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This post showed up on my Facebook feed recently from the Gettys sharing a link toa post on The Gospel Coalition website reviewing/promoting their new worship song “Christus Victor (Amen)”. It left me feeling, to use the word of one of my friends who commented “queasy”.
First it is worth saying that we will respond subjectively to different worship songs and hymns. We all have our preferences, both in terms of styles and in terms of the specific songs we like best. There are for example a couple of current classics that don’t do anything for me. Surprisingly given my love of traditional hymns its actually ones like Living Hope and Anastasia which are seen as most closely modelling the traditional hymn style. I just find them a little …dull. I recognise though that this is about personal taste.
In fact, there is one of the challenges for those involved in choosing worship songs, whether or not it’s the musicians or the elders/pastor who take responsibility. Selecting a healthy diety of worship songs means that you need to be ready to choose and prioritise songs that you personally, subjectively aren’t so keen on. You also need to be willing to forgo songs and hymns that you personally enjoy.
I have my views on this song, just as I have an opinion on the one it is being compared with. However, I’m not going to talk about that now because it’s incidental to the point I wish to make here. Setting up songs as rvals and talking about hem in terms of how popular/big they are going to be is something that belongs in the world of secular pop music. It has no place in conversations about worship. In the same way, we shouldn’t be making these kinds of comparisons between preachers, theological books, churches etc.
Whether or not intended, it gives the impression that there is a competition against worship songs. It is worth observing that when you look at the lyrics of the two songs they are doing different jobs. We should not see them as in competition, we should see them as complimenting each other. But even if the intent is not to pit these two songs against each other, even its that the new song is joining the ranks of “In Christ Alone, the idea that there is this kind of ranking of anthems, and that therefore until no w other songs were not fit to share In Christ Alone’s pedestal is surely unhelpful.
As much as I love hymns and songs like In Christ Alone, Cornerstone, My Jesus My Saviour, The Goodness of God, I think we have a tendency to latch onto a song of the moment, just like we latch onto songs in the charts and propel them to number one so that it seems that there are times when a few songs dominate. We sing them to death to the exclusion of all else and then they get retired and forgotten about. Again, this doesn’t encourage a healthy worship diet.
Finally, I’m concerned that this fits into a pattern of the worship music industry aping the world around. For example, I ‘ve written previously about the disturbing practice of Christian artists offering VIP tickets to their gigs.
So, have a look at this new song. If it fits in to a specific worship service, then use it, learn it, sing it. However, please don’t see it as a rival to other worship songs, don’t overuse it and don’t neglect the wide and rich variety of songs available to us.
Faithroots 