With One Voice, Part 5

This post concludes my sampling of the Leadership Journal interview (full text here) with Keith & Kristyn Getty, a young couple from Northern Ireland who have written dozens of excellent worship songs.

LJ: The relationship between pastor and music minister is notoriously troubled.

Kristyn: It's a match made in heaven. Are you kidding?

Keith: On paper, the pastor and musician are a great partnership, because one has a bent towards theology and message, and the other is creative and has a bent towards the arts. When the two work well together, like the Wesley brothers or Cliff Barrows and Billy Graham, it's a one plus one equals three.

LJ: So where do things go wrong?

Keith: A lot of pastors are content either not to get involved at all or to be happy with the music as long as it's bringing in the numbers. But the music is more than the PR and marketing department of the church that brings people in for the pastor to preach to. Singing is a holy activity which will go on into heaven long after expositional Bible teaching finishes.

LJ: How can a pastor and music minister work together to help the congregation worship?

Kristyn: When we visit churches Sunday to Sunday, the churches that sing the best seem to be the ones where the pastor is singing. If he's singing, people sing. For the musician or the worship leader at the front, having the pastor singing with you makes all the difference in the world.

Keith: Another thing, the effective pastor-and-worship-leader teams we've seen are totally geared to serving their congregation every week. They continually ask, "What really worked here and what didn't?" It's so easy to make the unimportant things the important things. So the music in itself or the sermon or the production values become the thing.

The best ministers have two goals—to teach the faith and to support the congregation. On Monday morning, they get together and ask, "How well did we achieve these goals?"

Then the pastor and music minister need to look at the words they put in their congregation's mouths and minds.

So we need to print out all the words from Sunday and ask, "Are these true words? Are these words giving people a bigger vision of God?"

Next you have to ask, "Did the congregation sing?" If the congregation can't sing a song, then it doesn't matter how good it is for the choir or the organ or the worship band or the lead singer. Can the congregation sing it?

LJ: I guess you work from pretty basic principles.

Keith: Absolutely. Our primary motivation is the need for twenty-first century hymnody that articulates the truths of the faith and builds up the young, vibrant, and increasingly persecuted church worldwide.

I had heard somebody else challenge worship leaders to consider well what words they were daring to put in people's mouths. They need to be true, yes, but more than just consistent with Scripture. If we're going to bother singing this song, it should be worth singing because it puts great truth beautifully and/or powerfully. And it's not worth singing a song that is theologically correct but absolutely cringe-inducing in its corny or clumsy poetry.

May God bless the Gettys' efforts at writing many more excellent songs of singable doctrine.