SING! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, Church (review)

 A book that makes you want to sing praises to God can’t be bad. I’m sure I interrupted my reading a few times to burst into song! Sound lyrics attached to suitable and complementary music can settle on a Christian's heartstrings like rows of nightingales on telephone wires. Keith and Kristyn Getty hit all the right notes. Their lyrics are Biblical, and their tunes are apt.

As hearing the gospel in your native tongue speaks to your head and then your heart so does hearing your own (Scottish/Irish) culture’s music. It was upon hearing Celtic strains in some of their songs that the Getty’s songs first struck a chord with me. Yes, I am eclectic enough to appreciate all good church music wherever it’s from, but the Getty stuff has me singing to the Lord with gusto.

Solid lyrics with good tunes are extremely important. For good tunes with unsound words can wreak untold damage to churches and to the whole of Christendom. Arius, a fourth century heretic knew this all too well. He cast his poisoned bread upon many waters. “Arius… composed several songs to be sung by sailors … and by travellers along the high road … which he adapted to certain tunes, as he thought suitable in each separate case, and thus he seduced the minds of the unlearned by the attractiveness of his songs to the adoption of his own impiety.” Philostorgius, Epitome, (Bk. 2 Ch. 2). Christians carry home with them much more than sermon points. What they sing in worship also lodges in their hearts. The Gettys (‘scuse the pun) get this.

Whether you’re an exclusive-psalmodist who doesn’t believe in any  musical accompaniment or whether you’re all electric guitars and drums, this book will help give you a handle on what’s happening with church music in Christendom beyond your own wee corner of God’s vineyard. The Getty’s have made a worthy contribution.

One of the surprises for me was when I read the following: “To write songs for the church is a beautiful, fun (sometimes), and laudable activity. But most songs that are written (in the case of songs we have written, at least 95 percent) never should be heard. We estimate that Keith has written or recorded five hundred to a thousand tunes per year for the last seventeen years, in order to come up with what is a relatively small handful of songs that we’re pleased with and known for. Kristyn has countless journals and Word files and scrap pieces of paper with lyrics that never made the cut.” pgs. 135-6.