During Advent and Christmas people love to sing, even in public. We find ourselves humming along to Christmas tunes in the stores. We welcome carolers to our front doors. We participate in or attend performances of Handel’s Messiah, school Christmas programs, or our church choir’s lessons and carols service. We always sing in worship, but our church takes special delight in singing during this season. Recently I’ve been wondering: Why do we sing? Particularly, why do we sing in worship?
Your question makes me consider how often we take public corporate singing for granted. It’s hard to envision public worship without it. At the same time, outside of church and sporting events, we don’t regularly join others in public singing. A highlight of every major league baseball game is the seventh-inning stretch. Between the top and bottom of the inning, the announcer takes the microphone and invites everyone to get on their feet to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The entire stadium echoes with the crowd happily singing, “For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game!”
In self-conscious moments, I stop and wonder why everyone’s singing. This particular ritual entertains us between innings. The song expresses a love for baseball and the experience of being at the ballpark. It unites us in our fandom. And it gets us moving after sitting for a long time.
There are a few other occasions when public singing is common. We sing “Happy Birthday” at a party to celebrate (or embarrass) a loved one. We sing our high school or college alma mater at commencements for solidarity and nostalgia. We sing along with our favorite bands at their concerts. We sing our national anthem at sporting events to express our love for our country. Children in school sing to learn the alphabet.
Singing on these occasions helps us to remember, to carry on traditions or convey values, or even to muster courage. And sometimes we sing together just because it’s fun. Our reasons for singing are innumerable.
Why Do We Sing in Public Worship?
We carry many of these reasons for singing into public worship. In The Music Architect, Dr. Constance Cherry lists several motives: Singing “sets the mood.” It “helps us to express ourselves to God,” “connect with culture,” and “draw nonbelievers to church.” Moreover, singing “adds life and vitality to a worship service,” “inspires us,” and is “our primary form of praise to God” (Constance Cherry, The Music Architect, 2016, p. 39). But among all these goals, which is central to public worship?
This question reminds me of the task of buying a car. Last summer I bought my first car in eighteen years. I wanted to be sure to get all that I needed for the next eighteen years. I decided to use the Carvana app. It has several helpful search filters: make, model, year, mileage, exterior color, interior color, front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and all-wheel drive. There are also filters for amenities: Apple CarPlay, power seats, heated seats, cooled seats, and leather steering wheels. And you can add filters for safety features: lane assist, backup camera, adaptive cruise control, and many more.
Of course I wanted the car to look good, to last, to keep me comfortable and entertained, and to keep me safe. But none of these features is central to the purpose of the car. Why do I need a car? Transportation.
Among all the purposes of public singing in worship, its central role is to facilitate “the proclamation and celebration of the story of God” (Cherry, Worship Architect, p. 39). This purpose of singing is tightly bound to the purpose of worship. “Worship enacts God’s story,” Cherry writes—“it remembers, rejoices in, and anticipates what God has done, is doing and will do to bring to fullness the kingdom of God. Music cannot operate independently from the ultimate purpose of worship” (Cherry, Worship Architect, p. 39).
We sing to remember God’s deeds in creation and redemption. We sing to lament our fall into sin and rebellion. We sing to rejoice in God’s saving deeds through Israel, Christ, and the church. We sing to anticipate Christ’s coming again and to look forward to the new creation.
The organization of Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs illustrates this purpose. The editors intentionally arranged the first 491 songs in the hymnal to tell the story of redemption, from creation to new creation.
The classic hymn “We Sing the Mighty Power of God,” by Isaac Watts (LUYH #10), invites us to proclaim and celebrate the acts of God in creation and providence. The power of God “made the mountains rise” and “spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.” The goodness of God, moreover, “filled the earth with food” and “formed the creatures with his word.”
Carl P. Daw Jr.’s contemporary hymn “How Sweet Was the Garden, Fertile and Fair” (LUYH #29) places us in the garden, the “paradise lavished on creatures of clay.” But the text mourns our disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit that “in our mouth turned from nectar to gall.”
God then brings “new life, new hope, new joy” in the incarnation of Jesus, expressed in the African American Christmas song “Jesus, Jesus, Oh, What a Wonderful Child” (LUYH #99).
As we commemorate the past through song, we also sing in hope for the future. We celebrate Christ’s victory over the grave and proclaim the good news of our own resurrection in Chris Tomlin’s “I Will Rise” (LUYH #468): “I will rise when he calls my name; no more sorrow, no more pain.”
Singing facilitates the proclamation and celebration of the story of God. It helps us to cherish what God has done in Jesus Christ and through the power of the Spirit. It shapes our identity as people participating in a story—a people with a shared past, present, and future.
Of course, any given song might inspire or entertain. It may help focus our hearts and minds. A song may be used as a gesture of hospitality or to promote solidarity. But singing songs for these purposes alone is like purchasing a vehicle that has all the bells and whistles but fails to transport its passengers from point A to point B.
As we choose songs for public worship, therefore, let us keep foremost in our mind the central role of singing: the proclamation and celebration of the story of God.