WORDSMITHS

I’m concerned about some of our worship songs.  Some of the songs are fine; but some are disappointing, with weak or meaningless lines.  Others are more dangerous because some of their words or images are unbiblical.  And since songs tend to stick with us, they effectively become vehicles that teach bad doctrine.  As a pastor, I always told the worship-leaders, “Look at the words before you fall in love with the tune.”  Nowadays I find myself singing an edited version of many songs.  In all good conscience, some of their lines I am unable to sing.

I could offer examples, but that might just divide opinion.  And it’s not the point anyway, because it’s not really the songs that I’m attacking, just whether they are suitable for use in corporate worship.

For years, I’ve participated in the performance of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.  Now if you know anything about Gilbert and Sullivan, you’ll probably know that Gilbert wrote all the words, and then Sullivan set them to music.  Each was proficient in his field.  Sullivan didn’t do words.  Gilbert claimed that he knew only two tunes, “and one of them is ‘God Save the Queen!’”  Someone asked, “And the other?”  “Isn’t,” Gilbert replied!  The point is that there was a division of labour, and each of them was very skilled in his own area.

In more recent years, Elton John had Bernie Taupin.  In ABBA, for the most part Benny wrote the music and Bjorn then put the words to it.  Yet Bjorn is also a musician.  Other practitioners are singer-songwriters, who write both words and music, and then sing them.  There are many models, and apparently all of them can work.

Terry Virgo said many years ago, “Worship has been hijacked by musicians.”  I think I understand what he meant.  Yet the reality may perhaps be better expressed as: those who are not top musicians have abdicated from worship.  Now that the simplicity, or some might say the crudity, of early charismatic worship has developed into the more professional, band-led approach, many of us have left the worship to the musicians.  But we’ve also largely left the song writing to the musicians.  We’ve gone for the singer-songwriter model.  Perhaps we’ve capitulated to the singer-songwriter model.  And sometimes it works well.  But it puts a lot of responsibility on musicians—musically gifted, melodically creative, and able to craft biblical truth into a balanced and accurate lyric.  It’s a lot.  Is it any wonder that we sometimes get questionable phrases and poor doctrine in the songs?

And so I ask this:  Where are the wordsmiths?  Where are those who have the gifting to craft biblical truth into a good lyric, that the musicians can then set to music?

Then I realise, maybe I am one!

George Alexander
October 2023
Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash

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