Avoiding Theologically Unhealthy Songs

“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

(2 Timothy 4:2)

Pastors, there is a sobering warning in your calling to the ministry of the Word – your sheep will want to wander. They will have itches begging to be scratched, and they will find ways to scratch them if you are not “ready in season and out of season” to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”

Jesus calls His shepherds to feed the sheep (John 21:15), but feeding the sheep until they are satisfied and feeding the sheep until they are healthy is not the same. A quick consultation with your Greek Lexicon might shed more light on Paul’s point – he is warning pastors that people (maybe even your own) will be tempted to grow tired of being fed spiritually healthy (sound) food. In our flesh, we all have a sweet tooth. We have cravings to satisfy and desires contrary to the Spirit of God. 

All of us are prone to incline our ears to that which satisfies our flesh. We secretly delight to hear messages that make us feel good about ourselves and our situation. We prefer encouragement over challenge, rest over work, sweet over bitter, and joy over sorrow. It’s not difficult to imagine how easily theological drift can happen in a church where the shepherds are not diligently watchful over their teaching. 

Pastors are not immune to the pull of their flesh and are just as susceptible to leaning their attention away from the Word and toward their own sheep. Given enough time with his flock, a pastor learns their tastes. He knows what sermons get the most likes. He knows what ministry initiatives garner the most support. He knows that if he looks a certain way, speaks a certain way, and presents himself and his family a certain way, he will earn credit with his people. Most acutely, he knows that if he doesn’t give his sheep X, Y, or Z, they will seek out those things from another shepherd.

Perhaps you faithfully and accurately handle the Word in your sermon each Sunday. Perhaps you entrust that same Word to faithful men—fellow shepherds—who teach the Word to others. Perhaps the staff in your church who minister to men, women, children, and youth are also holding fast to the truth in perfect alignment with the doctrine of the church. All of this is good and well, and faithfulness to your calling!

But what about your songs? Are they equally sound, equally faithful, and equally as useful as shepherding tools to teach and preach the word of God to the flock? [link to previous blog post]

Unfortunately, the singing diet in many churches is often overlooked in our assessments of the theological “soundness” of the church’s ministry of the Word. Even among the redeemed, the tempting itch of the flesh remains, and to neglect our songs is to forfeit one of the most significant safeguards against false teaching in the church (Colossians 1:28, 3:16). In all our efforts elsewhere to protect the sheep from false teaching, we may be leaving the back gate of the sheep pen open when we strike up the music in our worship services. 

Theologically unhealthy songs will make their way into the Sunday mix if pastors are not diligently examining every song they sing with the same careful attention they give to their weekly messages. Singing is one of the God-ordained means to feed the sheep. The following are a few questions to help guide you in your assessment of the theological health of your church’s singing diet:

Who is responsible for the song selection in your church?

This is a question with only one correct answer: the shepherd(s) of the church. The pastors, elders, and teachers of the word who have been entrusted with the sheep are the ones who will be held accountable for their teaching (James 3:1). Pastors, you are responsible not only for the words you put into your sheep’s ears but the words you put into their mouths.

Though you are responsible, you are not necessarily the one who will choose every song your church sings. But whoever you delegate that task to will be entrusted with the same responsibilities. Do those who choose the songs have adequate theological training to select songs that are doctrinally sound? Put another way, can you (or they) explain and defend the theology of the songs they have chosen?

If the answer to the last question isn’t as clear, it may be because you’re singing songs that aren’t theologically clear themselves. Remember that you preach the sermons you write, but you’re mainly singing songs someone else has written. Take great care to know the theological leanings of the songwriters from which you source the song diet of your church. The song may be theologically vague because the author intended to be vague. They may be theologically inaccurate because the author doesn’t know their theology, or worse because they are false teachers.

Like Bereans, pastors need to examine every song sung in their church to see if the lyrics match the truth (and weight) of those topics in scripture (Acts 17:11).

Are you singing what you believe as comprehensively as you are preaching and teaching what you believe?

Songs are meant to be vehicles for the word of God. Whatever we teach from the platform should also be mirrored in our songs. Anecdotally, there seems to be a significant disparity in the theological content of the songs churches sing compared to the preaching and teaching of those same ministries. Oddly enough, that gap widens as we age. Some of the most robust theological songs are found solely in children’s ministries! Unfortunately, the breadth of biblical singing drastically wanes in the early teen years when it should be expanding to keep pace with these students’ ability to understand greater theological concepts.

This should not be! Singing should be one of the main drivers of discipleship. Our people should either be learning the tenets of their faith for the first time or repeating and reminding one another of the truths they already firmly believe. This assumes that a church has a well-rounded biblical diet from which to source the content of its songs. Spiritual health requires a full and accurate picture of God’s word, not just the part that “tickles our ears.” 

Judging by the content of today’s most popular songs, I can be certain that most churches would agree that God is good, that He loves us, and that we have a lot of blessings for which we are thankful. All of this is biblical, true, and good. But it is not the whole gospel – it is barely the prologue. Singing about these themes almost exclusively will leave the sheep hyped up on the sugar but lacking the protein. It also leaves the church in a state of spiritual immaturity (1 Corinthians 3:1-2).

We don’t have to settle for the notion that songs must be “theology-lite.” Many great songs of the past and songs still being written today “declare the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The Word of God is living and active, and when it is proclaimed in its fullness in our songs, God’s Spirit is at work mightily through those songs just as much as through our preaching and teaching of that same Word.

Are your worship services a foretaste of heaven?

Scripture gives us very little to go on when it comes to singing in the church. But one thing is quite clear—singing is an activity of the whole church. The church that the Bible describes is one made up of many parts (1 Corinthians 12), of men and women, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles (Galatians 3:28), of every generation (Acts 2:17), and comprised of people from every nation, tribe, people, and language (Revelation 7:9).

When your church sings together, do you provide songs that each group can sing well with understanding and enthusiasm? Are the songs you sing teaching them this is a communal activity or a spectator sport? Do you cater your musical style to one generation over the other? Do your musical arrangements suit only professional voices or the voices of the trained and untrained alike? Do you ever sing songs without the accompaniment of modern instruments? Do you ever sing songs with LOTS of modern instruments?

The point is this: if all we have to go on with this eternal mandate to sing is the centrality of the Word and the beautiful kaleidoscope that is the Body of Christ, then why wouldn’t we prioritize those things?

Shepherds of the Body of Christ, work diligently to provide healthy songs to the sheep under your care.

©2024 Jon Gilmore. Used with permission.