Matt Boswell encourages worship songwriting.

I began writing new songs of worship when I was fifteen years old. No one sat me down and said this practice can be a part of growing in Christ, nor explained the spiritual benefits of writing songs. I simply tasted the goodness of God and felt compelled to respond by crafting a new song.

Now, for the last twenty years, I have been trying to bend the English language around for the glory of God and write melodies to encourage the hearts of his people. I know the difficulty and the reward of this labor and, more than ever, I feel the need to sing to the Lord a new song.

The Hymnal’s Not Closed

From the beginning of our history, God’s people have been a singing people. In Exodus 15, Moses stood before the Israelites who had just been rescued from slavery and led them in a new song of praise. In Judges 5, when God powerfully delivered his people from the Canaanites, Deborah and Barak led the people in a new song of salvation. At the dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles 5, the people sang a new song of God’s love and faithfulness.

The hymnal of the church has no back cover. While the canon of Scripture is closed, our hymnal is an ever-expanding work. We ought to continue to sing the historic songs of our faith, but we should not blush to add new expressions of worship to God. We have many new songs that are helpful, richly theological, and thoroughly biblical.

The “new song” we sing is informed by the “old song” (Exodus 15) and looks with anticipation toward the new song we will sing in the presence of God (Revelation 5:8–10). Through the lens of the past, and with an eye to the future, our songwriting finds its place.

As the timeline of redemption unfolds, culminating in the restoration of all things, God’s people will continue writing and singing new songs.

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Kevin P. Emmert says the biggest difference between old and new hymns isn’t Trinitarian theology.

If you think contemporary praise music lacks robust theology, you’re not alone. Modern worship is widely criticized for not being Trinitarian enough, and its lyrics are often perceived to be more romantic than reverent—as if Jesus were a significant other, not the God of the universe.

A new study, however, finds that Jesus has always been the primary focus of evangelical songs. Further, traditional hymns and contemporary worship are more similar in describing the Trinity than is widely believed.

So says Lester Ruth, research professor of Christian worship at Duke Divinity School. He compared the 110 worship songs that topped the Christian Copyright License International lists between 1989 and 2015 with the 70 most-printed US evangelical hymns from 1737 to 1860. He found that both traditional hymns and praise songs are equally weak in referencing the Trinity—and equally strong in addressing Jesus.

Ruth also found today’s praise songs never use sin as a verb per se, only as a noun; hymns predominantly use sin as a noun (including sinner) and occasionally as a verb (including sinning). No single theory of the Atonement predominates in either era. And whereas hymns tend to exhort people to worship, praise songs are more likely to worship God directly.

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Kevin Kruse is overwhelmed with worship songs.

I’ve wrestled with this dilemma before, but it seems more than ever there are just some amazing songs being written for the church. I find that with every new worship album I purchase there are usually multiple songs that I feel would be a fit for our church. It’s exciting and frustrating all at the same time! And as these new anthems continue to be written for the church, I feel the weight and the responsibility of selecting the “right” songs increasing.

So what do you do? With so many great songs, how do you choose which ones and how do you effectively introduce them to your church? Let me give you 3 simple steps that I have used that I think might help as you try and introduce new songs in your church

1. Pray. I know, it seems obvious. But I really believe prayer is important. If we’re not pressing near the heart of the Father God and really leaning in on Him for wisdom, then our song selections will be fueled out of possible unhealthy motives; like wanting to be trendy, or wanting a song that we think our voice sounds good singing. But when you pray and ask God, the songs might not always be the “cool” one, but they will be the right one.

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Greg Brewton says people leaving a worship service are more likely to be singing the words of a worship song than recounting the points of a sermon.

“Let me write the hymns of a church and I care not who writes the theology.” R. W. Dale

R.W. Dale, a nineteenth century English pastor, understood the vital importance of our congregational song lyrics. When music is used to accompany text, the text is heightened to a new level of remembrance. That is why people leaving a worship service are more likely to be singing the words of a worship song than recounting the points of a sermon. Congregational songs are not “filler” that leads to the sermon time. Through our worship songs we praise, pray, encourage and teach. One way worship leaders can disciple their congregations is through thoughtful song selection with great attention to lyrics.

Here are a few biblical principles to consider when choosing songs for congregational worship.

Our songs should be scripturally sound. The Apostle Paul tells Timothy to “rightly handle the word of truth” in 2 Timothy 2:15. Later in chapter 3 Paul reminds Timothy that ‘all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” As ministers we must give priority to the Word in worship and ensure it is rightly handled. When people are gathered in worship, we want everything spoken and sung to be rooted in Scripture. Is the song we are choosing scriptural truth? Not all worship songs are created equal in this way. Some popular worship songs can actually not be scripturally sound. As worship leaders we must have a theological foundation so we can wisely choose scripturally sound songs.

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Lets take a look at the DI and see what it can do for us:

What’s In a Name?

The direct box is named for the function it performs – a very sensible idea! The primary function of a direct box is to take a variety of non-microphone signals “direct” to the mixing console microphone input. The earliest direct boxes relied on a transformer to both reduce the input voltage (volume) to something the board could handle and to make the output impedance compatible with a mic input. Today direct boxes come in many flavors but can be broken down into passive versions that still use a transformer and do not require any external power, and active versions that use an electronic circuit to convert the signal and need some sort of power either from the mixer or a battery. A good direct box can do several things for us – let’s take a look.

High Impedance to Low Impedance

Impedance is the resistance of an alternating current circuit and is measured in Ohms (Ω) like normal resistance. In audio we want outputs to be lower in impedance than inputs because this effectively prevents any significant current from moving and doesn’t load down the audio output.

Mixer inputs are universally high in impedance (10k Ω or so) and almost any microphone or instrument output can be directly connected to them with the exception of electromagnetic pickups which have an output resistance of 10k Ω to a million Ohms – as high as or much higher than the input impedance at the mixer. The direct box converts this very high output impedance to a much lower one by using a transformer which effectively “moves” the signal over into a new circuit with a much lower output resistance.

Decouple Ground Paths

A direct box can also interrupt the ground path to the board preventing ground loop hum from entering the audio circuit. Ground loops occur when the local ground for the mixer has a different voltage than equipment elsewhere in the performance space. When those pieces of equipment are wired together the mixer sees this voltage difference as audio signal and the result is hum.

If we can interrupt the audio circuit the hum will be prevented. In an audio circuit the signal wire is actually the only wire that has to be present, so almost all direct boxes have a switch that will break the ground and prevent a continuous ground between the mixer and your equipment.

Convert to a balanced signal

A balanced audio signal is one where the audio has been duplicated into both a normal in-phase version and a reverse-phase version and sent along the signal cable. Any noise that enters the cable will be cancelled when the reversed-phase signal is flipped back into phase at the other end. This allows for long cable runs with less noise pickup and is preferred for low-amplitude sources like dynamic microphone outputs where the noise may be as loud as the signal itself.

A direct box transformer has a positive and negative taps that perform this out-of-phase conversion so that an un-balanced input will be converted to a balanced output.

Separating Truth from Fiction – Dun Dun Dunnnnn!

So we have been over the basic functions of any direct box so lets look at some myths and truths regarding their use. We are going to start from the premise that the best signal would be straight out of your instrument and into the board, so if we are going to put another piece of equipment in between it needs to be doing something for us.

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