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"Articles on Hymnody"
I defend a conservative philosophy of worship not because I want to protect old in the rejection of new, but because I believe “traditional” forms (both old and new) are more flexible and elastic in what they can express in worship, are better suited to carry rich truth about God, and are more appropriate than [...]
Continue Reading →Unless you believe in orthopathy as essential to Christianity, the worship wars are much ado over nothing. They represent the dying thrashes of hide-bound traditionalists, raging against the waning popularity of those songs most familiar to them. They represent the immature clamor of people who do not understand the Romans 14 principle, [...]
Continue Reading →My Lord, my Master, at Thy feet adoring,
I see Thee bowed beneath Thy load of woe:
For me, a sinner, is Thy life-blood pouring;
For Thee, my Saviour, scarce my tears will flow.
Thine own disciple to the Jews has sold Thee,
With friendship’s kiss and loyal word he came;
Continue Reading →
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series”Cheap Thrills: Pop Art and Transcendence”
You can recognize popular art not only through its form (or formlessness), but through the feelings it evokes, according to Kaplan. He disagrees with the common objection that popular art is mere entertainment. All art, Kaplan argues, has intrinsic interest [...]
Continue Reading →This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series”Cheap Thrills: Pop Art and Transcendence”
The popular arts are often criticized by aesthetes for their form, or perhaps formlessness. Kaplan responds to this by directing us once again to how people use the popular arts, much like Lewis does in An Experiment in Criticism.
Kaplan [...]
Continue Reading →How are we to worship God?
We should worship in all of life, but we have been told most explicitly to worship God corporately through the following:
– The reading of Scripture
– The preaching of Scripture
– The singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs
– The offering of [...]
Teaching children can be immensely helpful in clarifying one’s thoughts. This is probably true of any teaching project, but in dealing with children, the necessity of reducing principles and truths to their simplest comprehendable form without omitting or diminishing any of their central components is paramount.
I was recently asked to teach a segment [...]
Continue Reading →I received an email a few days ago asking what I thought about a few particular contemporary Christian songs. The individual mentioned that he thought that hymns have always been simply reflections of whatever music existed in the current culture, and that these songs were no different. I’ve copied my reply to him below in [...]
Continue Reading →Raise thee, my soul, fly up, and run
Through every heav’nly street,
And say, there’s naught below the sun
That’s worthy of thy feet.
Thus will we mount on sacred wings,
And tread the courts above;
Nor earth, nor all her mightiest things,
Shall tempt our meanest love.
There [...]
Continue Reading →This entry is part 14 of 14 in the series”The Tozer Collection: Worship Music”
We’ve gathered much of what Tozer wrote on music and hymnody. Having done so, some reflections on his writings might be helpful. I notice three outstanding features of Tozer’s approach to worship.
First, it’s clear that Tozer made an attempt to [...]
Continue Reading →This entry is part 12 of 14 in the series”The Tozer Collection: Worship Music”
(From the Introduction.)
This is a book for the worshiper rather than for the student. It has been carefully and lovingly prepared for those God-enamored persons who, while they feel as deeply as the enraptured poet, yet lack the gift that would [...]
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