One of the problems that consistently plagues small assemblies — especially house churches — is the question of what to do about music. If you’re blessed with a bunch of musically talented folks, great! But many groups are not. What do you do? Play a worship song off somebody’s phone and try to sing along?
You can, of course, but it’s wiser not to. In an age of mass media, too many of our expectations are shaped by consuming professional-grade productions. We have access to professional quality musicians in unprecedented numbers, on recordings that are carefully engineered to sound far better than the actual performers sound live. We need to re-calibrate our expectations to how real people sound. Like cooking and storytelling and dancing, singing is a human ability. We all — or nearly all — have it. Sure, it follows a bell-curvey distribution, so not all of us are equally capable, but I’ll bet you anything if you start singing together, and keep at it, the group will be decent at it after 6 months.
Pick songs you can sing a capella — grab some old Sacred Harp or Free Church of Scotland tunes if you like; there are living traditions there worth interacting with — and go to work.
People sing, the world over. If you want to go to the symphony, you have to go to a city, but singing? All you need is vocal cords; we all got those. Mothers sing to their babies; uncles sing around the cookfire after dinner; workers sing to keep a rhythm going; your friends sing happy birthday, or Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s. People sing; it’s a human trait. Consumer culture makes us think we can’t, the same way photoshopped Victoria’s Secret ads make ordinary women think they’re ugly. It’s a lie. You may have one or two people who can’t carry a tune to save their lives, but I’ll bet you dollars against bent toenail clippings that the majority of your people can sing; they just haven’t ever developed the talent God gave them. Time to develop it.
…and sing the Psalms, too! The New Testament three times (Ephesians, Colossians, and James) says we should be a psalm-singing people. Of course we also sing more than the 150 biblical psalms (some fragments of those new song lyrics show up in the New Testament), but we haven’t any business leaving the Psalms out.
Posted by Tim Nichols 
Full Contact Christianity 