The Music Exchange

I’m very privileged to work with a group of Christian professional musicians. They’re a huge encouragement to me as I see God strengthen them to stand for him in a tough world.

One of the greatest encouragements was sitting with one of them as he took a call from the London Symphony Orchestra. Offers of work from the LSO are the dream of any young musician starting out in the profession. He wrote down the dates and then ended the call. Checking his diary, he noticed that one of the concerts was on the same date that his Bible study group was going away for the weekend. Without hesitating, he crossed the dates out. He had a prior and more important engagement — to be among his Christian brothers and sisters listening to the words of Jesus.

Two passions at once?

One of the questions some of the musicians ask is whether it’s possible to be passionate about the Lord, while also being passionate about music. One talked about negotiating ‘the narrow path between celebrating career/musical success as a gift from God and allowing that same success to become an idol’.

My reasoning

I think I’d give two different reasons (one to non-Christians and one to Christians) for reaching my one conclusion, which is that the only thing worth being passionate about is the Lord.

First, for the non-Christian there is no narrow path to walk at all. This is because though they may have a passion for God’s wonderful creation of music, they have no passion for its Creator. They need a Saviour. Their music has not delivered on eternal salvation. Encouraging a non-Christian to be passionate about music may help them to see some tiny part of the glory of God, but they are still in darkness. They need to meet Jesus through the Spirit in his Word in order to cross from death to life.

Second, for Christians. We have the key to glorifying God with the gifts he’s given us, and many musicians try to negotiate the narrow path between celebrating music and idolising it. The Bible does tell us to work hard at everything we do (e.g. Colossians 3.17), but it’s always in the context of singular devotion to the Lord. The order is to be passionate for the Lord, and to let that passion drive our service of him, whether that’s as a musician or a tree surgeon. In this sense, the answer to negotiating the narrow path is to be solely dedicated to the Lord, rather than wondering whether we’re being passionate enough about music.

Black and white

That may seem awfully black and white — theologically correct, but cold and ascetically pious. To be honest, though, in my experience I’ve found that the musicians who are passionate about music in the most unidolatrous way are those who don’t try and negotiate the narrow path at all, but try to be dedicated solely to the Lord. Moreover, they really enjoy their music. Conversely, I’ve never had to encourage a musician to take a wander towards the ‘music side of the path’ by being more passionate about music! That’s because their teachers and audiences do the ‘passion for music’ stuff six days a week compared to our couple of hours focussing on passion for the Lord.

Self-service?

I’d also say that for musicians who play in church, having a passion for any art that isn’t born out of a desire to serve God and his people leads ultimately to self-service rather than service of others. I’ve heard some Christian musicians describe classical music and contemporary jazz as ‘high art’ (unsurprisingly these people are classical musicians and contemporary jazzers). Unfortunately, what some think of as high art, others think of as pretentious mumbo-jumbo. If a church’s musician is into ‘high art’, and pursues his passion for his music because he thinks that he’d be denying his calling to foist his tastes on everyone else, he has missed the point that he is there to serve the Lord and his people before satisfying his own passion, however well-intentioned he may be.

It’s true that our natural bent is to worship the created things rather than the creator, but the answer is not to invest more in the thing that can lead us into idolatry, but to be sold out in passion for the Creator and his Church.

Love of music and love of Christ

Two passions at once?

My reasoning

Black and white

Self-service?

Richard Simpkin

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