The Scandal Of Pagans Leading Worship

by on May 23, 2025 | 5 Comments

Collin Hansen has a fascinating series of interviews on the Gospel Coalition asking a variety of pastors whether they allow those who make no Christian profession, who regard themselves as non-Christians, non-believers, those we used to call “heathen” or “pagans,” to lead worship through leading or playing musical instruments.1 The responses vary from “Yes” (Scotty Smith, a PCA pastor), to “No” (Mike Cosper, and Jonathan Leeman), and “Maybe” (Zach Nielsen). This discussion was stimulated by a post by Bob Kauflin.2 Collin draws attention to the arguments made by Tim Keller in favor of including self-identified non-Christians “in our services” in musical ensembles on the grounds that it fits with Redeemer’s version of the “Reformed world and life view.”3

The first problem, however, which Collin’s post does not address, is the very existence of a praise team. Before we ask, “Who should serve on a praise team?” we need to ask and answer a more fundamental question: Has the God that revealed himself in Holy Scripture, whom we worship, required us to create and constitute praise teams in corporate worship? Some who know a little about Reformed worship might reply, “But a praise team is just a circumstance and therefore we do not have to answer that question.” Really, is having a praise team morally and logically equivalent to whether we meet at 10AM or 11AM, or whether we speak French (in a Francophone congregation) or English (in an Anglophone congregation)? Is a praise team morally indifferent (adiaphora) and purely a matter of Christian liberty?

I am not sure it is. A praise team is essentially a version of the choir. The choir sings for the congregation. Sometimes the choir leads the congregation in singing. The praise team performs both of these functions. When the Reformed churches subjected the western liturgies to the scrutiny of God’s Word by asking the sort of questions I asked above, they did not regard choirs as adiaphora. Rather, they concluded that God’s Word does not command the creation of a special class of Christian worshipers to lead worship.

There is nothing wrong with having musically gifted (in the generic sense, not specific only to instruments but able to read music, able to sing on key) and skilled people in the congregation. It is a great blessing. There is nothing wrong with having those people teach the rest of us to sing on key and in time and even to read music, but the existence of praise teams in Reformed churches deserves examination. If the use of praise teams in Reformed churches is without authorization from God’s Word, then we have solved the problem of pagans leading worship (by serving on praise teams).

Embedded in the existence of praise teams is also the question of the use of musical instruments in public worship. Where has God commanded his new covenant people to take up the typological and shadowy and bloody musical instruments (covered with the blood of bulls and gentiles)? Sing praise? Yes! With musical instruments? If the original Young, Restless, and Reformed folk have anything to say to us, they examined the medieval introduction of musical instruments into Christian worship and rejected it, in Calvin’s words, as “stupid imitation” (of the Mosaic epoch).4 My experience strongly suggests that, even if there is a case to be made that the praise team is a circumstance, the musical instruments being used are not a mere circumstance.5 Church members do not split congregations or go to war over mere “circumstances” (e.g., a 10AM service or 11AM service), but they will if you try to take their musical instruments away.

It is striking that two of the people cited by Hansen as those advocating the employment (in the generic sense and in the sense of “we pay them”) are ministers in Reformed churches. It has long seemed to me to be a little scandalous that Reformed churches hire self-conscious non-Christians (pagans) to lead worship. I have seen it done in “conservative” congregations on the grounds that “we need an organist,” and it is justified by more upwardly mobile congregations on aesthetic grounds or even as a form of evangelism.

If we are going to use Mosaic forms (e.g., harps and lyres and choirs) in our worship, then had we not better ask the Old Testament what it thinks about hiring Canaanites to lead in the worship of Yahweh? If, however, we accept the older Reformed notion that the Mosaic (old) covenant expired (Westminster Confession of Faith [WCF] 19) with the death of Christ and that (Heb 7–10; 2 Cor 3; Gal 3–4) we are new covenant Christians, and that the Mosaic ceremonies (types and shadows) have been fulfilled in Christ, then let us also ask what would Paul do? Would Paul ask self-identified pagans to help conduct Christian worship services? Can we really imagine that?

We have a fairly clear witness from Paul himself as to how he viewed the role of self-identified non-Christians in public worship. 1 Corinthians 14 seems to make it clear that Paul envisioned “outsiders or unbelievers” (ιδιωαι η απιστοι—1 Cor 14:23—“unbelievers” and “outsiders” are two ways of describing the same group) would find their way into Christian worship services. He did not, however, seem to imagine that they would be invited by the pastor and elders to lead the service! Rather, Paul envisioned that, when an unbeliever (and outsider) finds himself in a rightly ordered Christian worship service, the unbeliever would be convicted of his sins, come to faith and repentance, and fall down before God.

We should also observe how Paul thinks about “unbelievers” and the distinction he regularly makes between them and Christians. The latter are not to take internal disputes (which happen!) among Christians before “unbelievers” (1 Cor 6:6). A Christian spouse should not divorce a pagan spouse simply because they are an unbeliever, but if the unbeliever leaves, the Christian is not obligated (1 Cor 7:12–13). Speaking in foreign languages are not a sign for believers, but a sign of God’s judgment on unbelief (1 Cor 14:22). Unbelievers are those whose minds are “blinded” by “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). Believers are not to be “unequally yoked” with unbelievers (2 Cor 6:14) because there is a fundamental spiritual antithesis between belief and unbelief ( 2 Cor 6:15). If a Christian man fails to provide for his household, he is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim 5:8).

What in these verses would cause one to conclude that Paul would support the employment of unbelievers as part of a “worship team” in Christian services? What in these verses would cause one to conclude that the cultural mandate (transformationalism) is such that a session (elders and pastors) is free to employ non-Christians in leading sacred worship? Does not Tim Keller’s invocation of the “Reformed world and life view” signal how subjective the “Reformed world and life view is,” that it is a license to baptize anything one will?6

Rather, it seems as if the argument in favor of employing non-Christians as leaders of Christian worship makes common what Paul makes sacred. The antithesis that Paul teaches is a spiritual antithesis, not a cultural antithesis. As a matter of divine revelation and providence, we have a common culture with non-Christians. We are not commissioned to create a distinctly Christian language (e.g., Greek, Latin, English, French, and “Christian”). No, we express the Christian faith, using a sometimes distinct vocabulary, in whatever language is at hand. We share with unbelievers the methods of farming.

There are, however, things we do not share. The things not shared are sometimes described as belonging to the “antithesis” between belief and unbelief. The antithesis is spiritual and epistemic. The epistemic aspect of the antithesis simply means that believers begin with God’s self-revelation, and they interpret God’s self-revelation in the world and in the Word in submission to Christ. The spiritual aspect of the antithesis is at the forefront of Paul’s mind and writing. Believers belong to Jesus in a special way as his redeemed people. They have been bought with a price. The Holy Spirit has been poured out upon them. None of that is true of unbelievers. They do not belong to Jesus in the special, redemptive sense of “belonging.” They do not have his Holy Spirit. They have not been accepted (justified) by God for the sake of Christ’s righteousness imputed and received through faith alone. Unbelievers are under God’s wrath. Believers are under God’s peace.

Nowhere does the spiritual and epistemic antithesis come to a clearer expression in Holy Scripture than when it considers public, corporate worship. We live in the world, under God’s common providence, with unbelievers sharing (Matt 5:48) in God’s common gifts to humanity; but when we gather, on the Sabbath, for Christian worship, we withdraw from the common into a special, sacred space and time. It is not a time to celebrate our common humanity with non-believers; it is not a time for cultural, artistic expression and achievement. It is a time to bow before the face of our Holy Triune God and worship him as he has commanded (WCF 21.1). In this sense, holiness is about distinction (antithesis) between belief and unbelief. To make something sacred is to set it aside. That is what we are in corporate worship—God’s holy people, his holy priesthood (1 Pet 2:5), a holy temple. It is then that we express our status as a “holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9).

This is why Paul speaks of unbelievers as “outsiders,” because he was distinguishing between that which is common and that which is sacred, between culture and worship. In light of that distinction, in light of what we confess about what God’s Word teaches about worship, let us worship God in the way that he has commanded. Let us enjoy and revel in the common as appropriate, but let us enjoy and revel in our holiness when that is appropriate too, and God has not commanded that his holy people should be led by self-conscious unbelievers in sacred worship.

Notes

  1. Collin Hansen, “TGC Asks: Do Non-Believers Play a Public Role in Your Church Services?” The Gospel Coalition, December 2, 2010.
  2. Bob Kauflin, “Non-Christians on the Worship Team?” Worship Matters, May 22, 2008.
  3. Tim Keller, “Reformed Worship in the Global City,” in D. A. Carson ed., Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids, MIL Zondervan, 2002).
  4. “Calvin On Instruments: ‘Stupid Imitation,’” Heidelblog.
  5. R. Scott Clark, “Could Instruments Be Idols?”
  6. R. Scott Clark, “World and Life View: License to Baptize?”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2010.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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