The Music Exchange

At the start of the year we’ve been focussing as a church on the importance of godliness. It’s a much-needed tonic after Christmas. We’ve been learning that Jesus is our perfect model, but he’s also our source of godliness as well as being the reason we strive for purity.

For some reason though, musicians often seem to miss their calling to godliness. Newspaper stories about organists going off with vicars’ wives have dried up, not because organists no longer go off with vicars’ wives, but because it’s no longer news — it happens all the time. Musicians and godliness don’t often go hand in hand. Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), whose anthems are regularly sung in cathedrals throughout the land, was a drunk, as well as being a ‘notorious swearer and blasphemer’.

He was eventually sacked from his job at Chichester Cathedral because (allegedly) he urinated out of the organ loft onto the Dean’s head. Only today I was told of an evangelical minister who won’t employ a music leader ‘because they sleep with their girlfriends’. I winced at the generalisation and I winced for the Dean of Chichester, but the ability of musicians to get themselves into all sorts of ungodly scrapes definitely needs some attention. Why is it that Christian musicians are so prone to disobedience?

Vice and temperament

Part of the problem are the world’s musical role models. The ‘secular’ music industry is characterised by vice and sexual infidelity. Musicians court controversy. No wonder that it’s so hard to get insurance if you’re a musician!

Another problem is the musician’s temperament. Musicians are often very insecure, and need to have a visible presence in the church meeting in order to feel they belong — being visible and audible is a lot easier for a musician than sitting on a back seat working quietly at discipline and obedience. This, in turn, leads to a perception of the church musician as someone who has an ad-vanced spiritual maturity simply be-cause of his position in the church and his musical gifting. This can lead dangerously to spiritual unaccountability, pushing the musician even further be-hind the mask he is already wearing.

Believing the lie

I must admit to a certain sense of immunity from accountability in my job. I play beautiful music (the music’s beautiful, that is, not my playing) and I’m visible at the front of church every week. I’ve also written a couple of songs, which can make people think that my mind is always thinking up lyrics about heaven. Fortunately, my wife knows better, and simply measuring myself up with the beauty and purity of Christ reminds me constantly of my shortcomings, but I’m still in danger of believing the lie that I’m fit for service in God’s church if I play well, while filling my mind with every type of evil imaginable.

Role models and temperament are parts of the problem, but I believe the root of the problem is that musicians believe what they are told about them by the world and by often well-meaning Christians, while forgetting God’s view of them as forgiven sinners. Christian non-musicians are tempted to judge a musician by pedigree rather than purity. If they can play and sing beautifully on the outside, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt about what’s going on on the inside.

At the same time musicians are able to act, wearing a mask of purity, by their speech and through their music, so that they become even more ‘sacred’. In non-Christian musical circles it doesn’t matter what I believe or how I act, just as long as I play the organ, appreciate Bach, wear a tie and tell jokes about viola players. If I slept with someone else’s wife, that would be all part of the show — my musician’s prerogative.

Good music, good people?

To sum up, the world and the church tell musicians that we’re fine because our music is fine. However, God sees through the act. He tells musicians that they are sick and in need of a doctor. He wants heaven to be populated by forgiven sinners, not people with a fine musical pedigree, however ‘anointed’ their gifts are perceived to be.

Don’t let the masks of fine music and status stop you from asking your musicians hard questions about obedience to Jesus. Keep us under close observance and under much prayer, and then we’ll be much more useful for Christ and his church.

The church musician and godliness?

Vice and temperament

Believing the lie

Good music, good people?

Richard Simpkin

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