Why Singing is Key to Making Jesus Known

When I witnessed my friend Kekey choose pastoral ministry instead of the path of a voodoo priest, my first response as a missionary was to sing. 

Years later, sitting under Kekey’s preaching, I still find myself praising God with Matt Redman’s song 10,000 Reasons: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, worship his holy name…for all your goodness I will keep on singing, ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.” 

Why would my first response be to sing? Because, put simply, we sing our theology.

Every pastor knows the congregation usually leaves singing the songs from Sunday’s service rather than reciting the sermon. Every parent knows the catechizing power—and occasional silliness—of Scripture memory songs. 

And, as I can attest, every missionary knows the capacity of music to embed new truths in the hearts of believers scattered among the nations. Why? Because we sing our theology. 

The Psalter itself traverses sorrow, faith, conquest, praise, and joy, capturing the full spectrum of emotions unique to image-bearers of God. This is why we curate worship set lists. This is why Christian songwriters and musicians labor: Because we sing our theology. 

I am not a songwriter or a musician, and I’m certainly no singer—ask anyone seated near me in worship! I am simply a missionary. But I do sing. I sing out of the intense joy—and intense despair—that mark Great Commission obedience. 

Every single day, I sing the lyrics of  Scripture etched permanently on my heart, because as an image-bearer of the God who sings, I am a missionary who sings (Zephaniah 3:17). 

I sang songs of praise when God awakened the heart of Tomas, the elderly village shaman, to the glory of the gospel after nearly two years of patient evangelism. Matt Boswell’s O God of Our Salvation filled my heart and mouth: “O God of our salvation who reigns upon the throne. The sovereign Father, great is he, from whom all blessings flow.”

I whispered songs of sorrow when Isabela, my unbelieving neighbor, breathed her last while I held her helplessly in my arms. Broken and scared, I sang the truth of God’s sovereign goodness captured by Chris Tomlin’s lyrics: “Sovereign in my deepest cry…God, whatever comes my way, I will trust you.” 

And it was Shane & Shane’s Though You Slay Me that carried me and my wife through the long drive home on abandoned roads, weeping and worshiping in our foreign island home, after we miscarried our precious child during COVID. We sang our theology, our hearts clinging to these words: 

“Though you slay me
Yet I will praise you
Though you take from me
I will bless your name
Though you ruin me
Still, I will worship.”

SINGING OUR MISSIOLOGY 

Our theology includes our missiology. We know that the mission of God—the eternal plan of the Trinity—is to display Christ’s glory among every people. And that’s certainly worthy of song as well.

Yet, after 15 years on the mission field, I realized I had never found the one song that captures the essence of missions: the preeminence of Christ, the indwelling power of the Spirit, and the summons to the bride to proclaim her groom’s good news to every nation, in every land, and across every generation. 

But I think I’ve found one.

StillCreek’s new song Christ to Every Nation magnifies the gospel of Jesus, not the work of the missionary. We are merely his sent ones, “the ones who bring good news, that the Son of God has come, full of grace and truth; at the cross he bore our sin…now his resurrection life reaches far to save.” 

Transformed by the same message we herald, we sing to remember his worth and our privilege to “proclaim his worth in all the earth until he comes again.” 

The chorus—“we’ll praise Christ from every nation”—captures the providential interweaving of theology and missiology, fulfilling the eschatological vision of Psalm 96:3, Habakkuk 2:14, and Revelation 7:9–10, cherished by every missionary.  

So now, I sing my missiology. I sing to reorient my heart, my ambitions, my money, my time, and my gifts toward God’s global renown. I sing to awaken my own heart—and the hearts of the nations—to the supreme worth of Jesus. 

Missions is worthy of song because Jesus is worthy of worship from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It’s worthy and it’s necessary: We must continue our songs of theology and missiology until Christ is praised from every nation.