Keith Getty says Christians must ‘sing the Bible’ in AI age

Ten years after Keith and Kristyn Getty launched what was intended to be a one-time event celebrating a book about congregational singing, the Sing! Conference has grown into an international gathering of pastors, theologians, musicians and believers focused on strengthening the singing life of the Church.

This year, the conference will return to Nashville on Sept. 7–9 with the theme “Symphony of Scripture,” marking the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s English New Testament and examining the influence of the Bible on worship, theology, language, culture and the arts.

For Keith Getty, the Grammy-nominated hymn writer behind worship classics including “In Christ Alone,” “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death” and “The Lord Is My Salvation,” the focus reflects what he says has always been at the heart of the Sing! movement: helping Christians sing the truth of the Scriptures.

“There are many goals with the Sing! Conference: congregational singing, to improve high artistry, but I think at the heart of it is helping people sing the Bible,” the Irish artist told The Christian Post.

Getty, who shares four daughters with his wife, said the timing of the anniversary was particularly meaningful because the first Sing! Conference was deliberately postponed until 2017 so it could coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Now, its 10th gathering falls 500 years after Tyndale’s English New Testament helped make Scripture accessible to ordinary English-speaking Christians. The conference will also coincide with the 25th anniversary of the English Standard Version Bible. 

According to Getty, this year’s conference will highlight not only how Scripture has shaped Christianity but also how singing biblical truth has shaped American life and the global Church.

The event, held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, will feature speakers alongside large-scale hymn sings, theological discussions, instructional sessions and orchestral performances. Crossway is also launching its “Symphony of Scripture” project, Getty said, and a full symphony orchestra will accompany the opening day’s programming before the Getty band takes a larger role beginning on the second day.

“We’re excited about all the potential this has to touch people, to bring the Bible to people in a fresh way and to a wider audience. It’s a really amazing missional opportunity,” he said. 

Music and poetry are embedded throughout Scripture itself, Getty contended, and have historically functioned as a way of teaching and preserving biblical truth.

“Scripture itself is about 20 percent poems and songs,” Getty said. “The Bible is more biased towards songs and poetry than any Christian book written since. … Singing is exhilarating. It’s a holy privilege. It is doxological worship to our God and Heavenly Father. But it’s never less than instructional.”

What Christians sing, Getty said, helps shape what they believe and remember. He pointed to Martin Luther’s vision for the Reformation: Scripture should be opened in the language of ordinary people, pastors should faithfully explain it, and believers should carry biblical truths through song.

Luther, who Getty said is his “hero,” envisioned Scripture being opened “in the language of the people” so ordinary Christians could read the Bible while pastors explained and applied its truths. But Luther’s vision didn’t stop at biblical literacy, he said.

“People would carry the Bible out of church by being able to sing the Bible in their own tongue,” Getty said. “In other words, he thought the singing of the Bible had more to do with Monday to Saturday than the preaching or the reading of the Bible.”

For that reason, the hymn writer said strengthening congregational singing is “hugely important to our Christian health.”

He also sees that mission increasingly extending beyond the Western Church. The songwriter noted that much of Christianity’s growth is now occurring outside the English-speaking West, often in places without centuries-old traditions of hymnody. Part of Sing!’s mission, he said, is to “be a supporter” and “help stimulate” the singing life of churches around the world.

“The goal is, number one, to really reform it in the Western Church, and then to go out and be a supporter and someone who could help stimulate and contribute to the singing life of the Church around the world,” he said.

And that emphasis on theology and the power of worship is reflected in the speakers selected for this year’s conference, among them John Piper, John Lennox, Wes Huff, Sinclair Ferguson, Malcolm Guite and Os Guinness, among others. 

“We take a theme each year and we share the platform with many people who we believe are wiser and more holy than we are,” he said. “The Sing Conference every year is, to some degree, what Kristyn and I have been learning in the last year, what we’ve been doing, what we’ve been writing, what we’ve been sharing.”

Unlike previous years, Piper won’t deliver expository Bible teaching at the conference, but will instead tell the story of Tyndale and the extraordinary personal cost of his determination to give English-speaking Christians access to Scripture.

“I think a lot of how grace is taught today is just way too casual. It’s way too easy,” Getty said, adding that for Tyndale, faithfulness meant being “turned down 100 times” and ultimately being killed for his work. “I think Piper has a great way of telling that.”

Huff, a Canadian Christian apologist who has gained a significant following, will focus on the credibility of Scripture. Getty said Huff is “appealing to a new generation” that churches and Christian conferences have not always successfully reached.

Meanwhile, Guite, an Anglican priest, poet and longtime Cambridge educator, will examine Tyndale’s influence on the English language and subsequent literature, while Guinness will address Christianity’s engagement with culture. Ferguson, a prolific author and speaker, will focus on theology and worship.

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The conference will also address a decidedly 21st-century issue: artificial intelligence. Getty revealed that Huff and Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox will participate in what he described as a first-of-its-kind conversation between the two on “biblical intelligence versus artificial intelligence and the future.”

“As we enter the AI age, both the confusing disparity of what people have known to be true in the past and what is the new reality that they’re going to discover in the next one to 10 years will be so dislocating,” Getty said. “With the internet … rose depression, and then social media rose anxiety. And I think what AI is going to do for loneliness and just the lack of any sense of friendship is so crazy.”

The response, according to Getty, shouldn’t be fear, but be to root Christians more deeply in eternal truths and in the physical community of the Church.

“I think all the more important that we sing of Heaven, that we think of Heaven, that our trust is [in] eternal things. Ultimately … our hope has to be in Heaven,” he said, adding that throughout Christian history, movements of renewal have consistently produced new songs.

“All great movements result in doxology,” Getty said. “They result in people singing because, as the hymn writer says, how can we keep from singing? We just can’t. That’s how we’re made.”

“The world was sung into being,” he added. “Heaven is a picture of God’s people singing, and we want to help equip the Church to engage more fully in worship.”

Learn more about the Sing! Conference here.