Last week the Lakeshore Music team from Lakeshore@9 and Lakeshore@Night got together for a team night. We spent some singing — without all our instruments –  praying and reading the Bible together, and we worked on a few new songs. We also looked at a definition of what exactly our job as a Church Music Team is.

I took our definition straight from Bob Kauflin’s excellent book, Worship Matters. This is the best book I’ve read so far on Church Worship, I highly recommend it. The whole definition is listed first, followed by a point by point list with some bible verses that we checked along the way.

So What Does a Church Music Team Do?

“A faithful church music team magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit by skilfully combining God’s Word with music thereby motivating the gathered church to proclaim the gospel, to cherish God’s presence  and to live for God’s glory.”

• A faithful church music team… (1 Cor 4:1-2)
• Magnifies the greatness of God… (Ps 34:3, Ps 145:3)
• In Jesus Christ… (1 Cor 2:2, 2 Cor 4:6, Col 3:17)
• Through the power of the Holy Spirit… (Phil 3:3)
• By Skilfully combining God’s word… (Col 3:16)
• With music… (Eph 5:19)
• Thereby motivating the gathered church… (Heb 10:25)
• To Proclaim the gospel… (1 Pet 2:9, Ps 96:2)
• To cherish God’s presence… (Eph 2:22, Matt 18:20, Ps 105:4, also Ps 139:7-8, Gal 2:20)
• And to live for God’s glory… (2 Cor 3:18)

Bob Kauflin also has a helpful blog at http://www.worshipmatters.com/

Ephesians 5:19 says, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” Exactly what Paul was referring to as hymns and spiritual songs isn’t clear, but a principle is clear: as we sing together, we should use a variety of different songs. This is one of my favourite ‘music verses’ in the bible — Paul continues, “Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord.” This is a central aim of our church music: encouraging corporate worship both outwardly (“sing”) and inwardly (“in your hearts”).

If singing is important, it’s important that we sing good songs! Some songs will help us put Ephesians 5:19 into practice, other will not. How do we choose which songs we sing here at Lakeshore? Here are 5 different criteria:

1. Theology: Are the lyrics biblically true?
2. Helpful: Is it a theme we want to focus on? (e.g. Jesus / the cross / the gospel, Adoration, Mission etc)
3. Current Need: What sort of songs do we need variety in right now? (e.g. energetic songs, reflective songs, hymns)
4. Singable: Does it encourage, invite and allow everyone to sing with enthusiasm?
5. Playable: Can our band play it well with our current level of skill, our band make up and our amount of practice time?

I don’t find it easy to track down the right songs for our church! It certainly takes patience — there are enough songs available that pass all 5 tests for our church situation, but it seems like I  have to listen to plenty that don’t before I find the winners…