Sing It Wii Songs

[Saustin Grody]

d) In fact, (perhaps unfortunately) many in the Congregation these days do not know who even writes the songs, who are the bands that first produce it or even bother to think about the scriptural soundness of the songs.

I am not a musician but I can carry a tune. Occasionally it falls to me to lead acapella when musicians are not available. I am also responsible for both the preaching and leading in the small congregation I serve.

Old is not necessarily good, new is not necessarily bad.

There are many new worship songs that are very good but for congregational use they

should be performed the same each time they are used

I do thank you once again for this article. I value your thoughts and have been richly blessed of the Lord through SGM. Again, you have given me an opportunity to examine and re-examine several areas and I am grateful for that. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Could you describe how you arrived at the conclusion that avoiding all music written by heretics is an overreaction? Also, what benefits do songs written by heretics offer that a song written by a true Christian cannot already offer without any of the dangers?

Would you consider it an overreaction if the church leadership confronted their pastor about using material, even theologically correct material, from heretics in sermons? Or would you consider that to be a biblically justified action in keeping with Acts 20:28, Titus 1 & 2, etc.?

Think of it this way: a song written by a heretic would make up 20-25% of the singing of the church if you take it that one heretics song is sung out of every 4 or 5 during the service. By way of comparison, can you imagine the pastor spending 12-15 minutes of a 60 minute sermon, delivering material from a heretic??!!! The church needs to be consistent in its approach to the worship service in all areas.

On the other hand, since God is a discerner of the heart, it is He alone who can bless the hungry in soul, using whatever communication He desires. How many times has God used an unsaved person to drive home a characteristic in you that He finds unpleasing?

Bob, I read this with a great deal of interest. While I am a fundamental cessationist, I do take issue with the first responders ( E ) post- with that logic, we would not read the Psalms due to the author being an adulterer and murder.

If we (seventh-day Adventists) were to take all the hymns that were written by composers who were part of a denomination that teaches what we consider a distortion of the gospel the way WE understand it, our hymnal would be nearly empty. The criteria has been to choose those that did not contradict our teachings. If they did, we left them out OR we left out a specific verse that seemed to teach differently than we teach.

FWIW, we are not the only denomination that adheres to that policy/practice.

In Christ,

I have seen many in churches attend conferences and concerts where this dominion theology is practiced and taught, and all because they hear the songs being played in their churches they end up feeling that attending such events or churches are safe. This seems particularly common amongst youth coming out of youth ministries and seeking out churches of their own.

I see that this psalm points to the fact that they were behind the Waters of Babylon after they had been sent off to that foreign land in slavery. In the course of their journey, they penned and sang this very pathetic song. When it comes to the metaphor where it says, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land," I try to imagine what they meant exactly by that.

Babylon was a city infested with idols and demon worshiping, and they were mocking the Israelites that their god was superior to their God. Singing would give the opportunity to the Babylonians to jeer and belittle his name, that Jehovah is an inferior to the Babylonian gods.

Obviously from verse three, the Israelites repented from the wicked things of their ancestors and wanted to worship the true God in Jerusalem, and so they cried " How can we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land?" The period of their wait was 70 years.

2-4 The Babylonian captors demand musical entertainment but the captives, who can only cry, hang up their musical instruments and refuse to make music. They cannot express joy as long as they are in exile. Joy, which is synonymous with with being in God's presence, is no longer possible when the Temple is destroyed. Exile is equated with descent into the world of the dead; like the dead, the exiles are unable to praise God. (30.10; 88.11-13)

Songs are an expression of the joy which is found in the presence of God. They are sung in the Temple, or while making a pilgrimage to the Temple. Unlike the past where they were able to journey to the Temple, the exiles are like the dead, and are unable to praise God.

This song could rightly be called a song of the LORD. It was to serve as a witness for the LORD against the people of Israel. The exiles refused to sing the song which "would confront them as a witness".

The refusal to sing the song is both a type of acknowledgement of their past wrong actions and a rejection of the meaning the song carries. The people will not sing as a witness against themselves. Instead, they will not forget Jerusalem (137:5-6) and will call upon the LORD to punish the Edomites and Babylonians.

and a whole lot more besides.

And they had just seen it destroyed, razed to the ground. It ripped their courage and strength from them, because they just couldn't fathom how such a thing could have happened. It was just IMPOSSIBLE that God's dwelling place could be harmed; and yet, it was.

There is just no way that you can come back from that, without a LOT of grieving. And that's what they are doing here. The grief is palpable in these words; it's a complete and utter submersion in spirit-crushing pain.

At least, it's that experience until the last line, where dashing babies against a rock is called for.

Which tells me that this psalm wasn't written down IMMEDIATELY after the exile, because you don't go from despair, to a desire for violent revenge, in a moment. That last sentiment takes time to grow.

One octave songs can be easy enough range-wise, to build new habits, to practice on, to learn new technique. As long as the other criteria listed in the beginning of this article are met - no big jumps, not chromatic. etc. Here's a short list with one-octave songs that are good for practicing.

My church is painfully familiar with abusive and controlling behavior by male leaders. We watched in horror the avalanche of accusations against Catholic priests who sexually assaulted children and enjoyed the protection of calculated, systematic cover-ups of their crimes. Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels admitted to sexually abusing women connected to the church; later his mentor, Gilbert Bilezikian, was also caught in sexual misconduct.

In my tradition, theological giant John Howard Yoder spent decades sexually abusing women as part of a bizarre theological experiment. In every Christian tradition there are survivors of abuse by leaders in the church.

But there is something that we often do not calculate into these equations of forgiveness and grace: power. I am far enough along in life that accusations of men abusing women do not seem surprising or unusual. For me, the shock of abuse by church leaders is how long perpetrators are able to act out their crimes without getting caught or being held accountable, often for decades.

Their victims learn this as they watch women silenced and dismissed as liars, as they see people who report their abuse shamed for bringing down ministries that positively impact millions of people. The Christian commitment to sacrificial self-giving is the catalyst for a survivor to keep her trauma to herself.

Leaders like these men calculate their wealth, institutional standing, and social influence and conclude that we cannot get by without them. They are essential. We, the ordinary people who show up to church to sing and pray, need their thoughts, writings, and songs. Their gifts and leadership will shield them from the fallout from their bad behavior.

Unnatural is really fun to sing just can be tough with verse phrasing when you aren't used to singing quicker phrasing I struggle with the Uprising chorus, G4's are hard for me in phrases, the Mercy ones I can achieve really easily and the Dead Inside ones but Uprising I struggle to sustain them for some reason

no I'm able to actually belch out the micro cuts chorus screeches, and somewhat perfectly match the falsetto throughout the whole song. supermassive is just hard for me because the lyrics just mess me up while I try to do the falsetto.

Micro Cuts isn't too bad if you slide up to the notes and don't actually sing the proper pronunciations i.e. "i've seeeeeyaaaaaaawooooo whataya doooooooiiiiiiiiiah" etc but I still personally struggle with it as while I can hit the notes, my falsetto isn't particularly strong and I struggle to hold them

i base my Micro Cuts singing off the version at Rockwerchter 2015, and I can safely say there are absolutely no pwoper pronunciations of any of the lyrics on that version. its probably why I can do it so easily, because it literally is just indecipherable screeching during the chorus lol

I've been learning to sing for a year, and I noticed some great improvements, but there is one thing that happens to me that is totally strange: When I listen to songs, there are songs that I can "understand" right away and then I can sing them with the right notes after practically a few plays.

Slightly unusual, maybe! My experience is that when a singer learns by imitation, there's little distinction between 'hard' and 'easy' (as long as the song is in their vocal range). It's when reading notation that a complex song becomes 'hard'.

I've noticed it too, and it isn't always a matter of range. A song that follows familiar patterns (melodic, harmonic, rhythmic...) is more intuitive to navigate than one that uses patterns that I'm not used to. Some songs out there are very not-intuitive to me, especially the deceptive ones that seem like they should be following a familiar pattern but instead they go and wander just a little bit away from it.

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