Posted By Christa Thornsbury on Sep 18, 2019 | 3 comments

In a previous essay, I discussed the increasing individualistic approach to music in our modern society. Now I want to focus on how this trend has affected our church music, both on the level of individual songs and on the level of our approach to church music in general. An examination of lyrics, style, and setting can inform us of how we should sing and how we have missed the mark.

Lyrics

Perhaps the most basic element of our church music is the words we sing. In recent years, a marked trend has emerged of singing about ourselves more than we sing about the work of Jesus, the glory of the Father, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Consider these lyrics to “Undignified,” a popular twentieth-century worship song:

I will dance, I will sing to be mad for my King

Nothing Lord is hindering this passion in my soul

I will dance, I will sing to be mad for my King

Nothing Lord is hindering this passion in my soul

[Chorus]

I’ll become even more undignified than this

Some may say it’s foolishness

But I’ll become even more undignified than this, oh yes.^[1]

In this song, the lyrical focus is on the believer himself and what he will do to show his devotion to Christ rather than on the work of Christ or the duties of the Christian life as set forth in Scripture.

Perhaps when you were younger, a kind teacher attempted to demonstrate to you our innate self-centeredness by asking you to count how many times you used the words me, my, myself, and I in your normal conversation. Maybe you were surprised by how often and how easily your words focused on yourself. Indeed, just as it is natural or too easy for us to become self-centered in our day-to-day conversation, so it is easy for the very words we sing in church to become less about Christ and more about us.

Lest you think this a problem of only songs written in the last twenty-five years, though, let us consider an older song that is found in many hymnals. “Mansion over the Hilltop” is a particularly egregious example of self-focus: “I’m satisfied with just a cottage below / A little silver and a little gold / But in that city where the ransomed will shine / I want a gold one that’s silver-lined. . . . I want a mansion, a harp, and a crown.”^[2] Clearly, this song focuses almost entirely on the personal benefits the Christian will receive in glory. In fact, many of the songs written about heaven in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem almost to worship heaven or the idea of heaven more than the Redeemer Who made our eventual entrance into heaven possible.

Of course, sometimes it is entirely appropriate to be self-referential in our singing. Take the Psalms of David, for example. David often used first person language, but David did not focus on his personal achievement nor on the blessings of the Lord without praising the Lord Himself. Similarly, there is a place in our own singing for us to reflect on our duty as believers or to acknowledge the personal blessings that are ours through Christ, though we ought carefully to consider the focus of songs with this kind of lyrics. The hymn “Abide with Me,” for example, is certainly written from the perspective of one’s personal walk with the Lord. However, its lyrics portray a dependence on the Lord, acknowledging that only through Him can we dwell in safety and have victory in this life. 

Furthermore, we must remember the corporate nature of worship and the need to fulfill the apostle Paul’s directive for church music in Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (ESV). Here, we see that our corporate singing is a means through which we teach and encourage one another and show our gratitude to God for His salvation and His blessings. Therefore, we ought to consider whether the songs we choose for each of our church services inspire reflection on the truths of Scripture or whether they instead shift our focus inward.

What we choose not to sing about is another way that self-centeredness is present in our lyrical choices. We rarely sing songs of repentance that acknowledge our sinfulness and need for Christ’s atoning work, nor do we often sing songs about death and judgment. These are essential elements of the Word of Christ that is to dwell in us richly. Nevertheless, we avoid such songs because they make us feel bad about ourselves or because we are afraid we will make Christianity repulsive to lost people by singing about these uncomfortable truths in our corporate worship. Yet to really teach and admonish one another with the songs we sing in church, we must not neglect songs that deal with these very serious matters.

Style

The style of our church music can also show a preference for our own tastes and our own experience during worship. We must acknowledge the truth that a song’s style influences us deeply; therefore, it matters that the form or style of our church music is appropriate.

First, choosing songs only because they sound similar to the current radio top forty might reveal a self-centered desire to sound like everyone else or an arrogant belief that the new songs we produce are better than the songs the church has been singing for hundreds of years. Perhaps, though, this error is presented with a better face: We might choose a pop style with the seemingly noble intention of appealing to the broad culture and getting more people into the church.^[3]

However, worship was never intended to be a way through which we can satiate our own preferences, nor is its primary purpose one of evangelization. Instead, as Paul writes in Colossians, we ought to be focused on both glorifying and praising God for Who He is and on encouraging our fellow believers when we gather for worship, particularly when we are singing. When we are overly concerned with what is trendy, we are in danger of being person-centered rather than Christ-centered.

Second, we must remember that the style of a song can manipulate our emotions. So many songs are written to make the hearer feel something on a purely gut level. While a song’s style should reflect the mood of its lyrics, it must not be contrived merely to elicit an emotional response. So often in the contemporary church, worshippers are addicted to the emotional high that comes along with these emotionally manipulative songs. What’s worse, in fact, the genuineness of one’s faith is often tested by whether or not he or she has an intense emotional experience in worship. However, we never see this litmus test for faith in Scripture. Instead, we see an emphasis on the total personality: hand, heart, and head (or will, emotion, and intellect). Emphasizing any one of these to the detriment of the others falls short of the Scriptural guidelines.

Setting

Very closely related to style is the setting of our church music. In many churches, the music portion of the service becomes something more akin to a stadium concert than anything else. So much attention is given to the lights, the singers on stage, and the sound engineering. Yet worship music ought never to be about our selfish desire to be entertained or to be praised for our slick performances. In addition, this production approach can become another means by which to manipulate the emotions of the congregation. Such a method takes the focus off of Christ and one another and places it instead on personal preferences and feelings.

Furthermore, the use of loud, distracting settings makes it impossible for us to hear one another sing, and “worship spaces” that are almost completely dark keep us from clearly seeing anyone else than those on the stage. In these cases, the worship leader becomes the performing artist, and, at best, we hear only our own voices. Admonishing and teaching one another with our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs is virtually impossible in this kind of loud and distracting setting.

Conclusion 

If we want to take the principles of Colossians 3:16 seriously and sing to one another for the purposes of teaching and thanksgiving, we must consider these matters carefully. We must examine our motivations for the choices we make in the musical part of our services. Is our goal to reach the rest of the world by becoming like them? Is our goal to ensure that the congregants leave the church service having experienced intense emotion merely for the sake of the experience? If so, we would do well to examine the Scriptures and to see if this is the intended goal of singing in church. If it is not (and it is not), we need to abandon these practices that, in the end, will do more harm than good.

Instead, we must seek to sing songs in such a way that glorifies God and engages our total personalities, not only our emotions. We must not be afraid to sing about our sin, to sing the Scriptures themselves, to sing songs that contain robust doctrine. We must not sing to glorify or gratify ourselves. We must sing to glorify God and to forget not His benefits.

^[1]Matt Redman, “Undignified,” Genius; https://genius.com/Matt-redman-undignified-lyrics; accessed September 17, 2019; Internet; emphasis added.

^[2]Ira F. Stanphill, “Mansion Over the Hilltop,” Genius; https://genius.com/Elvis-presley-mansion-over-the-hilltop-lyrics; accessed September 17, 2019; Internet.

^[3]Of course one could argue that many of the songs we have been singing in church for years bear similarities to the music of the time in which they were written. However, bear in mind that popular culture as we know it today has existed only for 150 years at most. Current popular culture places primary value on keeping things new and exciting and on creating cultural products that are, for all intents and purposes, disposable. Given its very nature, worship songs written with such close ties to modern pop culture are very likely to fade quickly.

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