Worship Lyrics: Are Hymns Really Better?

I was talking to some new friends from our new church last night and was reminded during the course of conversation that there's still a false view out there about worship music in the Christian church that older means better, in terms of lyrical content.

I'm not calling anyone out on this because I think it's a pretty widespread view and it's easy to find evidence for, if that's what you're trying to do, but the fact is it's also easy to find evidence to the contrary.

This view that traditional music in the church is more full of meaningful lyrics and that modern music is more focused on the accompaniment to bring about an emotional response with lyrics that are less meaningful is generally false. Like I said, you can find evidence either way, but overall--speaking as a man who's memorized hundreds of songs over my 20 years as a worship leader--there is just as much awesome lyrical content now as ever, and our predecessors in worship songwriting were just as capable of producing stinkers as we are today.

Now, you've probably heard someone call modern worship "7-11 songs" because, they say, you basically just sing the same 7 words 11 times. That moniker, I believe, arose out of a time when the church had begun using short choruses in their sets that had easy melodies. Those were more popular in the 70's and 80's and into the 90's, so it's about time to retire the phrase "7-11 songs."

But what about lyrical content? Are the old hymns more rich with theological truth than modern worship songs?

Here are some of the lyrics to a song I've been learning recently called Take Heart, by Hillsong United. This is the first verse and chorus.

There is a light

Burns brighter than the sun

He steals the night

And casts no shadow

There is hope

Should oceans rise and mountains fall

He never fails

So take heart

Let His love lead us through the night

Hold onto hope

And take courage again

What do you see here? This is a more poetic approach than you’ll see in the more traditional songs, but is there less theological depth? Do these lyrics make you think about God in a way that draws you to worship Him? Because that’s the entire point isn’t it? With worship music, our goal is 100% to magnify God, which draws our spirits upward as we try to comprehend His greatness, as we are exposed to the truth of His goodness. To magnify is to make Him more clear, to increase the detail we see when we look at Him.

Let me show you an example. Look at that first line.

There is a light, burns brighter than the sun. He steals the night and casts no shadow.

What does that tell you about God? Some stuff we know well because we’ve read it, heard it, studied it. God is light. John 1:5 tells us that God is light and that in Him there is no darkness at all. Ecclesiastes 23:19 uses the language of brightness to describe God’s omniscience when it says that His eyes are 10,000 times brighter than the sun. Habakkuk 3:4, Matthew 12:2, and Revelation 1:16 all describe God/Jesus as being bright as the sun, but seeing that He made the sun, and all other stars, and that there are millions and millions of stars brighter than our sun, I think it’s safe to assume He’s not just as bright as the sun, but rather much brighter. If He decides He wants you to see Him that way, of course.

So God is bright. We get that. But have you ever thought of His brightness as “stealing the night” like this lyric describes? It’s just another way of thinking about brightness but it makes you think. How about something so bright, a light so pure and radiant that it doesn’t cast a shadow? Light always casts a shadow doesn’t it? If you’re using light and darkness as metaphors for good and evil, then you can think of God as so bright that nothing bad, nothing “dark” comes from His brightness.

Are you beginning to see what I’m getting at? This short line can do more to make you meditate on God’s greatness than other verses, both new and old, with many more words.

When you get to the chorus, “So take heart. Let His love lead us through the night,” we sing it still thinking about God’s immeasurable brightness and we are certain that if anything can lead us through dark times it is this God whose luminescence is so magnificent that it “steals the night” to the point that no shadow even remains.

This is just one example, and for every one of these profound lyrics in modern worship there’s another that’s trite and doesn’t do anything new to make us focus on the old truths in interesting ways. There’s nothing wrong with songs like that. Being straightforward is a perfectly efficient way to communicate God’s truth. So, the first takeaway here is that wordiness does not necessarily equal more theological depth, but…if you like loquaciousness in your worship music, we have that too. Consider O Praise the Name by Hillsong Worship. This is verse 1 and 2 and the chorus. There are two more verses that cover the Resurrection and the Second Coming.

I cast my mind to Calvary

Where Jesus bled and died for me

I see His wound, His hands His feet

My Savior on that cursed tree

His body bound and drenched in tears

They laid Him down in Joseph’s tomb

The entrance sealed by heavy stone

Messiah still and all alone

 

O praise the Name of the Lord our God

O praise His Name forever more

For endless days we will sing His praise

O Lord, O Lord our God

More of a straightforward account of the Passion, Resurrection, and Return or Jesus with a chorus that’s a response to the work of Christ, but that very first line is powerful. “I cast my mind to Calvary.” The idea is that we aren’t just repeating words, we’re meditating on the work of Christ. We’re “casting our minds” to Christ and what He has done, is doing, and will do.

There aren’t many songs, whether traditional or modern, which tell the story as succinctly and beautifully as this, taking into account that the accompaniment and melody are so perfectly constructed and arranged. Man or Sorrows by Hillsong and Jesus Thank You by Sovereign Grace Music are two that come to mind from the modern catalog, while When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and At the Cross are two from yesteryear which have been staples of the Church, and for good reason.

But again, for every At the Cross or Man of Sorrows there’s also a Nothing But the Blood or Lord I Lift Your Name on High. Not that the latter two are bad. The church needs all kinds of songs. We need deeper, weightier songs but we also need simple songs of praise and adoration, or dedication and celebration.

In conclusion, if you’ve gotten this far, I implore you not to close yourself off to any songs that have come out of a sincere desire to draw people into a place of worship or praise of our God simply because of the era from which they sprang. God’s people are still at work finding new ways to tell old truths. God never changes and His truth is as unchanging as Him, but He has gifted His people with a measure of His own creativity and He expects us to use that creativity to always be crafting new lyrics which magnify Him and motivate His people to join in and sing of His greatness, His goodness, and His work.

Until next time,

Peace, love, and a third thing.