Musician Theologians! Oxymoron????

By Scott Hill of "Fide-O"

"Blogging for me sometimes has an interesting dynamic. The reason I blog is to force myself to think through some of my own theology and philosophy of ministry and its consequences in my own life. It also gives you the readers a chance to agree, disagree, or say “this doesn’t interest me which is another check and balance. This is the benefit that I appreciate most about the blogging dynamic. However, sometimes being forced to carry out your thoughts is not pleasant. I can find I am wrong and have been for years. I can find I am right and no one cares. I can also discover that in a particular area I am right, yet it has such far reaching implications I might have been happier in ignorance. For sometimes truly ignorance is bliss.

That is the way I feel about today’s subject. After studying the bible, church history, and great pastors of the past I have finally decided that a person who takes on the responsibility for the corporate worship in our churches needs to be theologically trained and ordained. Hear me clearly. I am not saying that the person standing on the stage playing or leading the music must be this way. I am saying that the person responsible for what takes place in corporate worship, the person who carries the burden, from what is sung to how the offering is taken should be theologically trained and ordained.

For the last 50 or 60 years our corporate worship services have been turned over to musicians; men and women who have training in instrumentation and vocals, but not in theology. This has resulted in shallow theology being sung by our churches, which has resulted in shallow theology being advocated in our everyday lives. I believe we are seeing the fruit of this problem today in our church culture and the Christian music industry and its lunge feet first into secularism. Music at some point became about something other than the church. It developed into entertainment, which I don’t believe the music of the church was ever intended to be. This has carried over into the spectator model of corporate worship that so many churches embrace these days.

Another result is the fact that the word “worship” and “music” became synonymous in churches. Worship is relegated to 35 minutes once a week. The corporate worship service is no longer the singing of hymns, reading of scripture, testimony to God, exposition of the word. The worship service is the music and then we also have preaching. How can a musician pick songs with theologically sound lyrics if they really know theology?

Also, I believe they should be ordained. I have been thinking about this a lot lately since hearing Bob Kauflins seminar on Corporate Worship as Pastoral Care. I believe it takes someone with the heart and calling of a Pastor to take on the responsibility of corporate worship. Music only affects people emotionally. It does not affect them morally. The Word of God does that. The person taking on the responsibility for corporate worship must keep in mind that there is are bigger things taking place in that Sunday service than making people feel the right thing. It takes the heart of a shepherd to keep that focus from week to week and disciple people in spite of their opinions and preferences. Musicians focus on one thing, the music. Which is not a bad thing, but it is an extreme limitation on what is needed in corporate worship.

I know the crisis that some of you are in. This puts me at odds with some close friends of mine who are in this exact category. There are Pastors and musicians reading this who have the exact scenario I described as wrong in your church right now. You can either agree or disagree, but either way there are ramifications. I have friends who will read this and get mad at me and email me. I say go ahead and get mad, just don’t stop there. Consider what I say and if you believe I am right then make changes. (By the way I am right)."