Dabney Center Liturgy
by Rich Lusk
Spring 2007

Part 1

Psalm 149

Music has its origin in the eternal life of the Triune God. Music flows from God
into the creation, beginning with creation. As the corporate image of God, music
is a fundamental aspect of human life, especially worship and work. All of life,
indeed all of history, has a musical element, reflecting the inner rhythms of God’s
own Triune life.

Creation allegories by Christian storytellers depict the world being sung into
existence. Is there any biblical basis for this?
• Job 38, Zeph. 3
• Triune model
• The musical quality of the OT Scripture
• No hard line between speech and song

Our focus is the sacred music of the church. Insofar as the church is a culture of
her own (the new Jerusalem/Israel/kingdom), she is going to develop her own
musical forms. History bears this out. Of course, even within the church these
can vary some in different times and places. American Christians and Chinese
Christians will not sing exactly the same things. But the point is, the church is
going to use music differently (that is, for a different purpose) than the world,
and so it will quite naturally develop musical forms suited to that purpose. It will
develop a type of music that is indigenous to its own life. In studying the history
of music, many people are surprised to find that so much of music's
development took place through the church, for the sake of corporate worship.
Those innovations then trickled out into the world, where they were put to a
different use.

We need to have a clear sense of what we're trying to do with church music. The
goal is not to just have music that sounds different, just for the sake of beiung
different, but to develop music that is suited for the purpose of corporate praise.
Having different music is not enough in itself; it must be different because of its
origin, design, and use.

Of course, how different the church's music is from the surrounding culture's
depends on all kinds of factors. The church's relationship to the world is fluid,
not static. Sometimes the world is more rebellion against God than other times;

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