Preaching and Singing
People don't leave humming my sermon
Many of you know that I also do a podcast called BICLife Podcast. It’s a fun passion project for me and my friend Scott MacFeat. Our episode for this month was a fun one where we got to discuss the topic of culture-making and creativity in the Brethren in Christ church and the broader Christian community.
I’ll let you listen to the episode (on Youtube, or anywhere you get your podcasts), but there was one part that I just wanted to highlight. Our guest, Karah Leaman was talking about the importance of having songs and other practices in our churches that help us to participate in the breadth of spiritual disciplines and engage in the myriad of experiences in the Christian life.
I got to thinking about a phrase that I heard once; something to the effect of “If you show me a church’s song repertoire, I’ll show you their theology”. The idea is that it’s not so much the sermons that shape a community, it’s not the declaratory statements on their websites, it’s their music. And I believe there is a lot of truth in that.
As much as I work on my sermons, people don’t leave the service humming my sermon. They leave humming the songs that we sing. The song we sing, the practices we engage with in our corporate gatherings, these influence us so much more because they stick with us. They form us even when we’re not gathered together because we’re rehearsing their theology throughout the week when we just can’t get it out of our heads!
This is why songs were so important to early illiterate/preliterate communities. Songs and poems and stories were often how a community’s identity and core beliefs were shared and passed down through the generations.
This isn’t to say that preaching the word doesn’t matter. We should indeed preach the word and endeavor all the more to make it engaging, practical, and memorable. But it is to say that our songs matter in forming us as a people of God. These aren’t just things we do to make introverts uncomfortable. We sing together because we are shaped together.
So if this is true, what is the theology of your church? What songs do you sing? If you take the 15-20 songs that your church sings most frequently, what parts of God and the Christian life are you rehearsing well and getting familiar with, and what parts are you lacking in or feel deficient in?
Enjoy the episode!
Good post and good BicLife episode. These thoughts are about both.
I know discussions like these can pit the sermon against the worship, where the preacher thinks that "preaching the word" is the most potent. Artists say the music and other artistic pieces of the service create longer lasting shaping of the culture, because people leave with the artistic pieces "sticking" to them. As you said, they leave humming the song not the sermon. But I think comparing the two is as important as contrasting them. While sermons and songs are different in some ways, they also have a similar if not the same general purpose.
In fact, I think that is part of your point. Songs are not just for creative fun. They do more than add an aesthetic to the service. They communicate theology. They pass on and share our common identity and core beliefs. I would add that songs can stir us to action. I have often felt conviction and the desire for repentance during the singing portion of worship. Isn't all that what sermons do too?
Why I bring it up is that you and Scott both mentioned that the sermon is preached and then it is done, as if it has no life beyond the hearing of it. I would hope that your goal when preaching is that people leave "humming" the sermon. When you are in your study preparing, you are shaped by the Word. If your goal of preaching isn't to also shape the congregation and in turn the culture, then your assertion will probably be correct. The songs will shape the congregation more than the sermons. But it's possible for the songs and sermons to work together.
I know that both you and Scott preach with that goal in mind, but I wanted to stick up for preaching! I can only imagine that when the disciples walked by a farmer spreading seed that it brought to mind Jesus' parable of the sower and his explanation of that parable. In other words, Jesus taught deep spiritual truths that are at the heart of the gospel, AND he did it in a way that it would be "humming" in their minds after he preached it. Now that you've talked about how songs should be more like sermons, perhaps a future episode can be about how sermons should be more like songs!
OK. . . so that brings me to preaching a sermon series on Lost. . .
:)
You knew it was coming. . .
Your question to Karah was, is that culture creating? Just some thoughts from a retired pastor. My current church does an annual "At The Movies" series. They show multiple clips from a movie, weaving in thoughts from the pastor (who is also on video usually sitting in his home...I think it's a way to give the preaching team a break for the summer, a preacher is not required on stage!) For a 25 minute sermon perhaps 15 minutes is footage of the movie. It's entertaining. The congregation is encouraged to invite people because of that. They usually pick a movie that has a good message to it, and they find scripture that supports that message. I'm not saying there is no place for that kind of sermon, but I would say that is more copying the culture than creating it. I rarely hear a prophetic voice speaking INTO the culture during these sermons. In my opinion its better to use the world's artistic creations to ask questions than to answer them. If the culture around us is asking a question or communicating a fear, yearning, or temptation that the gospel speaks to, I think it's appropriate to use those forms of art to creatively raise questions, fears, yearnings, etc.. Of course, there are times when the world's culture is getting something right that the church is ignoring. It may be right to use those art forms as well to communicate, even if to convict the church when the world around them is acting more holy than they are. Anyway, just wanted to say that the conversation is probably less binary than does it create culture or copy it?
Hopefully we used the Lost series in a gospel honoring way, but I'm not going back to review it. . . just in case we didn't. . .
My recollection is that you were an excellent worship leader, not just at the parts that involved standing up and ushering the congregation into the presence of God, but also at leading the small group of us behind you trying to express what Jesus meant to us through the instruments in our hands.