Hymn writer Keith Getty urged the future pastors and ministry leaders at Southern Seminary to take responsibility for what their congregations sing, calling it one of the most formative influences on the life of a church.
Getty, co-writer of “In Christ Alone” and co-founder of Getty Music with his wife, Kristyn, spoke during a conversation hosted by The Bookstore at Southern with Jeremy Pierre, Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry, and Trevor Coleman, Assistant Professor of Church Music and Worship.
Getty opened the conversation by naming the one message he hoped students preparing for ministry would carry with them long after the event ended.
“My one urging to you would be that if you’re considering any form of pastoral ministry or, frankly, parenthood, what your people sing, what the families around you sing and what the church is singing is of profound influence,” Getty said.
The Protestant Reformers understood this well, Getty said, treating care for congregational song as part of their love for their people. Many church leaders today, he warned, have stepped away from that responsibility.
“The modern Reformed movement by and large has a Pontius Pilate approach to what is being sung in church, as you wash your hands of it,” Getty said. “If the people at the front can make the key leadership happy, if it can be good enough marketing for young families, or if it can create enough emotion to make up for the fact that my sermon’s quite dry and boring, that’s enough for us.”
Asked which churches sing best, the question he hears more than any other, Getty said the answer has little to do with budget, denomination or musical style. Just as a father sets the tone in his home, a pastor sets the tone for his congregation.
“The truth of the matter is the churches that sing best are the churches where the senior pastor deeply cares,” Getty said. “If the dad loves to sing, everybody sings. After the care of the pastor is evident, your style can be whatever.”
Getty also urged pastors to give their people a full canon of songs that spans the breadth of Scripture, noting that roughly 20% of the Bible is poetry and song.
“The Bible doesn’t just give us songs. It gives us a songbook,” Getty said. “The far bigger issue to me is the unhealth of not singing about the whole counsel of God. If we don’t sing about God’s providence and that he is sovereign, if we don’t sing about the fact that he is omnipresent or the fact that he is our judge, then it’s much harder to try and explain to your children that God’s a judge.”
For the students preparing to lead God’s people, the stakes reach far beyond any single Sunday. The songs a pastor places on his congregation’s lips can stay with them for the rest of their lives.
“We need fantastic songs. That’s what we need,” Getty said. “Most of those songs, you remember the first time you heard it. That’s the power of a great song, and you will have it with you the rest of your life.”
The conversation closed as it should, with a room full of future pastors and ministry leaders on their feet, singing together, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”