I was raised in the church of Christ, and I come from a long line of elders and deacons in the church. My great-grandfather was a church of Christ preacher who, epically, would approach the platform and set his pistol and Bible on the pulpit and proclaim, “There are mean people in this town.” That’s a story my dad would tell me about my Davy Crockett-looking, frontier living grandpa. I love that story.

I’ve shared in other posts and videos my testimony on why I left the church of Christ and joined, and later on, became an ordained Pentecostal preacher, so I won’t go that route today. However, I do want to touch on a topic that I have found to be an absolutely silly division within the church, and that’s the topic of forbidding instruments in the church. The churches of Christ are non-instrumental, whereas the Pentecostal churches embrace musical instruments during worship.

Now, I did have a friend who attended a church of Christ that actually had a piano in the same small town where I grew up. Sadly, we weren’t permitted to fellowship with each other because my church (non-instrumental) didn’t see them as Christians (because of the piano). I was taught that in the New Testament, the church didn’t have instruments; thus, we don’t. Oddly, this was a subject they were very passionate about. A hill they were willing to die on.

I want to note that I find acapella singing just fine, and congregational singing is beautiful in my opinion. I’m also aware of, and fear that, too many churches have caved to becoming a weekend concert with frontmen and bands. This is an area in which I can agree with those in the non-instrumental camp.

Let me be clear. I believe instruments are meant to be used to worship the Lord. I believe the focus should be solely on Jesus and to lift up His name. For example, the Old Testament instructs on the use of instruments in 2 Chronicles & Psalms, and the New Testament supports it.

The New Testament? Yes, the New Testament supports musical instruments and, most importantly, doesn’t forbid them. Let’s look at a passage often quoted by ministers in the church of Christ (out of context, I might add) in an attempt to show how the New Testament church is to worship.

speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, -Ephesians 5:19

So, where are the instruments? They are found in the definition of a “psalm”. Let’s look at the definition!

A Psalm is a set piece of music, i.e. a sacred ode (accompanied with the voice, harp or other instrument.)

psalmós – a psalm (“Scripture set to music”). Originally, a psalm (5568 /psalmós) was sung and accompanied by a plucked musical instrument (typically a harp), especially the OT Psalms.

If a critic is honest, they have to admit that nowhere in the New Testament are instruments forbidden during worship. However, their defense that we don’t see an example of instruments in the New Testament is destroyed by simply understanding what a psalm is.

We can use instruments because the New Testament Greek text itself uses a word that means to sing with a stringed instrument. This shows us that instruments weren’t left behind in the Old Covenant.

In this video, I share an encounter that I had with a professor who was an elder in the church of Christ when I showed him what the definition of a psalm was.