How should we sing?

This is part 3 in a series of posts on why and how we sing - you can read part 1 here, and part 2 here

If we were to take the words of the great 18^th Century hymn writer John Wesley to heart, then the answer to this question would be 'lustily and with good courage!' The preface to his Select Hymns of 1761 includes the following 'Directions for Singing':

• Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
• Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
• Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

All good, practical advice, and if we paid closer attention to it our singing would sound all the better! But the Bible's 'directions for singing' are less concerned with the sound of our voices and more concerned with the 'sound' of our hearts and our minds. When we sing, we're to do two things:

1. Engage our hearts

Some people get very emotional when they sing. Others don't. Some people wear their proverbial hearts on their sleeves. Others keep their proverbial (and literal) hands in their pockets. But whatever our emotional repertoire, there is no excuse for dry and dispassionate singing. Here's why:

• The content: In Colossians 3:16, Paul urges us to sing the word of Christ '...with gratitude in your hearts to God'. The word of Christ conveys the most profound truth that will ever leave our lips. We are to let that truth travel from our heads to our hearts and awaken the deepest gratitude. Could we ever be so hard-hearted as to be unmoved by that truth?
• The audience: Ephesians 5:19 says we are to 'Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord.' We sing to an audience (in fact, a dual-audience: the Lord and his people) that is foremost in our affections. Why would we ever be content to sing to him or his people absent-mindedly or without feeling?

2. Engage our minds 

In 1 Corinthians 14:14-15, Paul says 'If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.' You'd think that to be caught up praying in tongues would be a amazing spiritual state in which Paul would want to stay as long as possible. Amazingly, he says that if he finds himself in that state while meeting with fellow-believers, he deliberately re-engages his mind. Paul turns our thinking on its head. We think the spiritual thing is to indulge in the altered emotional state of an ecstatic moment. Paul says the spiritual thing is to re-engage the mind. In the same way, if we find our minds are disengaged while singing (whether caught up in emotion or simply with thoughts that are miles away) we are to check ourselves and re-engage them. We're to be quite deliberate about this. We're to pay close attention to the words we're singing.

It's only by engaging our minds that we truly engage our hearts

Music is immensely powerful. It can move us to joy or tears. It can make us think we've had a supernatural experience, or bring about an altered emotional state that makes us susceptible to choices we'd not otherwise make. In the emotional roller-coaster of sung worship, how can we ever know that what we're feeling is authentic? The answer is to engage both mind and heart. To engage the heart but not the mind is to have joy without truth (which is false joy). To engage the mind but not the heart is to have truth without joy (which is pitiful). But to engage both heart and mind is to be exactly where the Lord wants us to be: rejoicing in the truth.