I find I spend more time being critical (and/or analyzing) the actual music and arrangements than I do lyrics. Maybe it’s because most of my life I’ve spent immersed in the musical side of things? I don’t know.

Sometimes I think (literally) that life is too short to get worked up over lyrics that were obviously written from hearts turned towards God.

I read through the psalms almost daily and I see an imperfect “psalmist” writing from places of defeat, hopelessness, fear, longing, desire, victory, repentance, humiliation, confidence, and just about every place on the spectrum in between those.

To nitpick one song (or even one lyric in a song, seems to be a waste of time for me, personally. I like to approach songs from a “body of work” or as Shannon said, from an entire album standpoint. Which sometimes can be tough in this “itunes single” digital world.

That being said, I’ve been rubbed the wrong way by lyrics sometimes, and the solution for me is to do a whole lot of soul searching and to research the story behind the song.

Obviously, as worship leaders we should be doing that anyways, making sure that our song selection is full and rich with songs that are theologically sound and that aren’t so vague that nobody knows what the heck is going on.

Check out this month’s songwriting challenge over on the forums at The Worship Community. The challenge this month is for our writers to write a “Teaching” song. One that is specific and explicitly written to convey purposefully a truth from scripture.

Fun stuff!!

Melanie,
Yes – indeed, that’s one incredible line, especially when you understand the context and story in which that song was written!