I am wondering, what makes a good church song? Before I go ahead on this topic, I would like you to read the last page of the January 2007 edition of The Briefing. If you can't get it, I'll summarise it. Ian Carmichael, in saying that we should put a blanket ban on Hillsong music, gives 3 reasons:
1) When singing their songs, we publicly endorse them. And we don't want to be doing that do we?
2) When singing their songs, Hillsong financially benefits through royalties and other stuff. We don't want to be bankrolling harmful teaching. (the edition makes it clear that the teaching of Hillsong is not great, actually, pretty bad.)
3) When singing their songs, we compromise our theology, mainly because some of their songs are way off target, or even the good sounding ones mean different things to different people due to their ambiguity.
Next, read this article in the Southern Cross Magazine: The Big 3 Issues in Church Music
I wanted to point you to Trevor Hodge's recommendation that "Blessed Be Your Name" (by Matt Redman) is a good song. Also, I want to draw your attention to Trevor's recommendation of "Here I am to Worship" (by Tim Hughes) - he qualifies this recommendation with: "Needs to be balanced with teaching or songs that reminds us that worship is all of our life, not just our songs."
My question is this: does a good song need to be "balanced" by anything - or should they be able to stand on their own? No doubt there are many songs out there that praise God for his creation. Is it a bad song if it does not sing of his redemption of us in Jesus?
The other thing is the Blessed Be Your Name song (which I actually find really good musically). I would like you to read Andy Judd's case study of this song on the Garage Hymnal site:
Case Studies of Questionable Lyrics He ultimately gives the "pass mark" to this song because the major questionable line of "You give and take away" (taken from Job) "My heart will choose to say... Blessed be your name" makes sense in that the saints can praise God because by definition, that is what we do (because of God's grace and Holy Spirit). BUT since the song does not qualify the line of "My heart will choose to say" with words to the effect of "by your grace" or "by your Holy Spirit" does this make this a bad song?
In any case, would trying to fit such qualifying lyrics render the song so unsingable, that it becomes a bad song on grounds of musical lameness or unsingability. What are your thoughts? What makes a "good" church song? What are some examples that you think are good and not-so-good songs?
2 comments:
I didn't rad the articles because I'm lazy and nearly read out, but... I had a converstaion with a guy from Christ Church who is in a band called Garage Hymnal about Blessed Be The Name of The Lord. He gave a similar response about Job and the desire to praise God and the ability we have to do so through Jesus and the Spirit. I decided that perhaps saying we "will" do something isn't so bad because there is the desire to do it in God's strength. Even just reading the bible we can get caught up in trying to work for heaven. We read about love Jesus = obey Jesus and all of James is like an instruction manual. If you focus on what you're doing in your life you start to depend on it. Does that mean we should stop reading the bible and stop trying to be holy? Of course not, it just means we need to try to remind ourselves more often that we try to do these things with the strength and resources that God gives us. I think it's the same with those songs, perhaps it's a good thing to say we will praise his name, then when we don't w can remind ourselves of what we said and can try to get back into praising God. Similar thing with marriage as well - we're bound to hurt each other at times but that doesn't mean we shouldn't vow to love each other in the first place.
Well, this is my first comment placed on a blog site ever!
The reason why i have a comment is because i have come across comments in this area before. And i love worshipping God through music and songs.
I have heard a comment that if you can't do it then you shouldn't sing it. For example "I will worship with all of my heart" or " I will sing of your forever" These 2 songs are impossible to do, as there will be times that i am not even thinking about God let alone giving 100% of my self to God 100% of the time.
I heard a response from a good friend of my that when said you kinda go "Yeah!" And it articulates how you feel.
He said "Worship songs are an express of your heart towards God." Yeh i am not going to sing of God's love forever, but boy, i wish i could, and i guess i will be doing that in heaven!
That line from Matt Redman's song "My heart will choose to say, blessed be your name" I totally agree with this line, why assume that he is singing about his own strength and not God strength? Because he didn't mention it doesn't mean he is thinking that way.
Also the comments about blanket banning Hillsong? I do not go to Hillsong, but i will leave you with this thought from a part of a book that i read. "In the East persecution comes from outside the church, in the West persecution comes from within the church."
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