Levitical Age Limit

It seems to me that Leonard Payton touched an important part of church music in his article "Singing and the Ministry of the Word" when he spoke briefly about the age requirement of the Levitical priests. He writes, "A Levitical musician reached maturity at age thirty, not age twenty as in the case of the unspecialized Levite (1 Chron. 23:3, 5, 24). One wonders what the state of church music today would be were musical leadership withheld until age thirty."

Much of the move towards contemporary church music in mainline demoninational churches seems to have been in an effort to 1) Keep younger members interested in church or 2) Give younger members an opportunity to express their faith in ways that are culturally relevant for them. While the these motivations may not necessarily be bad, the true danger is allowing Christians who are not yet biblically educated or mature to control the times of corporate singing. Certainly the church ought to be concerned with keeping the next generation involved in the church, but not at the expense of biblical teaching. And the certainly the church ought to give its younger members opportunites to develop their gifts, but again, not at the expense of immature or heretical teaching. Payton writes, "If we are serious about sola scriptura, perhaps we should view an age restriction of thirty as a very prudent guideline, especially as our American culture is increasing in its infantility." Though perhaps not that high, I believe he is right in his sentiment.