I’ve always been convinced that there are ways of organizing ministry, even music ministry, that empower or distract from gospel focus in our gathered worship. Most of these are subtle yet if left unchecked, like gangrene, they’d work against long term fruitful ministry. 

So when I stumbled on Welsh preacher Martin Lloyd Jones addressing the same idea in his famous “Preaching and Preachers” I thought I would just share the whole thing here. 

“…But, more particularly, there is a very real danger, often, of a kind of ‘organist tyranny’. This arises because the organist is in a position where he or she can exercise considerable control. With a powerful instrument they can control the rate at which a hymn is sung, and the effect will vary completely according to whether he takes it too quickly, or too slowly. Many a preacher has had great trouble in his ministry with a difficult organist, and especially with the type that is more interested in music than in Truth. One should be very careful therefore in appointing an organist to make sure that he is a Christian.

And if you have choirs you should insist upon the same with every member of the choir. The first desideratum should not be the voice, but the Christian character, the love of the Truth, and a delight in singing it. That is the way to avoid organist tyranny and the sister-trouble choir tyranny.

There was an expression which used to be heard frequently in my home country, Wales. It had reference not so much to choirs as to congregational singing; it was known as ‘the demon of the singing’. What it meant was that this question of singing caused more quarrelling and divisions in churches than practically anything else, that singing gave the devil more frequent opportunities of hindering and disrupting the work than any other activity in Church life.

But quite apart from that, music in its various forms raises the whole problem of the element of entertainment insinuating itself and leading people to come to the services to listen to the music rather than to worship. I contend that we can lay it down as a fairly general rule that the greater the amount of attention that has been paid to this aspect of worship-namely the type of building, and the ceremonial, and the singing, and the music-the greater the emphasis on that, the less spirituality you are likely to have; and a lower spiritual temperature and spiritual understanding and desire can be expected.

 But I would go further and ask a question, for I feel it is time we began to ask this question. As I have said previously in another connection, we must break into certain bad habits that have settled into the life of our churches and which have become a tyranny. I have referred to the setform, and to the people who are ready to play about with the Truth and try to modify it, but who resist any change in the service and this rigid set-form. So I suggest that it is time we asked the question: Why is any of this accent on music necessary? Why does it have any place at all?

Let us face this question; and surely as we do so we must come to the conclusion that what we should seek and aim at is a congregation of people singing the praises of God together; and that the real function of an organ is to accompany that. It is to be accompaniment; it is not to dictate; and it must never be allowed to do so.

It must always be subservient. I would go so far as to say that the preacher generally should choose the tunes as well as the hymns, because sometimes there can be a contradiction between the two. Some tunes virtually contradict the message of the hymn though the metre may be correct. So the preacher has the right to be in charge of these matters; and he must not surrender this right.“

Need I add to that?