Should we use instruments in worship?

Question 11095

Whether we should use instruments in worship is one of those questions that sounds trivial until you meet someone for whom it is anything but. There are sincere, Bible-loving congregations across these islands who sing unaccompanied on principle, and there are others where the drum kit arrived decades ago and nobody has thought about it since. Both groups usually assume the other has simply not read the relevant texts.

I want to set out the arguments honestly, because the case against is stronger than most people realise, and then explain why I land where I do. This is a matter of liberty rather than a test of orthodoxy, and I hope to treat those who disagree with me as brothers rather than as opponents.

The Old Testament is full of instruments

Nobody disputes the Old Testament evidence. David appointed Levites as musicians with lyres, harps and cymbals, and 1 Chronicles describes the arrangement in considerable detail. The temple worship involved trumpets by divine instruction through the prophets. Psalm 150 is an inventory of noise, calling for trumpet, lute, harp, tambourine, strings, pipe and two kinds of cymbals, including the loud clashing sort.

So instruments in worship were not tolerated in Israel. They were commanded, organised and funded. The Hebrew verb zamar itself carries the sense of making music with strings, which suggests accompaniment was assumed rather than debated.

That would seem to settle the matter, and for most Christians it does. But those who object to instruments in worship have an answer ready, and it is not a foolish one.

The case against instruments in worship

The argument runs like this. The instruments of the Old Testament belonged to the temple, the sacrificial system and the Levitical priesthood. All three were shadows fulfilled and set aside in Jesus. When the veil tore, the whole apparatus went with it. To bring the harps and cymbals into the church is therefore to bring back a fragment of a system that has been superseded, rather like reinstating the incense and the animal offerings.

Supporters of this position then point out that the New Testament never once mentions instruments in worship in a gathered congregation. Paul tells the Ephesians and Colossians to sing, and specifies psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, but no accompaniment appears. The early church, on the historical evidence we have, sang unaccompanied for several centuries. Some of the finest Reformed writers argued exactly this way, and the exclusive psalmody congregations that still sing without instruments are being consistent rather than eccentric.

Underneath the argument sits a principle about how we decide such things at all, usually called the regulative principle: that public worship should contain only what Scripture positively commands. If you hold that principle strictly, silence about instruments in worship functions as prohibition. I have written separately on the regulative principle of worship, and it is the real hinge of this debate.

Why I am not persuaded

I take the argument seriously and I still think it fails, for three reasons that I will give without pretending they are knock-down blows.

The first is that the ceremonial argument proves too much. If instruments in worship must go because they were attached to the temple, then so must singing itself, which was equally organised by the Levites, and so must the Psalms, which were the temple’s own hymnbook. Yet Paul commands us to sing psalms. The shadow that has passed away is the sacrificial system that pointed to the cross, not every practice that happened to occur in the same building.

The second is that the argument from silence is weaker than it looks. The New Testament letters are occasional documents addressing problems, not manuals of service order. They do not tell us what time the church met, how long the meeting lasted, whether anyone sat down, or what the room looked like. Reading prohibition out of that silence would empty our services of a great deal more than the piano.

The third is that the regulative principle, applied with full rigour, is not applied with full rigour by anybody. Hymnbooks, pews, projectors, microphones, printed orders of service, church buildings themselves and the practice of meeting at eleven o’clock are all absent from the New Testament. Most of us accept these as circumstances of worship rather than elements of it. Once you allow that category, instruments in worship fit into it comfortably.

What the instruments are for

Granting the freedom does not settle how the freedom should be used, and here I have firmer views. The purpose of instruments in worship is to help a congregation sing. That is it. They set the pitch, hold the tempo, cover the nervousness of those who think they cannot sing, and give the whole room the confidence to open its mouth.

Measured against that purpose, a great deal of what happens in churches is upside down. If the amplification means you cannot hear the person beside you, the instruments have stopped serving the singing and started replacing it. If the arrangement is so intricate that the congregation loses the melody, the same thing has happened. A single unpretentious piano that keeps four hundred people together is doing more genuine work than a band that reduces them to spectators.

None of this is an argument against skill or against volume as such. Psalm 150 is not a quiet piece of writing. It is an argument that the test of instruments in worship is congregational, not aesthetic. Are more people singing, or fewer? That question is easy to answer and uncomfortable to ask. There is more on this in my answer about the role of music in worship.

Organs, guitars and the arguments underneath

It is worth noticing that most disputes in British churches are not really about whether to have instruments in worship at all. They are about which instruments, and that is a different argument wearing borrowed clothes. The organ was once the scandalous novelty, resisted as theatrical and worldly by people who would now defend it to the last pipe. The guitar and the drum kit are simply the current occupants of that role.

When an older member says the music is too loud and a younger member says it is lifeless, they are rarely making a theological claim. They are expressing a preference, and preferences are legitimate things to hold and poor things to legislate with. The moment we dress a preference in the language of principle we make peace impossible, because nobody can concede a principle without feeling they have betrayed God.

I would encourage congregations to be honest about which conversation they are actually having. If the question is genuinely whether Scripture permits instruments in worship, that deserves careful study and patient teaching. If the question is whether we would all prefer the arrangement of our own youth, that deserves an entirely different sort of conversation, conducted with a good deal more laughter and rather less certainty.

Handling the disagreement well

This belongs in the category Paul addresses in Romans 14, where believers hold different convictions about matters that are not the gospel and are told not to despise or judge one another. The brother who sings unaccompanied because he fears adding to God’s commands is not a legalist. He is a man with a tender conscience about the honour of God, and I would rather have him in my congregation than a dozen people who have never thought about it at all.

Equally, those who hold the stricter view should be slow to accuse others of will-worship. Freedom exercised thoughtfully is not the same as carelessness. I would say to both sides what Romans 14:19 says: pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

Practically, if you join a congregation whose practice differs from your preference, the question is whether the word is faithfully preached and the people genuinely love the Lord. If those are in place, instruments in worship are not worth leaving over. If they are not in place, the instruments were never the problem. For a wider treatment see my answer on how we should worship.

So, now what?

If you are in leadership, ask the congregational question this month. Stand at the back during the singing and listen for voices rather than for the band. Whatever your view on instruments in worship, the health of the singing is measurable and it will tell you more than any theory.

And if you are the one who has been quietly annoyed about this for years, whichever direction your annoyance runs, it may be worth asking the Lord whether the annoyance itself is doing you any good. I have never yet met anyone whose walk with God was deepened by a grievance about accompaniment. What would it take for you to sing wholeheartedly next Sunday regardless?

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! (Psalm 150:3-4, ESV)