Singing with Intention

First, we want to welcome Ray Crouse and Dave Mittendorf back to rehearsal tonight. Ray, the service for Jemé was beautiful, we were honored to be a part of it, and Dave, our deepest condolences to you and your family; we’re all thrilled that you both have re-joined us.

I was a little stumped on what to open with today, so I went back to an author who was popular the last time I read him, C.S. Lewis. I found an essay he wrote called “On Church Music”, which I found pretty fascinating, even though it immediately begins with this warning: “I am a layman and one who can boast no musical education. I cannot even speak from the experience of a lifelong churchgoer. It follows that Church Music is a subject on which I cannot, even in the lowest degree, appear as a teacher.”

Even so, Lewis writes five pretty thoughtful pages, and he closes by talking about the “intention” of singers, the importance of giving one’s music to the Lord. Here’s Lewis’ closing: “It seems to me that we must define rather carefully the ways in which music can glorify God. There is a sense in which all natural agents, even inanimate ones, glorify God continually by revealing the powers He has given them. An excellently performed piece of music, as a natural operation which reveals the peculiar powers given to man, will thus always glorify God whatever the intention of the performers may be. 


“But what is looked for in us is another kind of glorifying, which depends on intention. How easy or how hard it may be for a whole choir to preserve that intention through all the discussions and decisions, all the corrections and disappointments, all the temptations to pride, rivalry and ambition, which precede the performance of a great work, I naturally do not know. But it is on the intention that all depends. When it succeeds, I think the performers are the most enviable of men; privileged while mortals to honor God like angels and, for a few golden moments, to see spirit and flesh, delight and labor, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all joined together into perfect unity.”

So I thought that was a fitting charge to the choir tonight, even if it did come from a self-professed non-authority on church music. Let’s bow our heads.

Father, help us sing this season with the intention that C.S. Lewis describes. We lift up tonight, Lord. As we sing, may we, while mortals, honor you like angels. Be with us tonight as we rehearse, Amen.


(Source: http://soundliving.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/C.S.-Lewis-on-worship-music.pdf)