Toward a New Confessional Church Music

The Church of Christ needs blood-music. As a mother of soldiers, the Church needs music capable of forging its mass of individuals into a unified body. It needs music to hammer a universal pulse through the veins of every foot soldier and bowman, music to pump the sacrificially transfused blood of the Conqueror to every distant arm and finger. The Church salutes Christ as her captain, her general, in the war of separation. If the body fights under the one head with each man soldier shield-to-shield and hand-to-hand, shouldn’t we have common songs? The Covenanters of Scotland marched into battle all roaring Psalm 68. What will we sing?

The Church of God needs healing music. We soldiers come home continually shot up; we are sickened by the fight, persecuted but not destroyed, carrying with us everywhere the death of Christ. It is clear that the battle wears on us. Attacked from outside and tempted from inside, the enemy is constant and the wounds are frequent. If the same blood that makes us bold is the same blood that makes us well, should we not have common songs of grace and forgiveness? The Welsh wrote hymn tunes to encourage and comfort their congregations. What will we sing?

The element of military commonality is critical to the question. Worship, including music, should be characterized by a unity of covenant equality before God. The Communion table symbolizes this commonality, where the people join and are at peace with both God and each other. Due to the sinfulness of man, however, pursuit of excellence often has the “commonality element” crushed under the wheels of individual aesthetics. The very thing that is most desired is forgotten: namely, music to express the essential blood-unity of the Church instead of the personality of its individuals. This may sound pedantic, but the characteristics of the Church are nothing like those of an individual. The latter is descriptive and variable; the former is unconditionally definitive and inviolable. The one describes the habits and petty concerns of a foxhole private; the other, the glory of an imperial empire.

What then, besides military unity, describes this Church? What is she that her members are not, and what defines her to be apart from her members? Furthermore, how do we extract guidelines for music from those definitions? In answer to these questions, I will attempt to recommend confessional documents as the unavoidable starting point. God has handed down his Word to all, but not many have understood it well. All established denominations, knowingly or unknowingly, have confessions setting them apart as individual entities and states in the strongest terms that point to her fealty to her King. Let their music proudly state those strong points, those hard-won distinctives, and state them in no uncertain terms. Then she will have a hymnody with backbone.

But, many will ask, why focus on confessional documents? Isn’t Christ – the Word made flesh – the unifying element that we gather around? Is this not where we receive inspiration? Yes and no. No, in that the question assumes what we have already shown to be false: the church is not a gathering, but the Gathered. As explained above, it is not the mere sum of its present parts, but is instead the sanctified Bride whose corporate glories Christ has already won at infinite cost. As one body she understands God to be the proactive Word-giver, having inspired men to record His truth in human language for her to hear and to grasp. As a submissive bride, she takes that truth and lisps back confirmations of what she has learned, discerning them, examining them, and summarizing them into documents and exhibiting them in her confessional activities. The documents, as official representations of her beliefs, are the rallying standard of all her members. Each is a charter, a constitution, and a political declaration of war upon Satan and his kingdom. Far from replacing the Word, they provide an area for the body to affirm their faith in that Word, through music and other confessional activities.

We trust for granted, of course, that between Word and confession there will be the common trait of divine truth; the difference is that one is the word of God and the other is the word of men. While the word of God is unchanging, the words of men amend as generations of saints come and go. These confessions, transient though they are, are still absolutely vital to the unity and veracity of the church. The covenantally-minded Reformed have been especially perceptive to note the importance of their own confessional documents, since they have special significance as affirmations of covenantal unity established by God between Himself and His chosen people throughout Scripture.

The theological acuity involved in assembling these great documents, however, seems to often grow dim when applying them to the study of music. We know what the Word is, and we know what a confession is, but we fail to see the manifestations of each on Sunday morning. It is poorly understood that in the physical act of worship, the parallels between Word and confession are purposely sharp and indelible. Primarily we focus on the revelation of truth by God through the means of preaching, and secondarily we focus on the confession of the church back to God, through music and various other means. The difference should be easy to tell – either we are talking to God or God is talking to us. The only exception is in Communion, the pinnacle of it all, where talking is rendered unnecessary and the means of grace are applied to us most effectually without any words needed.

In the first category of “Word,” we all understand preaching to be God’s word to us, as the minister exegetes Scripture with Scripture. This institution today still remains as what it should be: a very precious and necessary practice of worship. It is this unique means of grace that calls sinners to repentance, strengthens the weak, edifies the ignorant, and aids the pilgrim journey; through its seeming foolishness God chooses to reveal His power, shining the light of His word on his weary soldiers. In this understanding, most Reformed churches are very diligent, giving the preaching and exposition of the Word its proper place of honor and distinction.

It is when we turn, however, to the understanding of confession and the corresponding manifestations in worship that confusion begins. As ordained by Scripture, the portions of worship we might consider “confessional” include prayer, song, and tithes and offerings. (It should be obvious that we refer not to the Roman Catholic “confessional” of priestly intercession, but to that which pertains to a church’s confessional documents.) In our worship we commonly practice each of these, but in mentally disassociating them from their confessional context we do an injustice. Prayer, we too often think, is a way to bring petitions to God; songs are to get us nice and warmed up; and passing the plate is a necessary evil to pay the church bills. How do we get from here to the blood-music described above, which unifies and thrills each member at the reality of union with Christ in God, now and forever, to the point of shouting back to God the truth he has just learned? What words will we sing, and from what pattern will we derive our style, that the unity of the Church will be made most apparent?

First, we must acknowledge that the problems we face are mostly the result of faction, selfishness, and an intolerable proclivity to a rotten, pathetic individualism. We think that music is ours rather than the church’s. We assume that it should lift us up rather than reflect God’s glory and think His thoughts after Him. And most of all, we do not see ourselves in the light of the church, but the church in the light of us, with lists of insatiable “needs” waiting at the door.

The answer is in the Word/confession division, in the proper understanding of the confessional nature of music. Adherence to a confession is essentially an expression of military loyalty, and the military leaves little room for individualistic grumbling. If the music is loyal to the confession in its substance and in its stylistic character and personality, then there is no debate and certainly no grumbling. Step back in line soldier, you’re holding up the train; you are creating disunity by taking offense at music that reflects the spirit of the confession you pledged adherence to in your membership vows. If the military did not “meet your needs” in the beginning, then how did you get this far? In this army we confess one goal: Christ and His Kingdom. Is that your goal? If it is, join with us in confessing that goal once again.

It is this confessional understanding of song that we must return to when doubts and debates arise over the nature and meaning of worship. Two choices present themselves: is there a disjoint between the confession and the confessional activity, or does someone just have a bad attitude? Look at the documentation; does that which is sung reflect, in content and in personality, the accepted confession? If not then the hymn, beloved or not, is unfortunately a turnip and should be replaced. If it is found to be satisfactory and the grumbling still remains, however, some admonition and rebuke might be in order.

Developing a lively hymnody is a never-ending process. When we see congregational singing as a means of vigorously expressing our confession, we should be prepared for some surprising changes of direction. Naturally, each denomination will have types of music that vary just as their confessions do, but to the degree that their members adhere to the teachings of their synod, most will be eventually constrained to common approval and taste. The blood will be common, the beliefs at unity, and the expression whole-hearted and unreserved. In essence, good confessional documents and prudent sessional application make for good confessional activity.

One final warning: if a church fails in her duty to catechize her children and drill them in the martial exercises and instead leaves them to be cultured with the pattern of the world, or if there are internal divisions along generational or ideological lines, the ugly results will turn up first in her music. I suspect that musical matters are the most sensitive barometers for the spiritual state of any church, as these issues will play upon subtle but dearly held beliefs that run very deeply in a congregation. We should wonder little, then, that we should so hotly debate the style and content of our music. Discussion is not disaster; the true disaster is when we wrongly identify battles over music merely as battles over music. Instead, they are battles over confessional unity, which are in turn battles of the heart. If a young generation develops contentious musical tastes and the older generation is offended, after having themselves failed to catechize their children and train them up in covenant faithfulness, the problem is not with the new musical style – it is with the lack of covenant unity. Spending words and effort debating the relative value of the style will never solve the problem. The solution is only found in wholesale repentance and generational reconciliation. We find that music is never the means but is the result – the result of general congregational health. A sick church will be known by its sick music while a thriving church will be known by its thriving music.

This conclusion, then, should point us away from petty particulars and toward the greater principles: principles of unity and confessional activity. If the Reformed church believes her music to express her confessions through song, half the battles are already won. If in any case disagreement and dissension over particulars still remain, the only recourse after comparing the documents with the music is to take a hard look at heart attitudes. Sin is a deeply rooted, organic thing; our church leaders would be wise to recognize music as the spiritual barometer it is. And let no one give up, for in the end Christ will bring honor to Himself, all battles will be won, and our everlasting joy will be to sing heavenly music, the blood-music of eternity, and to sing the notes that He Himself graciously places in our mouths.