Why NOT the Psalms?

I came into Reformed theology in late 1998. For me, the word of God began to make better sense, especially regarding the doctrine of election. Eventually, I learned that being Reformed, or Calvinistic had a great bearing on worship. In the Summer of 2002 I began to study worship song. Previously, I had come to hold seriously Paul's commands to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. My superficial understanding of those commands led me to believe that we should sing the biblical psalms in addition to hymns such as "A Mighty Fortress is our God," or "Amazing Grace," etc. I basically equated spiritual songs with good hymns that were doctrinally and theologically sound.

In 2002, I wanted to know more of the degree of prominence of psalm-singing in the contemporary church and historically. As I grew up in traditional African American Baptist churches, we never sang an entire psalm. I remember our choir at one church that sang a portion of Psalm 27 as a "prayer chant." That's it. As I thought about this, no one, I mean a pastor, ever looked in the Scriptures to state that we need to sing psalms. The first time I heard anyone even suggest psalm-singing was at a leadership meeting at a church where I served in the ministry; because of my ignorance, I blasted the idea calling it "High Church." I was wrong. The person that offered the suggestion was a musician who played at a Lutheran church and had been reared in African Methodism. I later learned that both of these traditions feature psalm singing or chanting.

When I did begin to study psalm-singing, I became convinced that not only should we sing psalms but we MUST sing psalms. How could I have missed this? I've referred already to Paul's commands in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3. James also commands psalm-singing: "Is any merry? let him sing psalms" (5:13b). We know that the Church at Corinth sang psalms (see I Corinthians 14:26). All of these NT commands support the commands in OT to sing psalms (see Psalm 95:2; 98:5). It is clear that the Church of God must sing psalms.

Since this is a clear command, why are there only two metrical psalms in The New National Baptist Hymnal(see Hymns 2, 7), one psalmodic refrain (Hymn 532), and four paraphrases of psalms (Hymns 19, 210, and 289). That's it. We know that few, if any, African American Baptist churches only sing from the hymnbook. Most of the singing is from whatever is contemporary in the gospel music industry. Because of such, psalm-singing is obsolete and forgotten.

To worship according to the word of God, African American Baptists must rediscover psalm-singing.