Worship Service Songs Don't Just Set the Table for the Sermon
Setting the table in baseball slang is when a utility hitter walks or gets a base hit so the power hitter that follows him in the line-up can drive everyone home. Setting the table for a meal is when we put utensils in place so everyone will be ready to eat when the food actually arrives. So, setting the table usually means laying the groundwork for something more substantial to follow.
Some believe the purpose of our worship service music is just to set the table for what follows. But the goal of our service music isn’t just to prepare our hearts for something else. It’s not the undercard before the main event. It isn’t the warm-up band before the headliner. So, it isn’t inserted in the line-up just to set the table for the sermon.
Paul exhorted the saints at Colossae to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly by teaching and admonishing each other through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. It doesn’t sound like Paul thought the only purpose for singing was as the supporting cast.
Teaching proclaims or makes something known by precept, example, and experience. It exhorts, instructs, exposits, and applies. And it communicates to us and through us.
Admonition urges us not just to hear but do. It reproves, advises, and counsels in order to correct our thinking. It encourages us to right what is wrong in order to redirect our attitudes and motives.
The worship songs we sing encourage us to reflect and respond to biblical text; they speak the gospel; they are sung with theological integrity; they encourage us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; they challenge us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves; and they exhort us to action. If the theology we are singing teaches us and admonishes us to be doers and not just hearers, then it can’t be seen as just the appetizer before the main course of the sermon.
As long as our worship songs continue to quicken the conscience through the holiness of God, feed the mind with the truth of God, purge the imagination by the beauty of God, open the heart to the love of God, and devote the will to the purpose of God, they aren’t just starters, stuffers, and stoppers for what some might consider more weighty elements that follow.[1]
[1] Adapted from a quote by William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury 1942-44.