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Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie  Quote:
Originally Posted by JBaldwin I am not an EPer, though I strongly believe we should be singing Psalms in worship along with the hymns. I also believe the hymns should be doctrinally sound. Can I add something from the perspective of someone who does not hold to the EP viewpoint?
Corporate worship is about unity, not division. If someone sits and does not join in with the singing for any reason, it can be a huge distraction for me, especially if I see the person is singing other words or doing something else during the corporate singing.
Corporate worship is about joining together with "one heart" and "one mind" unlike private worship which is primarily about our one-on-one relationship to God. When we worship God as the body of Christ we have to take into consideration our brothers and sisters in the Lord. When we sing, we sing with our whole hearts, and we join in with our fellow believers with one voice in worship to our Lord. If I sit out and don't participate, I may as well be at home, because I am not wholehearted about my worship, neither am I worshipping with my brothers and sisters. | That basically explains why I advise EP people to go to an EP church.  |
And one reason why I advise non-EP churches to become EP churches. If you want me to sing along, and if you want to join together in one heart and mind, then let's sing God's songs together, and be in unity with each other and the saints throughout history. Don't give me a list of hymns to sing that I have to scrutinize while singing to make sure that I'm not singing something against my conscience - a thing quite distracting. Instead, let's sing the Word of God, which judges me, not man's hymns, which I must judge "doctrinally sound," usually while also trying to engage the material. There was nothing that annoyed me more about worship services before I became Reformed and EP (except maybe the lack of balance in themes and common sentimentalism) than getting to the end of a few lines of a song only to wish I had never sung them.