The Right Tool for the Job

I prefer acappella in our assemblies, for practical reasons.

Instruments (and "praise teams") tend to kill congregational singing. It tends to move congregants from the role of participant to the role of spectator.

But I'm very much against abusing scripture, and against making laws which God has not made.

Since the primary goal of assembling is to provoke one another to love and good works, and to encourage one another, and to build up one another, whatever accomplishes that is fair game within the assembly (1 Cor 14:26; Heb 10:24-25). God has made us all different, with different giftings. Some of us are brains, functioning on logic and reason; some of us are ears, functioning on music; some of us are eyes, functioning on art. Different members, and different "moods" within a member, will be best nourished by different foods than will be another member, or "mood". Like in the very earliest church, when sometimes the Jewish believers focused on study in the synagogue, and sometimes they praised God in the "raucous" environment of the Temple, modern Christians need the "everyone participates" congregational singing, and sometimes they need the instrumental-backed singing in the car that drive God-concepts deep into the brain so that those concepts bubble up in your background thinking. Stephen Spielberg does not make movies without instrumental music, because he knows that music has power to communicate very strongly, even without words. Believers should not throw away such a powerful tool that can be very valuable in the task of provoking, encouraging, and edifying, simply because we insist on teaching as doctrine a commandment we've invented which God has not spoken and which violates the principles he has spoken.

But it takes skill to wield instrumental music as that sort of powerful tool, and "praise bands" in our assemblies *generally* do not foster what is supposed to be fostered in our assemblies, at least for me, and at least in my experience. For me, in my experience, acappella, congregational, four-part harmony singing serves that task better.

But I'm not an ear.

Unless a tool has been forbidden (and instrumental music has not been forbidden), use whatever tool best does the job we've been assigned to do. If it provokes, encourages, and/or builds up, use the tool, whether that is a guitar, or a PowerPoint presentation, or a live art illustration, or a skit where one ties a belt around his hands to mime being arrested.