Verdimus exists to train musicians in minority cultures to find ways to use their cultures’ music systems in Christian worship, discipleship, and evangelism.
People can understand the truths of the Bible only if they hear them in a language they can understand and think them through in their heart language, the language they know best. Each spoken language has its own words and ways of putting them together, and we can understand what people say only if we understand the words and how they are put together.
Music is also a language of the heart; it affects the way we feel. And just as one spoken language can communicate clearly to some people and be just noise to others, music that can make some people very happy or sad can sound like noise to other people.
The Bible encourages music more than any other art form as the way to connect biblical truth with our emotions:
Sing praises to God, sing praises.
Sing praises to our king, sing praises.
For God is king of all the earth.
Sing praises with understanding. (Psalm 47:6–7)
Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing [songs] and singing praise in your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19)
The goal of Verdimus is to help the church in minority cultures to “sing praises with understanding,” not only of the words, but of the tunes, so that their “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” speak to their hearts and from their hearts to the Lord.
Vernacular Discipleship through Music 