Music serves many purposes in worship.
One thing that music can do is help center our minds, help us meditate, help us find that quiet inner space where the countless small concerns that crowd our minds can be set aside for a time, preparing us for worship, preparing us to seek with our entire being the One whom we come to praise and adore, the One for whom we listen. It is not offered to God in the name of his devout people, but musical numbers rendered for their gratification and ill calculated to assist or to voice their reverence toward God. This is the nemesis of worship. But at times we as a church can become confused about the role of music in worship. If you are like me, at times, when we sing stirring hymns, when the choir s sound is particularly sublime, when the bell ringers dexterity and sound is simply amazing, when Babette closes worship with an inspired postlude, you can feel like a privileged concert-goer who witnesses artists at the peak of their craft.