We have unfortunately been so influenced in our churches today by the singing of pop music, which is breathy and unsupported—the very opposite of lustily and with good courage. Christians today have been taught by pop culture that if you really mean it, you’ll close your eyes, scrunch your face, sway a little, and sing in a light sensual manner. Don’t sing like that. That’s not how God created us to sing. That way of singing comes from the sensuality of pop music, it is a kind of singing that embodies the passions of the flesh, not from a robust love for God’s truth. Worldly culture is attacking the church and the family, worldly music has weakened congregational singing. Sing aloud to God our strength. Sing heartily!

God commands us to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, not as something optional, extra, or somehow disconnected from our mission to make disciples. No, as is clear from the broader context of Colossians 3, God commands us to sing, because singing is essential to discipleship.
On that basis, let us consider a few direct applications for your home and church.
1. Sing as Much as You Can
Singing is not optional. You can’t just say, well, singing is just not my thing. No, God commanded us to to sing because it is essential to our discipleship.
So sing as much as you can. In your home, sing before meals and after meals, make singing an emphasis in your times of family worship, sing before bed, sing in the car. Sing, sing sing. And our churches should be filled with congregational singing.
Be discerning in what you sing. Make sure that what you are singing accomplishes the goals of forming the kind of mature disciples mentioned here in Colossians 3 and all through the Scripture.
But once you have discerned what will help with the discipleship of your family or your church best, then sing! Singing ought to be a normal, regular occurrence in our homes and in our churches.
You might say, but I don’t know how to sing. I didn’t grow up singing, and I just don’t know how.
That leads to the next application.
2. Learn to Sing, and Teach Your Children to Sing
Singing is a skill, but it is a skill anyone can learn if you put a little effort into it.
What would you say if you were encouraging another Christian to faithfully read his Bible, and he said, “Well, I don’t know how to read. I didn’t grow up reading, so i just can’t read.” What would you say? Oh, OK. Well if you didn’t grow up reading, I guess we’ll just give you a pass on reading your Bible.
No! We would say, “Brother, that’s really too bad. I’m so sorry for you. So, now you need to learn how to read. God has commanded you to read his Word, so you need to do whatever it takes to learn the skills necessary to obey God’s command and feed your soul.”
The same is true for singing. Not having grown up singing is no excuse to disobey the command of the Lord. If you don’t know how to sing, then do whatever it takes to learn the skills necessary to obey God’s command and disciple your soul. Find another Christian who sings well and get help. There are all sorts of resources today to help you sing. Anyone can learn to sing, it just takes effort like any other skill.
And don’t make the same mistake for your own children.
Can you imagine a parent who said, “I’ll teach my children to read if they show an affinity for it”? Then why do we do the same with singing? God commanded his disciples to read the Word, and God commanded his disciples to sing the Word. Parents, make sure your children learn music. Get them into piano lessons. Enroll them in a good children’s choir. Raise up your children to be singers.
3. Get a Good Hymnal
I can’t stress this enough. There are certainly benefits to singing lyrics off of a screen, and I would never say it is wrong to do that.
But singing off a screen can never replace the benefits of a good hymnal. Much of the music illiteracy that plagues the church today is due to the decline of hymnals, where you can see the actual musical score.
You say, but I can’t read the musical score.
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We don’t muddle through life trying to make the best of things without a robust dependence on the Word of God as it proclaims the lordship of Christ, only at the end to say, “Oh yes, and one more thing, this is how you can be saved.” The grand redemptive narrative of our Trinitarian God, as it is revealed in the Bible, is the primary way we are to make sense of all the world, whether it is currently occupied by pagan leaders or those who claim Christ. As that narrative clearly says, sin and the dominion of Satan are the problem, and Christ is the conquering solution. This means that leadership problems are ultimately spiritual problems that require theological solutions.

There is a crisis of leadership. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic or alarmist. I’m not selling a grift course on how to solve all our leadership challenges. And I didn’t create a leadership assessment tool to unlock your potential. I don’t have a leadership degree from an Ivy League school plagued with leadership malfeasance (and I don’t want one). I am trying to be a realist. And we do actually have a significant global problem that bandies the word leadership around like being a leader is an essential human right. To highlight the problem, let’s say you’re going to have a conversation with a friend a few minutes after you read this essay. Your friend will start the conversation by saying, “I just read a news article about a well-known leader.” What do you think will follow that statement? The leader’s sordid financial dealings? A sexual scandal? A report on his gross incompetence? Accusations of plagiarism? A pattern of crude and abrasive language directed toward employees and colleagues? How far down the list do you need to go before you guess that your friend really wanted to tell you about the leader’s virtue, altruism, or skill at his profession? I’d guess it would be pretty far down the list. Even when we look at the leadership of clergy, men who used to be considered paragons of virtue in a culture, we find a similar problem.1 And to that, you might respond that it is only due to the media’s propensity to publish the salacious. To that, I’d say, “yes,” and “maybe.” But beyond media coverage, what is your personal experience of folks who go by the moniker “leader”? When we’re honest, we notice a strange tension. On the one hand, leaders have never had more access to leadership training, certificate accrual, books, or podcasts. Forbes reports that leadership development is a $366 billion industry. Someone is paying an NFL franchise-sized amount of money to grow as a leader. At the same time, leaders are struggling and not improving as leaders. In other words, in the face of enormous (faux) resources, leaders are actually getting worse and quitting in record numbers. Yes, there is a problem—in our culture and in the church.
Not the Problem You Thought
No, you did not make a mistake and visit the Drucker-Lencioni Weekly. This is a theological journal. And I’m not going to make the same argument that many make. The typical take on leadership issues (which also surface in the church) is that they are best sorted out at the corporation level and then applied piecemeal to the church. In this view, the church is downstream from where the real leadership work is being done—in very large secular institutions. In fact, the modern idea is that the church is so far downstream from secular leadership that it is a minor tributary tucked away in the reeds and marsh. The church is a kind of niché leadership environment, an oddity of low consequence to modern leadership concerns. So once the adults have figured out what plagues leaders, they’ll let the kids in on what might work for them in the church. I’d like to argue that this is entirely backward and has been for a very long time.2 This is why when most pastors want to study leadership, they read business books that are five years old or older.
I contend that the leadership crisis is a theological problem, that theological problems are always upstream from practical problems, that theological solutions are always primary, and that they tell us how to form and apply practical principles. The church (should be) is upstream from every form of instantiated secular leadership. That doesn’t mean that Microsoft would make a bazillion more dollars if the Bibles were on the desks of every VP, though I would be thrilled to find out that a Bible was on the desk of every VP at Microsoft. The Bible doesn’t work that way. But the Bible does reveal Jesus and the theology that describes his person and work. And that theology governs the world in which all of us live. It describes the world not as we’d like it to be but as it is. It describes the plight of every leader, no matter what his faith commitments are. It describes the general human condition, whether that human is a leader, CEO, VP, manager, colleague, or client. So, I believe one of the major reasons that leaders are struggling today isn’t just because of a post-COVID workplace filled with DEI-silliness, ESG regulations, and corporate greed. The problem is that we aren’t solving modern problems with correct solutions.
And I should add that upstream theology trumps any non-theologically based solution—conservative, liberal, left, or right. Many on the right want to return to the founding fathers, Classical literature, or the Great Books. These solutions aren’t necessarily bad3 but are incomplete and ultimately unable to solve what ails our leaders. They are giving out bandaids to treat cancer. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics are rather profound for a pagan and can make your immediate life and workplace a significantly better working environment compared to the morass that passes as wisdom today. Plato’s Republic is rather insightful as age-old wisdom for ordering loosely associated people. But even the (secular Greco-Roman) classics of Western Civilization are downstream from Christian theology. Christian theology takes precedence.
Returning Christian theology in general, and as it speaks to leaders and organizations specifically, to its rightful place as divinely revealed wisdom, centered on Christ, and able to equip the Christian for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16) has significant import for addressing what we’re currently facing in the crisis of leadership. This reorientation frees pastors from a schizophrenic mindset that attempts to reconcile Bavinck and Maxwell. It provides the watching world with wisdom and truth that are solely accessible through the church. It restores the church elder to the prominence in society that Jesus intended, if not in status, then definitely in influence. It guards against baptizing general leadership principles with biblical footnotes and calling it Christian. Ultimately, it recognizes that there is one great leader, one great king, and his name is Jesus. But before we get to solutions, we need to parse out this idea of revelation a bit more.
General and Special Revelation
To be more precise with my upstream-downstream analogy, the church has inverted general and special revelation when it comes to considering leadership. The world will always do this, as we’ll see, because all they have access to is general revelation and because special revelation looks foolish or weak to them (1 Cor. 1:20–25). That is expected. What is not expected is for the church to go along with this switcharoo, which we have. If you have turtled your boat and want to correct the problem, an essential thing to know is the deck from the hull. And yet, when considering issues around leadership—in society and in pastoral ministry—the church has been sailing along on a capsized ship, wondering why things aren’t going so well.
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God’s purpose for calling out a people for himself and unifying them together into one body under Christ is that his great wisdom might be marveled at by supernatural beings, ultimately bringing him supreme glory. Now what does it take for supernatural beings to marvel? It takes something supernatural, and God’s eternal plan of regenerating sinful people and uniting them together in one body is clearly that kind of supernatural act that would cause supernatural beings to marvel at the manifold wisdom of God.

What makes the events of Paul’s mission work in Philippi (Acts 16) so interesting for us is that this one of the first times that we are introduced to specific individuals who are converted and joined to the body of Christ. Luke takes note of a few individuals earlier in the book such as Paul himself or Sergius Paulus on Crete, but most of the time he just tells about groups of people who accepted the gospel. In Acts 16, Luke records the conversion of three specific individuals—Lydia, a slave girl, and a jailer.
The record of the salvation of these individuals serves a greater purpose than simply to provide interesting conversion stories. The fact that Luke, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chose to record the conversions of these three specific individuals was to teach us some important truths regarding the power of the gospel and Christ’s plan in building his church. Comparing and contrasting these three individuals help us to draw some conclusions regarding the nature of the gospel and the purpose of the church.
The Universal Appeal of the Gospel
Christ could hardly have chosen three more different people to save than Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer. Notice how different they were.
Nationality
First, their nationalities were different. Philippi was quite a cosmopolitan city. It was fairly large and influential, it was a common retirement spot for Roman military men, and it attracted much commerce. Lydia had evidently come to Philippi for the reason of commerce. Verse 13 says that she was from Thyatira, which was a city in modern Turkey. Thyatira was known for its fabric dyes, and evidently Lydia had come to Philippi to deal in dyed cloth.
The slave girl was likely a native of Philippi, and so she was probably Greek. As we’ll see in a moment as well, she was a worshiper of the Greek god Apollo, so that further indicates that she was probably Greek.
The jailer was a Roman soldier, maybe even a retired Roman official who had retired in Philippi.
So here we have three individuals who come to Christ, each of different nationality—West Asian, Greek, and Roman.
Gender
It probably goes without saying, but these individuals differed in gender as well. This may seem like a mundane point to us, but in that day women were looked down upon, and here Lydia becomes an influential member of the church, one of the few believers to be named in Paul’s letter to the church here. In fact, many scholars believe that Lydia was wealthy, and that her home was the meeting place for the church here.
Social
Which leads to the next difference. These three individuals were of completely different social status. Lydia was a business woman. She was likely wealthy. Not just anyone would have had space in their home to entertain guests like she did in verse 15.
The girl, as verse 16 tells us, was a slave. You couldn’t get much more opposite to a wealthy business woman than a slave. The girl was a member of the lowest class of their society.
The jailer fell somewhere in the middle. Being a soldier in the Roman army, he would have been your average middle-class worker.
Religion
The religious beliefs of these individuals differed as well. Lydia, according to verse 14, was a worshiper of God. She was a Gentile proselyte to Judaism. You might remember that on Paul’s first missionary journey it was his practice when he first entered a new city to visit the Jewish synagogue there. Now that his second journey had found him further away from Israel, the city of Philippi evidently had no synagogue. In order to have a synagogue, a city had to have at least 10 Jewish male heads of households in the city. So even in a fairly large city like Philippi, there were not even 10 male Jews. So Paul found the next best thing. As verse 13 tells us, on the Sabbath they went down to the river, and found several women who had gathered there to worship, and Lydia was among them. She had probably converted to Judaism in Thyatira where there was more Jewish witness, and when she came to Philippi had joined with other God-fearing woman in their Sabbath worship.
Once again, you could not get more opposite to Lydia in terms of religion than the slave girl. Verse 16 says that she had a spirit of divination. It literally says that “she had a spirit of Python.” According to the Greek myths, Zeus, the king of the gods, brought into existence at the town of Delphi an oracle, a place where the gods could be consulted. The oracle was guarded by Python, a female serpent, and answers from the gods were obtained through a priestess. According to mythology, Apollo, the son of Zeus, killed the serpent and took control of the shrine. He made the priestess, known as the Pythia or Pythoness, his servant. As a consequence, Apollo became known as the god of prophecy. Sometimes the name “Python” was associated directly with Apollo.
Based on the myth, at this time, there was an actual shrine and a succession of priestesses at Delphi, which wasn’t too far from Philippi. There are ancient pictures of the Pythoness sitting on a three‑legged stool over a cleft in the earth from which the oracle was supposed to proceed. When about to prophesy, she would go into a kind of ecstatic trance and utter a stream of unconnected phrases and obscure words. People would come from all over Greece to the shrine to enquire of the oracle, especially concerning the future. A priest would put their questions to the Pythoness, and her utterances, which were supposedly inspired by Apollo, would be interpreted by the priest and presented to the questioner, often in an ambiguous form.
The prophetic powers of Apollo, supposedly manifested in the priestess at Delphi, were also thought to be present in other women. Like the priestess, their utterances would be accompanied by convulsions or other abnormal behavior, which were assumed to be evidence of the presence of a spirit from Apollo, or a “spirit of Python.” In some cases, such behaviors may have been self‑induced; in other cases, they may have arisen from mental disturbance, or physical defects in the brain. Usually such a woman would be a slave, often owned by a group of men, who charged clients for her services.
So in Acts 16:16, the “slave girl who had a spirit of Python” was one of these women supposed to have similar powers to those of the Pythoness at Delphi, and to whom people came seeking the future. And evidently in this case she actually was demon possessed, which made her do things that people thought proved she was a Pythoness.
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