Chart songs in worship?

This is an issue that I’ve been a bit interested recently. It first came into my thoughts when I was just listening to my iPod and I came across a few songs that had some (in my opinion) amazing lyrics. When I’ve had teaching on songwriting I have often been told that song writers need to find new ways to say the old truths of the bible. Here I was discovering people doing just that but they were in mainstream songs.

I’ve read a few articles and forum posts about this subject and there seems to be a few different views, those against it appear very hard-line and even those that do agree with using the songs seem to have a few “rules” that are at odds with the way the some hymns were created and how we use some modern worship songs.

The first of these is not changing words. I can see where people are coming from, some of the benefit of using these songs is that people know them so if you change them then you lose that. Also there is a view that songs are art and you don’t change that. On the flip side I’d like to point out that people who cover songs often tweak odd lyrics, worship songs often have minor changes during worship (like changing I to we etc…) and some churches have permanently changed lyrics to worship songs (for example one church has change “Here I am to worship” to “All my life I’ll worship”). If we’re making changes to these songs then why not mainstream songs. It’s also easy to forget that some hymns were originally popular mainstream songs of the time but had their lyrics completely re-written. I remember a sunday school song from when I was younger that used the Match of the Day theme tune.

I’m not saying we should necessarily go to those extremes but some changes could be used and why should we limit how a song can be used?

The main argument I have read against the use of them is that they weren’t written to glorify God and so shouldn’t be used as such. My first reaction to that was “surely it’s about how the worshipper uses the song and where they’re heart is rather than the song writers”. Initially this was just a view I had and I had no scripture to back it up but I also didn’t have any to say that songs need to be written by Christians.

At my church small group this week there were a few lines of scripture which immediately reminded me of this topic.

Philippians 1:15-18

15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

Here Paul is talking about preachers but my initial thought was surely he could be talking about song writers too. If the song declares God’s truth and glorify’s Him what does it matter who wrote it or what its initial intentions were for. If it helps people engage and worship God then surely that is great isn’t it?

I’m going to follow this up by looking at “do we use too much scripture in our worship songs”, this might be some time next week. I’m also going to try to build a list of songs I think could be used in worship which I will continue to update.