Rule #2: Wear pants when you go outside. Nice ones, if you can.

(image from www.kuklaskorner.com)

So the way I see it we are dealing with two issues here.

The first one is the what and why? of church music - the timeless biblical truths regarding singing as God's people - what does God have to say in his word about what church music is and what it's for? (I should hasten to say here that this blog has no interest whatsoever in Christian music in general - only the music we sing together when we meet together as God's people. I'm not CCM-inclined myself, but what people do in the privacy of their own car stereos is none of my concern.)

The second is the how? of church music. This involves pragmatic issues. Did God really set his divine imprimatur on the musical style of sixteenth century, to be continually imitated in perpetuity? Or should there be some kind of engagement with the style of contemporary music of the time? How far does this go - if crunk (or even worse, Michael Buble) is topping the charts, should the style of our church music reflect that?

If you don't get the theology right, your church music will still suck, no matter how slick your sound is. The question of how? comes second to the questions of what and why? This means that if you're going to get just one of these two right, then listen to what God says in his word about music in church.

But if you want to do it well, then you need to get both right. We need to know exactly what we are doing when we sing in church and why we are doing it, and we also need to have thought hard about how we do it.

(As an aside, when church music sucks I think that the how? is often the presenting problem. It's easy to spot musical atrocities like singers out of tune, a soprano sax used anywhere at any time, etc. But the what and why? can be all out of place and be covered over by a skillful guitarist. This isn't a good thing - it means that the music will still suck (i.e. it will be off the mark in terms of what it ought to be doing for God's people), it will just sound ok while it does it and therefore be harder to diagnose)

When you leave the house, the most important thing is to have enough clothes on that you don't get arrested. But this is setting the bar pretty low, right?

The guy at the top of the page isn't going to get arrested, but he's still not likely to make many friends until he rethinks that jacket.

So make sure you fulfil the minimum requirement, but aim higher too!