Part One: Three Questions

All churches come together to sing, and most Christians would readily affirm that this shared musical practice is a significant element in spiritual life. Yet the exact manner in which music exerts powers of spiritual formation may seem amorphous and elusive. I will approach the subject by asking three questions:

How do song lyrics affect us?

What kinds of musical experiences may subtly exclude some Christians?

What happens when music in the church borrows from music in the culture?

I will explore each of these and then conclude with suggestions for understanding theologically rich lyrics, inviting participation from all congregants, and innovating in areas where the culture may prove unhelpful.

Question 1: How Do Song Lyrics Affect Us?

Lyrics have the power to teach, but indirectly; there are very few songs that resemble a paragraph from a seminary textbook. To illustrate the point, readers may find it amusing to try setting the following doctrinal statement to music:

We believe in one God (eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent) existing as three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in nature, attributes, power, and glory.

Songwriters will find this text unwieldy, and a congregation will find it downright clumsy, even with a nice melody.

In the same way prosaic theological propositions do not usually make good song lyrics simply because they are too direct and too plain. Songs, by their nature, require language evoking imagery and narrative rather than asserting abstract facts, and they teach by awakening the imagination to Kingdom realities.

Even the most theologically rich lyrics reach their best moments not in assertion but in evocation: they speak more profoundly in image than in proposition. For example, the unifying theme of Immortal, Invisible is the paradox of God’s immanence and transcendence—that he is both close to us and distant from us. The finest line of the first verse is In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, which is both a vivid image (that of blinding light) and also poetically ironic (insofar as light, normally the vehicle of sight, here precludes it). The second verse also peaks in a poetic line: Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light. The reader imagines the human states of repose and hurry, and then sweeps them both aside as inadequate to describe the activity of God. Light is normally silent, but here the simile illuminates the purity, energy, and life behind even God’s unperceived deeds: he is silent as light, not quiet as a mouse.¹

Holy, Holy, Holy is an instance of Trinitarian teaching in song. Nevertheless, the direct statement God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity, while edifying, comes off as static and formulary when compared with dramatic scenes like Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. This latter line draws upon things we can imagine: we have not seen the saints casting down their crowns (let alone the glassy sea) but we do know what crowns are and we have seen the ordinary sea, so our imaginations can make the leap and the text comes to life in our minds.

Responding to the “Other Significant Article” review of John Mortensen’s “How Then Shall We Write?”

Editor’s Note: that link to the full issue is http://vineyardusa.org/site/files/cutting-edge/06-Spring-Worship.pdf [updated Dec 11, 2104]

I followed the link included at the end of the brief review for the article: John Mortensen, “How Then Shall We Write? A Guide to Composing Better Music for Worship” Cutting Edge (Spring, 2006), pages 6-9. The whole issue looks great. I am reading the article by Matt Redman and I was blessed by both, but wanted to ask some questions.

John Mortensen wrote: “These days a sense of self-congratulation seems to pervade many songs. We seem to be impressed, not with our works (because that would be heresy) but at least with the admirable way we’ve responded to grace. This trend is also evident in the many songs of outrageous promise: Forever I’ll love You, Forever I’ll stand, I will sing of Your love forever, Over oceans deep I will follow, and so on. That last promise sounds like the one Peter made. One wonders whether we might be singing in praise of our own competence” (page 7).

I would like you to clarify for me a little about the “word thing.” I think that some of these songs with an “outrageous promise” are also actually expressing a personal hope and spiritual goal that they are reaching for.

I was thinking about what you said about ingredients in writing new music. There are some huge, beautiful pieces of music out there that change time signature and meter—almost like many songs blended into one—but yet are single songs. These are spectacular to listen to, even though the lyrics are secular. A couple of examples I can think of are by the band Genesis: “Behind the Lines” from the album Duke; “Los Endos” from Trick of the Tail. Would something like this be ‘too much’ to put into a worship set, if written with scriptural lyrics?”

— Skip

Response from John Mortensen

1. Yes, it is always possible to construe or interpret “self-congratulatory” songs as hopeful rather than arrogant, and certainly most songs will be received and understood by the people with a variety of interpretations. Nevertheless I stick with my point for two reasons: First, the American church is in danger of too much triumphalism, but not in danger of too much humility. Second, we live in a culture that is overwhelmed with the exaggerated claims of advertising and marketing. Our own song lyrics should be remarkably different from that: poetic, beautiful, honest, proportional, humane.

2. I do remember Genesis, but not so much the particular songs you mention. This seems like a discussion that could become technical, and perhaps a piano and manuscript paper are needed before we can go much further.

Thanks for sending in these remarks.

— John