Accessibility of Worship Music Lyrics
January 6th, 2007 by Matt Heerema | Posted in Song Selection
Relevintage asks about the wisdom in using worship lyrics containing phrases that would require a large amount of explanation to someone who is not familiar with the biblical concepts they are speaking of. Ie, “God of Jacob..”
Is it beneficial to sing songs with phrases that need that much explanation? Don’t we want songs to be more accessible? Yes and No…
ht: ESV Bible Blog
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Song Selection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
There are two sides: YES keep the songs phrasing simple so as not to hinder worshipers, the other side is to teach and streach the people into deeper Biblical truths, and maybe encouraging more bible study along the way. I think it depends on your style and how you worship flow.
But if it is an important biblical concept, perhaps towards the praise portion of a worship service would be a good time to introduce this to people.
Another important point is to be biblical sound. A very popular worship song uses the catchy phrase “You give and take away” repeated over and over. While this is indeed biblical it does come from a passage in Job that needs context to be understood. I think a simple concept leaves to much to the imagination. We love the song but have replaced this pharase with “You give your life away” making reference to Jesus sacrifice for us.