Musical and Social Meaning… Part 13

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 13

As was mentioned earlier, a host of current and former music philosophers have in the past and now believe that all musicing is unavoidably done in community.  When it comes to composers, arrangers, performers, and worship leaders, no musician is an island and no musician stands alone.  Christian musicians, who believe that if one ignores these theories they will go away, are naive and short-sighed.  Christian musicians should remember Jesus’ words recorded in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” 

The way we music in the context of public (and private) worship helps to form musical and cultural listening habits that are shaped by these ideologically informed critical metalanguages of music.  We are not only “what we eat” but also “what we music”.  Christian musicians may scoff at the belief that Church Music Matters but every time one musics in church an ideology is  being formed or at least a musical paradigm is being carried out by the music leaders doing. The way a church musics develops of a set of shared musical habits within that body of believers. These musical habits become beliefs that influence the way a Christian community thinks, acts, and views the world.