Really! Why does worship always have to be so loud? Can’t it just be done quietly!?

From a purely physical point of view, instruments and voices automatically produce a certain level of volume when they make music together. From this perspective, worship (when accompanied by music) can be neither exceptionally quiet nor completely silent. Otherwise, we would simply hear the speakers humming. And that really is not the best worship sound.

However, I wanted to find out what the Bible says about the volume of worship music. I therefore did not examine how Jesus went into silence to pray. That is also a form of worship, although without music. Apart from that, there are only a few verses in the Bible on the subject of “being still”. Most of them are in the context of: “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:14 – NIV).

In the Psalms (the book of songs in the Bible) there are not really any passages that suggest we should worship in a quiet way. The most “quiet” psalm is probably Psalm 131.

What I do find over 20 times in the Psalms, though, is that we are to worship and praise God LOUDLY in every emotional state (from despair to joy) (Psalm 3:4; 18:6; 20:5; 26:7; 27:6–7; 28:2; 32:11; 33:3; 47:1; 48:11; 61:1; 66:8+17; 68:3; 77:1; 86:6; 95:1; 97:8; 102:1; 105:1; and so on…)! Here is an example:

“Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.” (Psalm 32,11 – KJV)

There’s something about this loud worship music. It does not necessarily have to be deafeningly loud. But it can sometimes reach around 92–95 dB(A). – The thing is this: if music is poorly mixed, it sounds like it’s deafening even at a low volume. Often because certain frequencies have got out of hand. But if music is mixed really well, it sounds fine even when it reaches 95 dB(A).

Action step: How can you, as a worship team, support your audio engineers, or even help them improve, so that your worship sounds better?