Keith Getty Explains How Worship Music Teaches Children Scripture
By Movieguide® Contributor
Musician Keith Getty spoke about why worship music is a key element for children’s faith development during a recent interview with the Christian Post.
The interviewer began, “You mentioned a growing hunger for music geared towards children and families. So why this is such a prominent desire right now? And how does Getty music address this?”
“[It goes] right back to the Shabbat, in the Old Testament, ‘Read these truths in your children’s hearts,’” Getty shared. “And through Christian history, teaching our children to sing is important.”
“Obviously, the mediazation [sic], the globalization of culture, has taken away something of that pattern of families singing hymns together…If we go back 100 years, the American Sunday school movement that pretty much everybody who’s been to churches experienced actually began a singing school…You would go to church on a Sunday, and you’d learn to study the Bible and pray and sing,” he explained.
“By extension, singing songs of faith to our children is an important part of faith formation,” the Presbyterian Outlook stated.
“Music binds the community together, and thus singing to our children, surrounding them with the music of our faith, should be an everyday way that we encourage the faith development of our young ones,” the article explained.
More than simply building community, though, music allows children to learn more about their faith.
“We think less [today] about singing as being a way to learn our faith,” Getty continued. “I think that’s a concern because the Bible is 20% poetry and songs for a reason.”
“If we’re in a generation where we’re singing less and the songs have less truth, then we have to presume that we’re going to have a lot less of the Bible dwelling richly in us,” he continued.
Getty explained that singing the Bible builds an emotional connection that enables children to realize when something they are hearing isn’t right.
“We’re letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly when we meet together singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs,” he continued.
“Every day of in lives, our kids are going to be listening to songs and singing the truths of those songs into their hearts, so we have to decide, do we want Taylor Swift, do we want Disney or do we want our spiritual leadership in our kids’ lives because it is crucial,” Getty concluded.
Movieguide® previously reported on Getty:
Composed in 2001 by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, “In Christ Alone” has become one of the most well-known praise songs in churches across the world.
Getty said that when he first scrawled the melody on the back of an electric bill in Northern Ireland, he had little hope for the song.
However, Getty decided to send it to Townend regardless, with the prospect that the English songwriter could put lyrics to the melody and create a serviceable hymn.
“We got together, we had a coffee, nothing particularly eventful happened,” Townend recalled in a 2016 interview. “He said he’d send me a CD with some of his song ideas. … It arrived and I wasn’t expecting anything.”
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