Psalms With a Twist of Clay

Don't call fire from heaven down upon your Baptist hymnals or boycott Chris Tomlin concerts just yet, but I think we need to sing more of the psalms. We need to sing for our instruction. We need to sing to commit these biblical verses to memory. However good David Crowder and Matt Redman are, they can't claim to have been inspired by God to write faultless and perfect lyrics. Only David, Solomon, Moses, Agur, and the Sons of Korah (all of whom are writers who show up randomly in the Book of Pslams) can claim to have done that. That said, we need to find more interesting ways to sing these inspired verses of praise; the flat choruses of past generations just don't cut it any more (if they ever did!) and they don't draw their hearers into the experience. If we want to experience God through music, though, then Jars of Clay might be setting an example of how to approach the Psalms with good musical style - take note, young worship team members! If you have a band, halfway knowledge on any musical instrument, or some other means of getting an instrument and having people hear you, definitely consider a psalm when you can.