When the music starts this weekend, don’t underestimate what happens as you sing. You are engaging your heart, teaching those around you (and receiving teaching), and declaring God’s faithfulness. The simple act of lifting your voice in song may well be the most significant way you serve your church this Sunday.

Your brothers and sisters in your local church need you. They need you to show up. They need you to be engaged. And, perhaps more than many of us realize, they need you to sing.

Congregational singing can be polarizing. For some people, singing is their favorite part of the church’s gathering. Others prefer to arrive on Sunday mornings just as the worship team is wrapping up and the sermon is about to begin. For those in the latter category, perhaps you’re highly self-conscious about your lack of ability to carry a tune, or maybe you don’t jibe with the style of music your church’s hipster music director tends to choose.

Whatever the reason, I want you to hear that your church suffers when your voice is silent.

Get to the Heart

The Bible is full of singing and songs. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if God’s divine speech, by which he spoke the world into existence, sounded more like a song than a seminar. Adam’s first words to Eve are beautifully poetic (Genesis 2:23). The largest book in the Bible is a collection of songs. At least once, if not more often, the apostle Paul quotes or crafts what seems to be an early Christian hymn (Colossians 1:15–20). And Jesus himself sang (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26).

And for good reason: singing uniquely engages our heads and our hearts, our intellect and our affections. That’s basically what Paul says in Colossians 3:16, where he connects “the word of Christ dwell[ing] in you richly” with “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Good songs take the truths hovering in our heads and sink them down for our hearts to dwell on.

We experience the power of singing in songs like Horatio Spafford’s famous “It Is Well with My Soul.” As we sing the third verse, we cannot help but feel the solemnity of the line, “My sin — oh, the bliss of this glorious thought — my sin not in part but the whole . . .” Yet suddenly the minors of the first half of the verse give way to the bright major chords of the second half, and we confidently declare, “. . . is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more: praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!” And as we sing, we feel the major lift of the music raise our hearts to soar in proportion with the glory of that truth.

Sure, we could speak the lyrics, and the truth in them should still move us to worship. But the elements of rhythm and melody arrest our affections in transformative ways not typical of speech alone.

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