Singing the Gospel

Last Saturday, around 30 music and production team members from across our contemporary English and Chinese services spent a day being trained at the Emu Music “Word in Song” conference. This annual conference is run as part of the Emu Music team’s conviction “to encourage and equip the church in biblical, beautiful, and transformative singing” and was available for free to St John’s members as part of our partnership with them! Each person who attended received valuable teaching and gained new skills which we are keen to implement as we return to our weekly gatherings.

We began the day with a talk from Toby Neal on “The Preciousness of the Church”, exploring how valuable the church really is as a manifestation of God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10). Indeed, we as the church are God’s instrument:

“I also loved the part in the first talk about how God chooses to display his wonder and majesty through the church. That we are the proclamation of his wisdom. And as musicians/AV we are ministers of the word, so our role is really important to ensure we are being faithful stewards: ‘…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.’ (Eph 3:10)”

- 9:30/11am Music Team Leader

Our team members attended a diverse range of electives, including: Church Music Masterclass (layering instruments and sonic cohesion in small and large band contexts), Resources for Church Music & Production, Vocal Technique, Song Leading, Services that Shepherd (how to lead our congregations by well-planned services and flows), Leading a Team, What Songs Should We Sing?, “A Career in Music Ministry?”, and workshops targeting techniques relevant to each instrument. This year, a team from Turramurra Music also came in to run a stream for Sound & Mixing which the production team members greatly valued (and which I got to sit in on)! These team members stayed after the main session to have questions answered about adapting to our meeting spaces and technologies:

“A servant-hearted band measures their performance by the [participation] of the congregation, rather than how well they played their instrument.

The digital parametric equaliser (PEQ) and high pass filter (HPF) is the sound technician’s friend, especially if microphones get swapped between instruments 10 seconds before the next song starts.”

- 9:30/11am Production Team Member

Music plays a significant role in our gatherings and church life, as we grow disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. This can be clearly seen in Colossians 3:15-16: “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Faithful music ministry, working in tandem with our production ministry, serves to lead us in expressing both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of receiving and responding to the gospel. We engage with the word of Christ which is to dwell richly in us; we grow one another as disciples of Christ with faithful and theological teaching, which is expressed in joyful song; and we glorify God with thankfulness in our hearts. Please continue to pray that our music and production teams will seek opportunities to faithfully implement our new learnings as we continue to serve one another and lead our congregations in thankful response to God’s word.

Music makes you feel a feeling.

A song makes you feel a thought.

“How many times have we gone home from church with a worship song we sang stuck in our heads for the rest of the day? Let's use that chance to saturate our hearts and minds with a song that proclaims the gospel.”

- 5pm Music Team Member

Nicholas Morley
Ministry Intern

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash