How Do We Know What Is Good?

A Houston-based worship leader, Tyler Anson Newberry, says one of the questions he hears most often from young worship leaders is a plain one: how do you know if a song is good? The report describing his work notes that he has been in ministry for more than thirty years, and that for him evaluating a new song takes only a few minutes. Many of us would like that kind of confidence.

The question is larger than music. How do we know whether anything set before us — a song, a teaching, a fashion in the church — is good and true? Christians have wrestled with this for centuries, and we are right to listen to that long conversation. As The Gospel Coalition has put it, we should show due deference to the Christian tradition, while Scripture keeps its pride of place as the inspired Word of God.

That ordering matters. Tradition instructs us; Scripture judges us. The letter to Timothy sets out the standard: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." The test of a song, or a sermon, or a settled habit, is not whether it moves us quickly. It is whether it holds up against that word.

So take your few minutes, or your few years. Measure what you meet against the one thing that measures everything else.