Last Thursday, I was turned away from my favourite pub. Not for being drunk and disorderly, you’ll be pleased to hear, but because a team from my church were inside, kicking off the 11th annual Beer and Carols night, and the place was too stuffed for a single person more.

This is a big pub. It’s called Telford’s Warehouse and, as the name suggests, it’s an old warehouse. It has multiple levels and a gig space and very high ceilings. But despite all that, there was no room at the inn.

Rightly so, because Beer and Carols is truly wondrous. The joy, camaraderie, and beauty in the room are something else. The beer is helpful because we’re English and need a little prod to loosen up, but it’s the carols that bring the magic. They imbue that ex-industrial bar with rowdy, giggly, occasionally discordant wonder.

On Saturday, the script was flipped. My wife and I went to see a band called Stornoway in a church on Penny Lane, where the young Paul McCartney was a choirboy. Stornoway’s sensitive, affably romantic folk has a way of becoming very important to you. We had their November Song at our wedding, and the lyrics are up in our kitchen. Predictably, I cried when they played it – and I heard plenty of snuffles during other tunes, too.

There it was again – that wonder. Although most of the audience probably weren’t Christians, in that ‘sacred’ space, the ‘secular’ music communicated God’s love, care, and beauty.

For good measure, on Sunday I went to see said choirboy at the biggest arena in Europe. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Paul McCartney puts on a good show, or that his concerts are a religious experience for Beatle superfans. Suffice to say, bellowing ‘naah-na-na-NA-NA-NA-NAAH’ with 23,000 others gave me some sense of what John may have experienced during his vision of the multitude (Revelation 7:9–10).

Hymns in a pub, folk in a church, Beatlemania in an arena. Very different styles and venues. But whether they were explicitly Christian or not, the mystery and wonder of God was in all three moments. Music powerfully confronts us with him, wherever we find it.

This week, if you’re playing music, know you’re communicating something of the Lord. Or, if you just love music, maybe it can be the cue for you to share why you also love the One who gave it to us.

Josh Hinton
Head of Communications, LICC