Music Team

All cultures seem to have at least one thing in common—they write music and sing. But why? Music baffled the evolutionist, Charles Darwin. Humanity’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Other scientists were skeptical. That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing.

In recent years, scientists have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. One researcher offered the following guess for why we sing: “Maybe music was needed to improve group cohesion.” Or maybe sharing choruses and melodies, could have brought people together whether as a community or in preparation for a battle. Or maybe it helped parents bond with children.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The fact is, these are all guesses, but the Christian knows the best reason for singing—because the Living God is worthy of our joyful worship. He puts a new song in our mouth.

What's blasting from your car speakers, and more important, how does it sound? For sound-system engineers at the audio-equipment manufacturer Bose, a playlist is more than tracks that slap. To test stereos, they need songs representing a variety of sounds and recording techniques to make sure new systems can re-create a song with the depth of the original recording.

To have a common reference point, Bose engineers all over the globe share a master playlist. Mark Armitage, head of the acoustical-engineering team at Bose says, "Every system engineer knows these tracks inside and out. It makes for a universal language we can use when testing and tuning." He named a few selections from the test list:

Bruno Mars, "24K Magic" – It features a lot of instruments from the high tweeter notes all the way down.

Tom Petty, "Learning to Fly (Live)” - The crowd starts singing along, Petty's voice drops out, and you get a real sense of how big that auditorium is.

Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Take Five" - Listen for the cymbals from the intro, which are hard to reproduce.

Straight No Chaser, "Homeward Bound" All a cappella. The vocals span all the way across the stage and you can independently hear each person singing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We also use music to tunes our minds and souls. The world has its music, which attunes them to worldly thoughts, desires, and actions. But believers also have music which tunes our hearts to God by giving us the vocabulary to express praise and worship to God, unifying us as we gather for worship, and adjusting our hearts so that our faith is expressed to God in worship.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation sold a record number of guitars in 2020, driven in part by people forced to stay at home during the pandemic. The company calculates that nearly a third of those new musical instruments were purchased by people who play in praise and worship bands.

No one knows the first person to bring a guitar into church, but it became common in charismatic congregations in Southern California in the 1970s. Folk, rock, and folk-rock went to church with the hippies who converted during the Jesus People movement. Guitars became staples of the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard church style before spreading to other evangelical churches.

Guitars also had some practical advantages. They were portable. When a new church started in a school, or someone’s house, or even on the beach, no one had to haul over an organ. Guitars are also easier to learn to play than the pianos and organs traditionally used in church music.

Duke Divinity School’s Adam Perez says, “People joke about how simple it is—three chords or four chords—but that was a strength, not a weakness. You could have a beginner guitar player who learned to play to lead their small group, their cell group, or even a new church. You’re democratizing access to the sacred.”

According to Ultimate Guitar, an estimated one million guitar players are “gigging” at churches every weekend, and more people play praise and worship music than any other genre in the US.

In an issue of CT Magazine, singer-songwriter Kira Fontana shares how she was delivered from a new-age mindset to a life-changing relationship with Christ:

From the outside, my life looked great. I was enjoying a fantastic job as one of the top vocal coaches in Los Angeles. I had worked with major-label and top-40 artists, as well as hit TV shows like The Voice and Glee. Clients regularly flew in from around the world.

Though I had moved to LA to pursue a career creating my own music, somewhere along the way that dream got lost. Throughout this dry time, I managed to find temporary peace and joy through an LA megachurch for “spiritual but not religious” seekers. The church was transdenominational, which appealed to me. I adopted Eastern beliefs about God and practices like meditation.

After almost 20 years of spiritual seeking, I truly believed I had attained higher levels of consciousness than most people. I believed there were many roads to God, and my thoughts were awash with “love and light” and other positive-thinking mantras. However, when I really looked at my life, I knew something was missing.

Around this time, several members of my family became born-again Christians and started talking about Jesus. I remember one of my brothers calling my spiritual center “satanic.” What could be so horrible about channeling love and light, attaining higher consciousness, and finding inner healing?

When my brother asked me, “Who do you think Jesus is?” I answered, “He was a great spiritual teacher, and one of the most enlightened people who ever lived.” He said, “How can you live like Jesus when you have no idea who he really is? You’ve never read the one book that would tell you who he is.”

I spent a solid year praying and reading the Bible. Scripture confronted me with many ideas my new-age mindset simply couldn’t process. As I did this, God began revealing his truth in ways that radically transformed my mind.

In time, I came to see that my most cherished beliefs had all been focused on myself. Even though they were framed in spiritual ways, they were oriented toward self-realization and self-help. But discovering the Bible’s definition of good shattered this confidence. I finally saw that I wasn’t capable of being a good person on my own. And I sensed my need for a Savior.

Meanwhile, God gradually opened my eyes to the reality of evil in the world. But day by day, God revealed to me the real state of the world—pulling back a veil and showing me depths of darkness, I had never fathomed.

I began attending a local church in Santa Monica, asking God to reveal himself and praying he would bring me out of the darkness. I asked a ton of questions, and I read multiple books on apologetics. Eventually, I was ready to finally surrender my life to Christ.

As a new Christian, I prayed that God would show me how to use my musical gifts for the sake of his kingdom. I soon realized I no longer belonged in the secular music industry. The lyrics of most pop songs disturbed me, and I was concerned about the destructive impact these songs were having on young people.

After only a couple of weeks of praying, I felt God clearly call me to leave LA and move to San Diego County. Alone one night in my new home, I felt I had truly reached the end of myself. I cried out to God with a desperation and sadness I had never felt before, asking, “Why did you even make me?” I felt I had completely failed in so many areas of life, including my own music.

That very night, I woke up from a dream at 3 a.m. In the dream I heard an amazing song. I got up, rushed down to the piano, and recorded the chorus for “Refuge.” It was my first worship song. From that day forward, I experienced a complete revival of musical creativity. God was saying, “I made you to worship me.”

Since I put my faith in Christ, God has redeemed everything that was lost in my life. He has freed me from the prison of my selfishness, rescued me from darkness, and brought me into his glorious light. He has given my life new purpose, equipping me to serve his kingdom and glorify his name with music. There is no greater joy.

Ligonier Ministries asked Americans a practical question about worship. “Must churches provide entertaining worship services if they want to be effective?”

Frequent attendees of evangelical churches (monthly or more):

Strongly agree: 9%

Somewhat agree: 25%

Somewhat disagree: 25%

Strongly disagree: 39%

Infrequent attendees of evangelical churches (holidays only/rarely/never):

Strongly agree: 8%

Somewhat agree: 32%

Somewhat disagree: 27%

Strongly disagree: 29%

Millennial attendees of evangelical churches (ages 18 to 34)

Strongly agree: 11%

Somewhat agree: 29%

Somewhat disagree: 22%

Strongly disagree: 37%

Boomer attendees of evangelical churches (ages 50 to 64)

Strongly agree: 7%

Somewhat agree: 31%

Somewhat disagree: 22%

Strongly disagree: 37%

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation sold a record number of guitars in 2020, driven in part by people forced to stay at home during the pandemic. The company calculates that nearly a third of those new musical instruments were purchased by people who play in praise and worship bands. This may not be surprising to anyone who knows a worship leader who are always wanting to “up” their guitars.

No one knows the first person to bring a guitar into church, but it became common in charismatic congregations in Southern California in the 1970s. Folk-rock went to church with the hippies who converted during the Jesus People movement. Guitars became staples of the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard church style before spreading to other evangelical churches.

The style signaled openness and authenticity to baby boomers raised on the Beatles. But guitars also had some practical advantages. They were portable. When a new church started in a school, or someone’s house, or even on the beach, no one had to haul over an organ. Guitars are also easier to learn to play than the pianos and organs traditionally used in church music.

Duke Divinity student Adam Perez says, “People joke about how simple it is—three chords or four chords—but that was a strength, not a weakness. You could have a beginner guitar player who learned to play to lead their small group or even a new church. You’re democratizing access to the sacred.”

Worship music in the 2020s is not all guitar-based, but industry experts know there is a lot of money in church guitars. According to Ultimate Guitar, an estimated one million guitar players are “gigging” at churches every weekend, and more people play praise and worship music than any other genre in the US.

When Jody Flemming started livestreaming his DJ set, he expected to gather an audience. But he didn’t expect anyone to congregate at his front door, and even if he had--he certainly didn’t expect to see any wildlife. But that’s just what happened.

When Flemming was in the middle of streaming his DJ set from the living room of his home in the mountains of North Carolina, his cameras caught the sight of a black bear at his screen door. Unaware of the bear, Flemming continues his performance, tweaking and dialing knobs to the beat of the music. Eventually Flemming sees a shadow and thinks a friend is at the door, only to turn around to the sign of the black bear. Ultimately, the bear is shooed away, and the DJ set continued with no further interruptions.

A self-described DJ, realtor, and dad, Flemming was circumspect about the whole thing. When a follower on social media suggested the bear “came to party,” He responded in kind. “He came to the right place.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Music is an especially powerful force; it can alter the mood or countenance of even the most dangerous beasts. Using our creative gifts is both an awesome privilege and a sacred duty.

When some choirs sing, the individuals' heart rates quickly synchronize. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden monitored the pulse of high school choir singers and also found that when the choir began to sing, their unified voices caused their heart rates to slow.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What a picture of church unity, worship, or shared mission that unites individuals so profoundly that their very pulses flow together.

Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven. Every note, and every strain, and every harmony is divine and belongs to us. So consecrate your voice and your instruments. Offer them to God, and use them to make all the hearts about you merry before the Lord.

If a good sermon needs time to develop and drive home a point, so does authentic worship. Worship needs at least fifteen to twenty minutes to build.

Ira D. Sankey was helping with his father's business and working as a local revenue collector, married and with one child, when Moody's path crossed his. Moody heard him sing at the YMCA convention and in his characteristic straightforward way informed Sankey that he would have to quit his job. "I have been looking for you for the past eight years," said the evangelist. But Sankey hesitated to give up the security of a well-paying government job.

So the next day, according to one writer, "Moody ... asked to meet him on a certain street corner. When Sankey arrived, he found Moody setting up a barrel on the sidewalk. Moody called to Sankey to climb up and start singing. Startled, Sankey hardly remembered how, but he found himself on the barrel singing 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross?' The crowd of factory workers heading home stopped and stayed for Moody's sermon. One example was worth a thousand arguments to Sankey. He knew he must return home and seriously consider joining Moody in Chicago."

He did, and their names became inseparably linked. Although Sankey was not college-educated, and his voice was untrained, the enrapturing quality of his sound and his sensitivity to the use of music in spiritual capacities became his trademarks. It was said of him: "Mr. Sankey sings with the conviction that souls are receiving Jesus between one note and the next."