How does singing contribute to the mission of making disciples?

In this video, Scott Aniol discusses how every aspect of corporate worship, including singing, plays a crucial role in fulfilling Christ's command to make disciples. While the teaching and discipling effects of preaching and Scripture reading are often recognized, the powerfully-formative function of singing in corporate worship can be overlooked. According to Colossians 3:16-17, singing not only serves as worship to the Lord, but it also has a significant horizontal focus, enabling us to teach and admonish one another.

Singing can be a means of discipleship in two ways. First, the lyrics of songs can teach and reinforce biblical truth, helping congregants remember and internalize sound doctrine. Second, the music itself can shape and disciple our hearts, forming and maturing our responses toward the Lord. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that both the lyrics and the music of our songs are faithful to Scripture and contribute to the discipleship of the congregation.

Psalm 105:2 (NKJV): 'Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works.'

Everything about what we do in corporate worship contributes to this mission that Christ has given us of making disciples. And I think we easily recognize that with things like preaching, scripture reading. Clearly, truth is being taught, and so we recognize discipleship is taking place. But we sometimes don't recognize the powerfully formative purpose of singing in corporate worship. Singing, too, is for the goal of making disciples.

And we see that clearly in Colossians 3, 16 and 17, where Paul says that we are teaching and admonishing one another when we sing to one another. It is true that our singing is worship to the Lord. We are praising Him. We are adoring Him. We're confessing our sins.

We're delighting in the gospel. So it is God-word, but what Colossians 3 16 helps us to see is that there's also a very important horizontal focus that's happening with the singing. We are teaching one another. And I think we're doing that in two ways. Number one, the lyrics of our songs are certainly teaching and contributing to this discipleship.

What we sing matters in terms of the lyrics. We need to make sure that what we are singing is faithful to the truth of Scripture, that it is clearly communicating sound biblical doctrine, because as Isaac Watts once said, things learned in song are remembered long. And so just the rhyme and the poetry and the fact that we're singing these truths is going to help these things come back to the people in the congregation's memory and continue to disciple them going forward. So we need to think very carefully about the words of our lyrics. But also not only are we discipling people in song intellectually in terms of the truth, but one of the great powers of music is that music actually shapes and disciples our hearts.

It forms and matures our affections, our responses toward the Lord. That's something we often forget. We maybe recognize that the lyrics of our songs are discipling, but even the music itself can either disciple and mature or actually work in contradiction. Sometimes it's possible that we might have lyrics that have an aim of maturity, biblical maturity in the Word of God, and music that actually causes immaturity and causes us to really revel in our own feelings rather than direct our attention to the Lord. So Our singing and worship has a really powerfully formative potential to disciple people, and we need to make sure that what we're choosing to sing, both in the lyrics and the teaching that's happening in terms of the mind, and in the music, the teaching that's happening in terms of the heart, are faithful to Scripture and are discipling people to be mature followers of Jesus Christ.