Protestant Christians have two Sacraments, ordained by Christ. Holy Baptism where one enters into the people of God. The second is Holy Communion, the Christian Passover, where we come to not just remember His death, but where we receive His grace as we encounter Him in eating and drinking. These two Sacraments have been central to the identity and practice of the Christian Church for its entire history.
It is especially in Holy Communion where as Christians we encounter Christ. As Scripture shows over and over again, worship requires a sacrifice of some kind. And, as those redeemed by the worthy Lamb the sacrifices of old have been replaced by the celebration, remembering and participation in His sacrifice, i.e. Holy Communion.
But something has happened over the last fifty years in Evangelicalism. A new “sacrament” has creeped in and has become the predominant place where we are told encountering Christ really happens. Worship music. The expectation of most modern evangelical worship services is that the primary place where you are meant to “encounter and feel God” is during the time of singing and worship.
When a congregation is trained to expect that God is most immediately present during a musical crescendo, what does that do to the church’s understanding of the Word, the Supper, prayer, and ordinary discipleship?
In a recent article from Christianity Today they addressed the massive amounts of pressure that “worship leaders” face to perform their jobs with excellence.1 And as a part of that are expected to make experiences and times where people feel the presence of God. The point of this article is not to address the “worship leader” label, something I hope to do in a future blog post. But to ask the question, is music in church supposed to do this?
The Christianity Today article on worship-leader burnout illustrates one pastoral consequence of this expectation: musicians can come to feel responsible not only for leading songs well, but for generating the conditions in which a congregation believes it will experience God. The article does not create the problem, but it helps reveal how deeply the expectation has taken hold.
You see, this expectation that we were meant to “encounter God” in a personal way during a time of singing is a very recent innovation in the Church, and does elevate the use of music in a church service to the status of a Sacrament. If a Sacrament is an action or ritual where God’s grace is encountered and received, then it certainly has done so. A sacrament is not simply any moment in which Christians are helped, moved, or strengthened by grace. It is a rite instituted by Christ and joined to a visible sign through which he promises to act for his people.
The problem is not that Christians may encounter God while singing, nor that music can move the affections. The problem arises when emotional intensity becomes the expected proof of God’s nearness, and when the congregation is implicitly taught that the Spirit is most active during the musical set rather than through the whole ordained worship of the church.
This is not to say singing is not a means of grace. It most certainly is. As the gathered Church sings praise to God, it is both a part of us demonstrating our love to Him, and it is edifying to the believer. Another benefit is that songs and hymns teach us the truths about God just as St. Paul encouraged (Ephesians 5:19). Maddox in his work Responsible Grace talks more specifically about hymns in the Methodist context were to both empower and encourage, and should be aligned with the rhythm of the Church calendar to shape and form the believer2.
The understanding of songs for this purpose is dramatically different that was normally understood in our Evangelical culture today. Rather the current expectation is that when we sing songs (usually a block of 3-4 songs in immediate succession in the first half of the service), it is during this time that the “atmosphere” is set and that it is the time the Holy Spirit moves and works and people are to “feel His move”.
Understanding the purpose of worship music, as already stated, is a very recent innovation. The role of music in the history of the Church has almost always been in support of the ministry of the Word and Table for the Sunday gathering. Any hymns, canticles, Psalms or other songs that are sung are done so throughout the Sunday service. An opening song, a song before the Gospel reading, musical settings to the Eucharist liturgy, songs sung or played during the distribution of the Sacrament, and some kind of hymn or song to close the service has been, with many variations, but the general same shape the norm of Christian worship.
The biggest contention I have with how modern worship music is perceived is that it has taken the primary and predominant place of the Blessed Sacrament as C.S. Lewis calls it. Even my own denomination of Free Methodism that speaks highly and centrally of the Lord’s supper as a primary means of grace has functionally replaced its use with the modern conception of worship music as the primary place of encountering God. While it is not stated, it is practiced. Johnathan Aigner offer this as what is offered in a Word & Table conception of worship:
Christ offers us everything in worship, for he offers us himself. There is where we find true meaning. In the gospel. In the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. In a rich biblical liturgy that preaches truth to our hearts. In the discipline of the church year.3
What are we to do? I would like to offer two potential steps in recovering the both the right understanding of music in the worship service as a whole, and returning to the centrality of the Table as the central focus of the Sunday gathering.
- Don’t look to emotional experience as the primary litmus test of attending Sunday worship. As I have already addressed in a previous post about the topic, our emotions are a terrible standard to derive whether we have encountered God or not. We have been relentlessly catechized in our modern Evangelical culture to look to our emotions (which are so easily swayed) as to whether we have met with God or not. Stop. Yes, emotions play a role, and they were created by God. But what we have functionally done is turn them into the standard we follow.
- Sing to know and declare, not just feel. A further extension of the first point is to reorient why we are singing. The declaration of truths about God and His mighty works are not just for us and those around us, they are a declaration to the spiritual world (1 Peter 1:12). When music becomes about giving us an emotional feel, we distort what we are there to do. Yes, emotion can and should be expressed in singing, but the purpose of that is to bolster the decoration of who God is and what He has done.
Keep singing. Don’t stop. Music has always been an important part of the expression of the Christian faith. But at the same time it is not a Sacrament. God has already given us his instituted means of grace, why would we replace them with something else?
- https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/08/worship-leader-mental-health-burnout-study/ ↩︎
- Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 208 ↩︎
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2022/01/11/the-problem-with-meaningful-worship/ ↩︎