On-line Supplement Ch2:
Teaching, the Spirit, &
Our Congregational Songs

There are two sections to this supplement.

Section A contains student feedback. College students answered three questions relating to chapter two of The New Worship. The responses indicate their level of thinking and awareness. The questions could provide an interesting discussion topic for your worship team, youth group, or Sunday School class.

Section B offers wider perspectives on the history of spiritual songs, and more information on the practice by some of singing in the Spirit.

A. Student Feedback on Chapter Two

Question 1. Is worship becoming a privatized experience among teenagers and college students? Do you have a good balance of singing to the Lord and to one another (songs that admonish) in your home church?

Singing in churches today is concentrated on self-edification. The focus is always on the individual and his experience with God and has very little to do with the rest of the body. Everyone is so involved with themselves and their own experience with God that they couldn't care less, and would probably prefer to be isolated in a room by themselves.

I see many college students sitting with their eyes closed. It seems as if they are blocking out the people around them and focusing in on whatever it is that they want to do by themselves in their own private time of worship.

A room full of people with their eyes closed tight singing on their own reflects how privatized worship has gotten among young people.

Teenagers and college students make worshiping God a more personal issue than any other age group. They seem to crave that state of bliss when one worships God wholeheartedly. Older people, however, seem to realize that God is worthy, no matter what you feel emotionally. I like this approach better because I'm disturbed to hear some young people say that a particular service wasn't good because they didn't cry or feel anything special. This is something that we should warn the young people in our church against.

Most students in worship services go to fulfill a need that they feel inside. Songs are often written with the words "show me," "lead me," instead of "show us," "lead us."

Worship has become about the individual, about how "I" feel and about what "I" get out of it. The concept of worshiping as a body and not an individual was completely foreign to me until I came to Biola.

When I worship it is usually an independent thing and I would like it to be more of a community thing. I would like to worship more as a group, but I have no idea how.

I agree that worship is not only meant to glorify God, but also made to encourage and build up other believers. This idea was simply never brought to my attention before.

The whole concept of songs that admonish is new to me. I would not know where to even begin to start using songs that "admonish" others.

I really don't know what singing to one another would look like or how it would happen. When I sing, it is between me and God, hence very private.

I can't think of any songs specifically focused toward admonishing each other. Are there many songs that admonish? Where can we find such songs?

I don't exactly believe that you have to literally sing to one another, but we should recognize that we are worshiping as the body of Christ and not just as individuals.

Question 2. Write out the lyric of two popular choruses--one with a strong teaching function and the other with a weak teaching function. Explain the rationale for your choice.

Student #1
[I find this student's contrasting examples inadequate]

Example of weak teaching function:
Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord (2x)
And He shall lift you up, higher and higher
And he shall lift you up, up into heaven
And he shall lift you up.
(Bud Hudson, 1978 Maranatha! Music)

Student rationale. "Humble Thyself" is taken directly from Scripture, it does not give the reason for humbling yourself.

Example of a strong teaching function:
Oh, Lord, You gaze into my heart
like looking through a glass house.
Though Lord, you see through the darkest part,
still Lord, You love me
And I know You're thinking of me.
I must confess I just don't understand,
but I rely on your love like the flower needs the rain
I rely on your love through the storms and through the pain.
I rely on your love to free me from my chains
It's like the sun shining down from above
I rely on your love. I rely on your love.
(Greg Fadness, 1994 Downey Song)

Student rationale. This chorus gives a reason for dependence on God in the verse section of the song.

Student #2
[I find this student's examples strongly contrasting.]

A popular chorus that is sung today that has a weak theological message is "Make a Joyful Noise." The song goes like this:
Make a joyful noise, unto the Lord
Make a joyful noise, unto the Lord
Make a noise! (3x)
Make a joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful.
(waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!) noise.

Student rationale. This has a weak theological message because it says absolutely nothing about God's character. It encourages us to be happy and make noises accordingly, but it teaches us almost nothing. This song is fun, upbeat, and easy to remember, making singers feel good, but it certainly does not teach or admonish.

Praise to the Lamb that was slain
Praise to the Father, who gave his son away
You traded all to take my place
And died for me so I could be a child of God.

Student rationale. This song talks about the crucifixion of Christ, the grace and love of God, and other topics. It does not simply repeat a simple phrase over and over, but tells a powerful story about how Christ's blood cleanses us. Most of the time hymns are the songs that teach a stronger theological message, but this chorus does a fairly good job.

Question 3. Is worship a means of being filled with the Spirit? Have you experienced this personally? Share.

I have personally experienced the filling of the Spirit. It was a time that was so intimate. I completely opened up my entire being to him, and he sent his Holy Spirit down upon me and filled my entire being. I believe that this happened because during worship, I completely surrendered myself to him and allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do. It was incredible!! Like nothing I had ever experienced.

There was a particular time when His presence was so strong and convicting I got down on my knees and broke down before Him. Focused on the Spirit, I had not paid any attention to what the rest of the congregation was doing, but when I "came out," it turned out that the Lord had been doing similar things all throughout the church. I believe the Holy Spirit is particularly present in worship--after all, He himself said that He dwells in the praises of His people!

I think this question depends on what is believed by "filled with the Spirit." I believe that we are always filled with the Spirit (if we are saved). Too much emphasis is placed on the "feelings" of worship. People believe that when they worship they need to have a "warm" feeling to be filled with the Spirit.

Every time I truly meditate on the words and really mean what I am singing to God, the Holy Spirit had led me in examining my heart. I am reminded of who God is and what He has done for me out of sheer love.

When you sing the words to the Lord, you can have feelings of unbelievable peace that can only come from the Lord. When I was singing a song about heaven, I broke down emotionally. The song made me realize how unworthy I was. The Holy Spirit filled my life and made me realize how prideful I can be.

The most significant time was at my college group winter retreat. The words of the speaker were in my head but didn't really pierce my heart until we entered into a time of prayer. I could not feel it until the praise team began to sing a song from John 16:13, "He Loves Me" by Tommy Walker. As I started to sing "No greater love...." tears began to pour from my face as He revealed a glimpse of His unending love for me.

Absolutely, worship is a means of being filled with the Spirit. The Lord came upon Elisha when the harpist came. I believe that is still the case today.

Yes, I definitely think that worship is a time when we are more aware of the Spirit within us. But I believe we have the Spirit within us always, not just during the worship.

For this question I don't have a lot to say, but I hope that I could have this kind of experience soon.

Worship is most definitely a means of being filled with the Spirit (Acts 4:31; Isaiah 57:19 NIV). About two weeks ago, I entered chapel feeling spiritually poor and downcast. As we began to sing about the holiness and love of God, the Lord poured the peace which passes understanding into my soul. He broke my heart as He opened my eyes and made me aware of His glory. I was so enamored and awe struck with the glory of God that it took my breath away. Due to the intensity of His presence, my eyes were filled with tears, which rolled over my cheeks and streamed down my face to the point where I could not longer sing. I reveled in the glory of God as His presence overflowed into my soul. I entered chapel spiritually poor and left spiritually rich with the blessed assurance that God was and is love.

It is my understanding that when Paul talks about the filling of the Spirit he is talking about being controlled by the Spirit. The filling of the Spirit can be misconstrued by some to think that Christians can come to a worship service and get "charged up" with the Spirit. However, I do not want to devalue worship as a means for us to drawn closer to God or feel his presence more keenly.

If you get lost in worship and pour out your heart to God in a personal way, "being filled with the Spirit" comes naturally.

Worshiping God through songs is the time that I most feel God speaking to me.

I often experienced being filled with the Spirit during worship. When I was young, I often wept without knowing why. My heart was overwhelmed by a greater power, which sometimes brought joy into my heart, and other times took doubt from me and granted me relief. I believe these experiences were the power of the Spirit since only God can grant us authentic joy and peace. As I grew up, I experienced less emotional flows like that, but I still am being filled with the Spirit often.

I firmly believe worship is a means of being filled with the Spirit. It is that feeling of being overwhelmed with a new understanding of what is going on. I came to a new understanding of what my calling was, of suddenly knowing what God was trying to tell me for a while.

Worship plays a very important role in the spirit-filled life. The more we open ourselves to God, the more the Spirit can fill us. The only danger I see is that sometimes people mistake emotional experiences from singing songs with being filled with the Holy Spirit.

I think that worship is one of the primary ways we are filled with the Spirit. I become so focused on God that everything fades away and I truly enter into the presence of God. I feel more "real" at these times than any other and things become very clear. It is in these times that God has given me direction and confirmation about many things. It's odd because often it is so unexpected.

I can remember worshiping God and suddenly feeling the presence of God in an unusual way. I felt like shouting, crying, laughing, and running away and hiding all at the same time. When this happens, I become aware of my own sinfulness and wretchedness and God's infinite love, grace, and mercy. The Holy Spirit makes me aware of areas of my life that need to change. I have never had any prophetic experiences but I know that my experiences are purely the work of the Holy Spirit.

I was at a point in my life where sin had crippled me and I was almost lost in the darkness. A song was being sung and I couldn't help my tears. I didn't sing but I listened and watched others and saw how happy they were. They were filled with the joy of the Lord and I wanted to lay down my sins for that joy.

When I think of worship, I think of the Spirit being there with you, not necessarily anything earth shattering. Having the Spirit "take over," no I have not experienced that.

I believe that once you accept Christ, you get all of the Spirit all at once. The experience that sometimes comes with worship is the feeling of letting Christ have all of you, not having more of Christ.

One time while I was worshiping, God revealed to me something extremely troublesome about another sister in the church. Through this spirit-filled worship, God led me to comfort her and help her overcome her sin. Without that time of being filled with the Spirit, I would have never have had the gift of intuition to help that individual.

It is a mistake to assess spirituality simply on the basis of a person's emotional display. What you want to be careful of is looking around at people in the church service and seeing people really into it--on their knees, people singing with glazed-over eyes, people expressing a lot of emotion, people weeping--and drawing the conclusion that because people are responding emotionally that they have a deeper connection with God or a more mature faith than the person who is not reacting emotionally at all. This is a profound error.

The first time worship really took root in my life was on a missions trip to Mexico in my junior year of high school. In the dirt of Mexico among thousands of believers, I came to know what it truly means to worship God. In those moments I was the closest to God that I have ever been. I saw my depravity and my weakness, which was truly the working of the Spirit. It was one of the most amazing experiences ever. It is my prayer that more people will see the power of worship and experience being filled with the Spirit.

B. Additional Perspectives

The meaning of "Psalms," "Hymns," and "Spiritual Songs"

In the expanded edition of The New Worship I mentioned that most scholars believe that precise differentiation of the terms "psalms," "hymns," and "spiritual songs" is not possible. Here are some additional facts. No early Christian treatise on ecclesiastical music has survived. The earliest full text we have of an extra-biblical Christian hymn (a hymn not quoted in Scripture) is dated around A.D. 200.1 Not until about A.D. 560 are there substantial descriptions of Christian liturgy and its music, although Saint Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110), Tertullian (d. 220), Clement of Alexandria (d. 212), and Augustine (d. 430) talk much about music practice in their time.2

What sources did early Christian music draw on? Answer: popular Greek idioms. Scholars believe that Christian music developed not from classical Greek music, but from a freer, less strictly metered popular Greek idiom that developed during the fourth century B.C.3 Apparently, the early Christians also improvised much of their chant: "The church Fathers gave a surprising amount of attention, in music and worship, to improvisation and charismatic utterance . . . [and] spontaneity in prayer."4 Early church father Tertullian wrote: "Anyone who can, either from holy Scripture or from his own heart, is called into the middle to sing to God."

In contrast to my presentation in the expanded edition, Egon Wellesz, an authority on music of this period, holds to the three forms argument-that the forms were stylistically differentiated. Based on a study of early Jewish music and later recorded Christian chant--not the textual usage of the words "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs"--he views the terms the following way:

That is, Wellesz believes that the psalms probably refer to unmetered psalms and their early church derivatives that reflect the parallelism inherent in Old Testament materials. The hymns were likely syllabic (one note for each syllable)-more like our hymns. They were probably Christological expressions, similar to hymnic passages in Paul's letters that show evidence of Greek poetic patterns (see Phil. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16).

Moreover, it has also been suggested that the designation "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" may reflect a Trinitarian emphasis: psalms were addressed to God, hymns to Christ the Son, and spiritual songs were spontaneous expressions under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Arro holds a view similar to Wellesz, believing that psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs reflect the three influences that shaped early Christianity-Judaism, Hellenism, and the Asiatic Near East region-and bases his judgment on the "subsequent course of history, not on a strict literary interpretation of St. Paul's terms."6

Tracing the History of "Spiritual Songs"

Research has produced evidence regarding the meaning of "spiritual songs" that may seem strange, perhaps even touching a sensitive chord in readers.

"Spiritual songs" may have a more focused meaning than many evangelicals might think. Many scholars relate it to glossolalia, to the influence of mystical traditions, and in a later development, to the jubilus in Catholic chant. For example, Jewish scholar Eric Werner links "spiritual songs" to the synagogue and to "the glossolaly of the Paulinian age." And Ford and Hardy relate them to mystical traditions in Eastern culture.7

Moreover, some musicologists believe "spiritual songs" relates to the development of improvised songs on a single word like alleluia. The Greek phrase for "spiritual songs" is odaes pneumaticaes or "pneumatic odes"-that is, "songs upon the breath."8 What could "songs upon the breath" mean? Egon Wellesz relates "spiritual songs" to improvisation. He says improvising on a single word like alleluia was common practice in Near East cultures during the time of Christ and later became formalized in the jubilus of the Catholic mass. The final syllable ("ah") of the word alleluia was prolonged in a kind of wordless improvisation.

Jerome and Augustine spoke of the practice. Saint Jerome (c. 347-420) described it as neither "words nor syllables nor letters nor speech." Saint Augustine said of it:

When Augustine referred to "words which cannot be understood" or songs "without words," he might have been speaking of simple improvisation or some kind of ecstatic expression similar to that mentioned in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 10:5-6; 16:13-14, 23) or even the "singing in the spirit" occurring in the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 14:1-3). The non-charismatic Jewish scholar, Werner, says,

Edie Ensley says the improvised jubilus persisted in the worship of Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, dying out only in the sixteenth century.11

In reference to singing in the spirit, these verses come to mind:

Performing "Spiritual Songs" Today

Is any counterpart to this spontaneous praise being practiced today?12 Yes. Liturgical and non-liturgical evangelical churches occasionally employ improvised praise as a brief "coda" at the end of choruses for ten to thirty seconds. I've heard this performed inoffensively in Lutheran and Foursquare churches. Moreover, some Assembly of God churches "sing in the spirit" for one to two minutes as a regular part of their Sunday morning service.

Even in Assembly of God practice, however, there is nothing necessarily "supernatural" about it. Many simply improvise alleluias and other short phrases a cappella over a sustained instrumental drone or chord.13 The triad tends to emerge.14 One can hear neighbor and passing tones and free material in the cloud-like textures that arise. Since I improvise, one Sunday I felt free to join in-humming the drone and sometimes singing alleluias or short "I thank you, Lord" or "I bless you" phrases.

The total effect did not smack of a "fervor gone wild." In fact, what I heard was peaceful and reverential, more like the strumming of many harps. Choruses like "Give Thanks" lend themselves to this kind of treatment. Sing it as written; at the end allow some free singing; then return to the melody to close off.15 Moreover, prayer of this kind is widespread in Latin American and Asian churches and is not perceived by them as charismatic. Usually the leader rounds off this exercise with a spoken prayer. Prayer is closely tied in to the whole concept of "spiritual song."

A known melody can also be used for the basis of spontaneous song. The congregation can sing their own verses to the chorus "Allelulia," for example. Or chord progressions, each four beats long with a pedal tone (C, G, F, G over a pedal C), are also possible. Repeat as long as necessary.

I have also heard instrumentalists do an exclusively instrumental free improvisation after a worship chorus at Vineyard churches. The progressions I-ii-V-IV (repeat) and I-bVII-bVI-bVII (repeat) can be employed. This too can be a meaningful expression of worship.

For many churches, however, this form may not be appropriate because it could be divisive. It is valuable, though, to become aware of its various manifestations. The rationale of wedding the spontaneous with the spiritual seems to lie behind the form. But remember, spontaneity in worship doesn't make us more spiritual than another group.

If any aspect of this presentation interests you, don't rush or force implementation. Allow ample time for the people to adjust. You might want to consider having your worship group (instrumental or vocal) model the shorter, coda version as an introductory step. If the form becomes familiar and comfortable to all, then invite the people to join in. Viewed in this light, Colossians 3:16 definitely gives us a richness to think about! A whole book could be written just on this concept of "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs."

Moreover, this chapter does not address at all the singing and chanting of psalms, though this is a tremendous area for development. With imagination, the chanting of psalms can fit with your unique music style. It can be done.

I don't want you to think of art as
a little whipped cream on the cake of life.
It's more like steak and potatoes.
Dallas Willard

Endnotes