"Tune My Heart" (pt. 1)

The second session of the conference was presented by Dr Peter Davis, the assistant music director at Mount Calvary (MCBC) and professor of music at Bob Jones University. Dr Davis is a wonderful and thoughtful musician. My wife got to know Peter's wife, Leslie, while we were members at MCBC. After we had moved to Charleston, we visited Greenville and made it a point to sit down and talk with Dr Davis about church music ministry. We were privileged to do this over a Sunday afternoon lunch. I learned more about music ministry in that 30 to 40 minute visit that I had in any other ministerial class I had taken. We were glad to take some of his ideas and try to implement them in our local church.

Some of the things he shared with us that afternoon were developed more fully in his session at the Whetstone Conference. The title of his lecture was "Tune My Heart, Lord" Or is that my responsibility...? Dr Davis' basic premise was that "Unless the heart is tuned properly, there is no song in the heart, no matter what the circumstances."

In working out this premise, Dr Davis walked us through five basic sections of the Scriptures: the Kings, the Levites, the Prophets, the Poets, and the Apostles. In each section he turned our attention to a couple of key texts, helped us to identify the setting, and then showed how each passage presented both Man's part and God's part in the tuning process.

For instance, the first passage we turned to was 1 Samuel 16:23, "And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him" (ESV).

Setting: Saul in a negative spirit
Man's Part: Believe in the power of the sound of music. Seek out a musician.
God's Part: God drives away the negative spirit. He refreshed Saul.

The power of music is profound. Music is emotive. Certain kinds of music affect corresponding emotions and actions. However, an untuned spirit can hinder the proper affect of music. In the case above, Saul responds in accord with the music and is refreshed. However, in 1 Samuel 18:9-11, Saul does not respond to the music, but "lashes out, unchanged, in a jealous rage." In response, "God does not take away the negative spirit." The power of good, beautiful, God-glorifying music to refresh the soul is amazing.

Well, what about secular music? What about secular, classical music? Here Dr Davis did not want to pass up the opportunity to correct the notion of "Art for art's sake." Rather, he argued, we should view "art for God's sake." To bolster his claim, he turned our attention to Ecclesiastes 2:8-11.

Setting: Solomon in pursuit of pleasure.
Man's part: Solomon no doubt amassed the best secular music of his day.
God's part: God left him empty. Why? God intends we find satisfaction in Him who gives good things, not in the things themselves. (1 Tim. 6:17)

His conclusion to this matter was, "Man, left empty, thus is turned back to God." At this point he brought up the issue of congregants saying "Amen." He said that in the music classes they talk about the amenometer. How well did I sing, or minister is often measured by the heartiness of the "amen." Sometimes a special number is done terribly but the "amen" seems to be louder so that the person won't feel embarrassed. In other words, we have come to distort the whole purpose and usefulness of saying "amen." We are not praising the music or the musician, but God and His message proclaimed (even in song).

At this point, I made a note on the side of my handout, "we need a corporate 'amen.'" The instances in Scripture where you see the people of God saying "amen," it is said corporately (Num. 5:22; Deut. 27:15-26; 1 Chron. 16:36; Neh. 5:13; Neh. 8:6). I've visited a Presbyterian school that is trying to instill this value in it's students. Anything can become perfunctory, but there seems to be strong biblical precedent for practicing this. In the end, the entire congregations is brought into active participation in the entire service. Not only would everyone be speaking the affirmation, "Amen," but they would/should be affirming their acceptance and commitment to the ministry received.

This post has grown longer than I had anticipated. However, this has been a good exercise for me to go through my notes. I'll plan to continue some thoughts on this lecture in the following days.

"Tune My Heart" (pt. 1)