The State of Contemporary Worship Lyrics

Johnny Cash, Madeleine L'Engle and secondhand signifiers

This Edition of Ecstatic is by Joshua Leventhal

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There is a scene from the 2005 James Mangold film Walk the Line, about the life and career of Johnny Cash, that I tend to bring up when I think about faith expressed through art. In it, a young, unsigned, unknown Johnny sings a ho-hum gospel tune in front of a record exec, hoping for his break. The executive stops him midway, saying he’s not interested. Johnny presses him on his reasoning and the man replies, “I don’t believe you.” Johnny takes this as an affront to the sincerity of his faith. The label man assures him that is not the issue—the issue is that we have heard that same song, sung the same way, countless times.

As a songwriter and worship leader who has become obsessed with the beauty of the craft of writing (and acquired a healthy dose of suspicion of the industry surrounding it), I would never expect to find myself agreeing wholesale with a profit-driven, coldhearted label rep. And yet, in this case, I do. Because I too am disinterested in God-songs that feel secondhand. Because a secondhand encounter with the living YHWH is not the inheritance of the saints.

Joshua Leventhal by Elizabeth Joy Sanders

And yet, so much of the music of the modern Western Church feels pre-owned. Only in the last couple of decades has “CCM”—or, Contemporary Christian Music—become a genre unto itself, with its own set of linguistic and stylistic markers. And quite often these markers cannot be traced to Scripture nor the work of faith giants who have come before, but rather... to other worship songs.

A song introduces a phrase about battles, and that phrase becomes canonical in subsequent songs for the following five years. Exact statements are plucked from one and placed in another with greater abandon than the allusions in hip-hop, which often serve as an art form itself. However, the modern worship song uses plagiarism as shorthand. It has become self-referential beyond measure: signifiers and phrases that are plugged straight into The Formula.

You know The Formula: a verse with a scenario that is as nondescript as possible—“every trial, every season,” etc. Time is not articulated in any tangible sense; it’s forever, or always. A chorus with a soaring melody that might have rich lyrics or might not; words are not the point. The melody is. A bridge that can be repeated endlessly, because there is no movement in its ideas—like the chorus, lyrics serve as vassal to the melody. All of this is then dressed up in world-class production and band arrangements that are skilled at building atmospheric intensity.

If we think of what we sing in our liturgy as vital to our spiritual diet, we need a balanced one. A mix of substantial sustenance, sweetness, and diverse flavor profiles that turn eating into more than an exercise in acquiring energy. We do not eat merely pragmatically, nor solely for enjoyment. Our diet mixes nutrition with pleasure, into something that transcends yet meets both. And yet, songs borne of The Formula are most analogous to energy drinks. Carrying little to no nutritional value, all tasting the same, they exist for one purpose: an injection of caffeine, straight into the veins. We may feel ready to take on the world after downing one, but our bodies have not truly been fed. They may, in fact, have been harmed.

How is the goodness and faithfulness of YHWH described in the typical modern worship anthem? It is not described at all—it is stated. Hear me, there is nothing wrong with simple statements as response in worship—the Church has always practiced this in her liturgies and catechisms. Merely stating the faithfulness of God, simply and earnestly, can be a beautiful response in the midst of unspeakable pain or joy. However, the songs in question tend to avoid meaningful description of those as well.

Contrast Psalm 18’s description of both predicament and deliverance with that of most modern worship fare:

⁶ In my distress I called upon the Lord;
    to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
    and my cry to him reached his ears.

⁷ Then the earth reeled and rocked;
    the foundations also of the mountains trembled
    and quaked, because he was angry.
⁸ Smoke went up from his nostrils,
    and devouring fire from his mouth;
    glowing coals flamed forth from him.
⁹ He bowed the heavens and came down;
    thick darkness was under his feet.
¹⁰ He rode on a cherub and flew;
    he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
¹¹ He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him,
    thick clouds dark with water.
¹² Out of the brightness before him
    hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

¹³ The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
    and the Most High uttered his voice,
    hailstones and coals of fire.
¹⁴ And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
    he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
¹⁵ Then the channels of the sea were seen,
    and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
    at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

¹⁶ He sent from on high, he took me;
    he drew me out of many waters.
¹⁷ He rescued me from my strong enemy
    and from those who hated me,
    for they were too mighty for me.
¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
    but the Lord was my support.
¹⁹ He brought me out into a broad place;
    he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

The Lord Most High veiling himself in shadow, riding on the wind and the thunderclouds. His nostrils fuming with the flame of the cosmos. He opens the chaos of the sea and lays it bare, no depths unturned. All to rescue his child, in whom he delights. This scene lavishly, piercingly depicts the grandeur of an almighty God, but also the deeply personal nature of his saving work upon the author. What a scene it is.

In comparison, what has become common in the modern Protestant liturgy?

“In every season, in every trial, in every battle, You are faithful.”

There is no need to name a singular song or writer or movement; no reason to point out anyone in particular, when so many fit this rubric perfectly.

Why, like the record exec in Walk the Line, do I find myself saying to the latter, “I don’t believe you”? The Psalmist’s expression feels gut-wrenchingly genuine; a visceral account of the saving work of YHWH. The latter feels barren.

I am in no way questioning the sincerity of the worship writer. The writer of this trope has quite likely walked through pain just as deep as the Psalmists. They, too, have endured betrayals, profound disappointment, miscarriages, abandonment, brushes with death—for these are experiences to be found not merely across all human life, but also those under the banner of Jesus (perhaps especially those under his banner). We all share moments of the fracture in full, awaiting his redemption of it all. So why do the experiences conveyed in the Psalms feel living, breathing, while the lyrics above feel secondhand?

Imagery and specificity are present in one, and absent in the other. The Psalmist paints with his words—and what unforgettable paintings they are! So much of the poetry in Scripture has carried through time because it paints itself upon the heart. And yet, our modern lyrics so rarely do.

The same rule to which the great filmmakers adhere applies to the written word as well: Show, don’t tell.

I believe, with all that I am, that imagery is the key to the human heart. Images transcend what we perceive cognitively, to something more fundamental—something at the core of being human. Art itself is meant to bear image across its many forms. Music does this. I’ve often said it is one of the most beautiful ways of enacting the Shema; what Jesus calls the greatest commandment: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.

When music that comes from the deepest places within us marries with imagery that pierces and buries itself in the marrow of our bones, the result defies categories and even goes beyond our own words. The moments I’ve experienced this kind of music in my own life cannot be verbalized, and I suspect you’ve known them too. Moments like when Jon Foreman sings of a girl addicted to some unnamed substance. He tells us all we need to know without ever stating it outright. Instead, he paints…“her nightmares grew fingers” (I challenge you to find a more vivid image wrought with four words). Or the works of masters like Isaac Watts, in words that never fade in their splendor: “See from His head, His hands His feet / Sorrow and love flow mingled down / Did e’re such love and sorrow meet / Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

Unfortunately, the current trend in the music of the Church is to forego imagery entirely. In a worship service, transitioning from reading a passage out of Revelation, or the words of the Puritan prayers, to a song that’s been sitting on the CCLI top 100, is jarring to say the least. We leave a garden teeming with living, breathing word-paintings, for a wasteland of sparse, well-worn phrases. Devoid of imagination, yet wrapped in a beautiful melody.

The question is not whether one writer’s faith is more genuine than another’s. The question is whether or not that sincerity is properly conveyed. For it is only able to be conveyed through words. And the words chosen to sing the song of our modern liturgy drink only from the same well, time and again.

Cliches are seen as tried and true and, indeed, became so as a result of that fact. People find it safe (and therefore, harmless) to use them. But, in fact, they can actually be dangerous. The last thing we want in our encounters with the God of the Universe is spiritual and emotional autopilot.

The modern worship song has gripped tightly to the lowest common denominator: songs that can be sung by all people, at all times, regardless of circumstance or maturity. Hence the language of “every trial, every season, every battle.” They are (quite nobly) trying to reach everyone. However, life is not made up of the lowest common denominator moments. Generic language, meant to tap into the universal, ironically does precisely the opposite. Catch-all phrases fall woefully shy of the pain of a mother who has lost her baby to SIDS. Of the son whose alcoholic, abusive father has now passed away, and now finds storms of conflicting wounds within. Of the young man full of love to give, but has just had his heart broken. And not only our grief; these phrases also fail to fulfill the promise of joy. The joy of when the most beautiful person you’ve ever met says yes to weaving their life with yours. When the Spirit of God meets you in the thin place that cannot be explained in word or thought.

The Psalmist doesn’t merely state that he is sad or happy, and then drive that notion home by repeating it in a bridge for ten minutes. He says that his heart melts like wax (Psalm 22:14) or that the very earth skips like a calf now freed (Psalm 29:6). His language invokes synesthesia; it crosses sensorial boundaries to convey what it must. It is when we bring others into our own fractures and joyful eclipsing, through words that become more than words, that we tap into true humanity.

Ridding ourselves of The Formula cannot be done through yet another overly critical piece on the state of contemporary worship, by an author who offers no help or solution. No, the answer lies in revived imaginations, in desiring to tread the deep waters of this wild, beautiful, fractured world that we have been placed into as heirs. It is in recognizing that there is a divinely created universe to drink in, and to pour it forth in beauty across the fabric of time—whether that be a grand congregation or a bedroom-composed three-chord act of adoration.

Joshua Leventhal by Elizabeth Joy Sanders

How will we arrive there? It will take both time and hunger. By steeping ourselves in the sacred abiding acts of the Word, and prayer, and community; but also observing and enjoying the “secular” realities of the cinema, the kitchen conversation, the hospital, the parking lot. We need to be listening and filling ourselves with that which points us to the transcendent through the beautiful. Lifts us to it. Until we bleed it.

As we listen and look closer, we see that the so-called sacred and secular divide erodes in the face of divine expression. Madeleine L’Engle, in Walking on Water—her incredible treatise on Christian faith and art—speaks of the erosion of this divide with an almost disconcerting sobriety: “Christian art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.”

And what is the implied inverse of L’Engle’s thesis? It is that good art is good religion—though that requires more discussion. The more art achieves the intertwining of beauty, goodness, and truth, the more it reaches—and ultimately touches—the transcendent.

I leave you with the lyrics that swirled in me one melancholy evening, as I sat lamenting the feebler aspects of our contemporary liturgy; the lowest common denominator songs of The Formula. My heart didn’t stay there, however. It stirred for that nourishment that cuts through the veil of categorization, the craftsmanship that follows the Imago Dei where it leads, that we might behold the face of God.

That meditation began to take on form and melody, and unfolded ultimately into my song below.

Vapor is a siren
Come to snare this sailor's faith
Its vow hollow desire
But it dissolves as a wraith

But I want substance
I want soil
I want grain wrought from the toil
I want mercy that I can touch
I want substance in this love

We've traded Your bread and wine
For the meals that go down smooth
We cashed the cheapest vouchers
Spent them with no thought of You

But I want substance
I want soil
I want grain wrought from the toil
I want mercy that I can touch
I want substance in this love

So may I put my hands in Your scars
May my own eyes behold Thy wounds
This life You gave so willingly
I want to give mine too
So that I look more like You

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Joshua Leventhal
Musician & Worship Leader

Joshua is American-born, Canadian-raised. He is married to a fellow creative, the love of his life—Kaitlyn Rose, who is a full-time abstract painter. He is currently based outside of Vancouver, BC, and is the Director of Worship at Main Street Church in Chilliwack. You can find Joshua’s music here.

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