Music And Musician In The Service Of The Church

Music has great power to both reflect and shape human experience. In worship, as in other activities, music is able to express the most profound thoughts and emotions in ways that words cannot. Music in Christian worship is a powerful-even a risky-force that must be used thoughtfully, imaginatively, and prayerfully. Music soothes, transfigures, opens the fountains of a greater deep and bathes us in a world of victory, which submerges our griefs so that we see them as lovely as ruined towers at the bottom of a clear lake on whose bosom we glide. It has, for the hour, the power that faith has for good and all-to unloose, emancipate, and redeem. When the ransomed of the Lord return to Zion, it is with singing and great joy upon their heads. (P. T. Forsyth, Christ on Parnassus: Lectures on Art, Ethic and Theology [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911], 225) The Nature of Music Music consists of rhythm, pitch, melody, and harmony, but it is not just that, for music has power. When an evil…