagement’ (down the mountain). This form of the model has application then, in both service design generally, and specifically music ministry.
As a card carrying member of the Sydney Anglican tribe, I think our focus is rightly on getting things right intellectually and academically. But if we do have a failing, it is a lack of care for engagement. This is even more evident in the sphere of music ministry.
Many churches will have identified the need to review the lyrics of songs to ensure theological accuracy. This is a good process, if implemented correctly.
My experience is that very little effort is made to spend any time considering the engagement side of a song. Do the lyrics match the music? Is the music any good? Does it fit the mix of instruments we have? Is it repetitive for a good reason, focusing us on key truths? Is it congregational and easy to sing (key selection, dynamics, clear start, middle and end, etc).
The quality of the actual music is unfortunately often subservient to secondary issues like which artist wrote the song, or specific things like if the words ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ appear enough (as opposed to a generic ‘God’). Or maybe how many times the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’ appear lyrically. These are certainly useful guidelines, but are often enforced in a legalistic manner. For example, the argument that a Jew or a Muslim may wander into a Christian church and hear singing to ‘God’, and think the Christian church is singing to Yahweh or Allah seems overly simplistic and probably foolish. A sermon will rarely provide an entire Biblical overview (Biblical theology). Yet sometimes songs are expected to do just that. Songs may be cut if God’s love is evident lyrically, but not his judgment. The absence of something is not opposition to it.
The propagators of these rules often have to participate in some decent mental gymnastics to get around things like how the most common sung verses of Be Thou My Vision, or Amazing Grace as examples, have no reference to Jesus specifically. Are we to discount these foundations of our music heritage as well, as it is unclear as to which ‘God’ we are singing to? It seems ridiculous.
Another way to look at the Cornhill model may be to describe going up the mountain as engaging the head and down the mountain the heart.
If music is done well, it reinforces the sermon and service theme, engaging both head and heart. Music is not just a filler to be done at the beginning of a service, to give late-comers a few extra minutes to wander in before the ‘proper’ stuff starts. Nor is it just a way to allow us to stretch our legs after the sermon.
There are around 185 songs to be found in the Bible. Music matters to God. People may often find themselves humming along to a song on a Wednesday, but not recall the focus or application of the sermon from the same service.
If you are on staff at a church, work with your music team to have a discussion, and allow the experts on the ‘heart’ side of the mountain to have their input. Recognise where you have a knowledge or skill gap, and delegate to those who know more than you.
Band Leaders, take your role seriously. Spend the time to manage your song portfolio and do song selection in a thoughtful, deliberate and Biblical manner. Before a new sermon series starts, review the themes of that series and see if your current song portfolio adequately supports those themes.
Let’s spend the time to deliberately think through a proper way to engage both head and heart, in a way that ensures both accuracy and engagement.
Adam Burt is CEO of Vivlos, an organisation driven by a singular mission: to fulfill the Great Commission for those who cannot read or do not have access to the written word. These views are his own and do not represent those of the Cornhill program or staff.
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