Joshua Hawk

“Worship songs can’t just be rooted in culture – they won’t be deep enough. They have to be rooted in scripture.” – Matt Redman

In early 2007, I formed a Christian band with a group of friends that I met while attending Clovis Community College. It didn’t last for more than a year but we had the privilege of leading worship for several churches in Clovis, NM. One of those churches was where our singer and bass player attended. It was a traditional church that sang from a hymnal and only had two instruments on the platform – a grand piano and an organ. As our band was setting up before the service, I felt the heavy scrutiny of many eyes peering through my soul. I was the keyboard player in the band and used a laptop in my rig. Around this season of the band, our drummer had moved to Ireland so we were playing along with drum tracks that I pre-programmed on my software MIDI sequencer. Loop Community and Multitracks didn’t exist then so it took hours of preparation! Not a measure into the first song, Once Again by Matt Redman, an elderly lady made a scene by tightly shoving her fingers into her ears and exited the sanctuary in a hurry. She stayed in the foyer for the remainder of the worship service and came back inside when the preaching began. 

I have attended church most of my life and discovered a heartbreaking divide in the church regarding worship music. The musical divide in the church consists of two groups: the elderly who prefer hymns and people under 40 who prefer modern worship. I have been in churches where the refusal to change was reflected in the average age of the church body. Churches that strictly did hymns had an overwhelming majority of members who were 50 and older. In those churches, I was a statistical outlier being in my 20s. I was the youngest person in attendance which would occasionally change to the second or third youngest when brother Earl and sister Mildred brought their grandkids to church. I have also attended churches that used modern worship songs and the congregation mostly consisted of people under the age of 40. It is a heartbreaking trend but this divide is prevalent in many churches across the United States.

I consider myself blessed to have had the privilege of receiving a decent amount of exposure to both hymns and modern worship songs. On occasion, I get an earful from church people on both sides who explain why their style of music is better than the other. Truthfully, I enjoy both and I don’t find one to be superior over the other. I like all kinds of music with the exception of a few genres but I tend to tap my foot and clap my hands during a southern gospel camp meeting song. I also appreciate songs that are electric guitar driven backed with thick synth pads. Putting all musical preferences aside, there is one thing that that is far more important than the age of a song or the style of music – the lyrics!

3,000 years ago, a collection of songs were written and were passed down from generation to generation. Unfortunately, these songs were written thousands of years before musical notation was invented so the melodies were kept in the memories of the people who sung them. As time went on, the music and melodies were forgotten and lost. Fortunately for us, the lyrics were recorded and preserved. As a result, this collection of songs has become the most sold songbook of all-time found in 87% of American households today!

Have you figured out what songbook I am describing? The songbook is none other than the largest book in the Bible – the book of Psalms. What a lot of Christians do not know is the book of Psalms was the hymnal of the Old Testament Jews! When I think of hymns, I instantly think of Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and Near the Cross. I could sing these hymns and almost instantly people would recognize the melody and start singing along from memory. Those hymns have stood the test of time and the book of Psalms was the same way for the Jewish people living in the Old Testament. Their Amazing Grace could have been Psalm 23! What’s interesting about this is even though the melody and music of Psalms were forgotten and lost over time; God preserved the lyrics.

Over the last few decades, many songwriters have attempted to rewrite the music for some of the Psalms using newer melodies and chord progressions. Keith Green does a beautiful rendition of Psalm 51:10-12 in his song Create in me a Clean Heart. We may never know the original melody that King David wrote for that psalm but the thing that is more important than the melody or the music are the lyrics.

Lately I find myself paying a lot of attention to lyrics whether it’s a song being played on the radio or a song being sung in the church. Lyrics are powerful and I must say if there’s one thing that hymns do really well, it’s the lyrics. A lot of the hymns are very worshipful and make Jesus, His blood, the cross, and heaven the subject of the song. The majority of contemporary worship songs written today focus more on love, grace, and our identity. Nevertheless, there are plenty of hidden treasures out there if you look hard enough!

Several months ago, I introduced a song to a congregation that they were not familiar with. To be blunt, I tend to avoid using songs from Hillsong for worship but their song O Praise the Name (Anástasis) quickly became a favorite when I first heard it. The song is no more than four years old but what stood out to me the most was the lyrics! When I started leading the congregation with this song, the Holy Spirit moved and people responded to the altars during prayer time. Several older people approached me after service inquiring about the song and said it was anointed. One of those individuals was an 80 year old lady! If you read the lyrics to this song, you’ll find that the lyrics are very worshipful and gives praise to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To that 80 year old lady the style of music didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to her that the song wasn’t a hymn. The lyrics encouraged her to praise God in such a way that allowed her to have special encounter with the Holy Spirit that morning. That is why lyrics are so important!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t always a proactive worshipper in regards to lyrics. I made many mistakes along the way which to my benefit allowed me to grow in wisdom. I can easily make a list of do’s and dont’s for worship that I learned from experience that I wish I had from the beginning. There are plenty of things to avoid and things to look out for but providing such a list would be extremely lengthy. If there’s one thing I learned about music that I can pass down to all of my fellow worship leaders and worshippers alike, beats and melodies should always take a back seat to lyrics. Always closely examine the songs you choose to sing regardless of the beat, genre, or melody. It’s really easy to be attracted to a particular song because it sounds good but make glorifying God the top priority. If you do, I can guarantee that you’ll see improvements in your worship life and for those you lead in song!