The new book, The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise & Worship, consists of a collection of essays that evaluate, analyze, and critique the 77 songs that appear most frequently on the Top 25 praise and worship song lists as reported by Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) between 1989 and 2005. Since these songs, by virtue of their popularity, have such a profound influence on our spiritual formation, it is well worth the time and effort to consider what these songs have to say about the great themes of the Christian faith.

First, the bad news: The Trinity is largely absent from CWM. "None of the 77 songs explicitly uses the word 'Trinity' or 'Triune,' and only four songs explicitly refer to or name all three Persons of the Trinity" (31). "As a whole this body of 77 songs is what some might call 'functionally unitarian'" (33).

This does not bode well for our conceptual understanding of God. Christians approach God the Father through Jesus and in the Spirit. We are baptized into the triune name of God. We find our life, love, and joy in and through participation in the life, love, and joy of the triune God - Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, the truth that God is triune is the basis for our declaration that God is love and that God desires a loving relationship with each one of us. To lose the Trinity would be to lose everything that makes worship distinctively Christian.

Second, CWM songs fail to speak of the gospel story: "The songs pay little attention to placing salvation within a broader meta-narrative--that is, grand, all-encompassing master story--and thus providing opportunity to recite the specific activities or internal dynamics of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (34). Christ's continued heavenly mediation, the Spirit's saving role, and God's ongoing mission in the world receive little or no attention.

We find ourselves and our sense of meaning within the story of God's saving work to the world. If we lose the larger story of God's saving work in and through Israel, and then through Christ, we lose the good news. Gospel songs should contain "gospel," that is, good news of God's saving work. This is not the same thing as our "experience" of the gospel, but rather, our experience is dependent upon the truth of the good news. No good news = no Christian experience.

Third, these "77 songs have a very low explicit consciousness of the church" (36). Life together as the community of God is eclipsed by an emphasis on immediate personal experience. Yet, salvation throughout the Old and New Testaments is always corporate. God saves a people. We, individually, are joined to God's people through faith, but the emphasis remains on God's salvation of the world.

Christ proclaimed, "I will build my church" and then commissioned his church to share his mission. If we lose the church, we lose God's primary means of manifesting God's kingdom to the world. Christ "loves the church and gave himself for it" (Ephesians 5:25). We should do no less.

Fourth, a romantic view of relationship with God in CWM  often eclipses a more realistic view of long-term fidelity. Falling in love does happen, but staying in love "requires hard work, compromise, and sacrifice over time" (45). While an emphasis on a heartfelt relationship with God is important

it is also very limiting. God's activities include more than personal salvation and interpersonal intimacy. To name just a few, God also created the world, formed a nation and then a church as His people, and continues to work through people to bring justice to the oppressed. These are all actions related to God's loving character that reach beyond an individual's experience of inner fulfillment or even individual salvation. (48)

"In addition to its romantic aspects, love includes care, justice, refuge, and service--all attributes of a loving God that could be included in worship" (49). What is most problematic about this is that "these songs suggest that personal fulfillment is the high point of being a Christian" (50).

While it is true that human identity finds completion in God, the repetition of this theme to the exclusion of human service and community may promote an excessively personalized and pietistic vision of faith--as if feeling satisfied in life and experiencing romantic feelings of love toward God is the mark of Christian maturity. The love of God may sometimes bring intense emotional experience that may mimic human romantic love, but sometimes it does not, and the presence or absence of a particular experience should not be the mark of Christian maturity. Additionally, God's love does more than produce inner experience. It also helps free believers to express His love in the world by living rightly with others and with creation. (50)

These "romantic" songs pose another problem - the problem of singing phrases that are not completely true. One interviewee said, "God is not my whole heart's desire--I have many competing desires, and when I sing phrases like these I feel like I'm being a hypocrite and not telling the truth" (62).

The very strength of most CWM songs is also their greatest weakness. Worship is made more personal and individual by "personalizing and privatizing the lyrics so that we sing them directly and personally to Jesus" (63). The danger of this approach is that "the individual is improperly placed in the spot where the corporate body should be. None of us alone can be the bride of Christ; only together collectively are we His bride" (63). The author suggests replacing "I, my, and mine" language with "we, our, and ours."

Fifth, the message of social justice and transformation is completely absent from CWM. Amazingly, the word "justice" is not found in the lyrics of any of the 77 CWM songs. Yet justice and righteousness are consistently linked in scripture. "In scripture, justice is not merely providing equal treatment under the law as we tend to define it in contemporary terms today. Instead, biblical justice is tied to 'putting power at the service of the powerless and wealth at the service of the poor'" (66). The call to help the orphans, widows, hungry, prisoners, disabled, impoverished, and oppressed is silenced in CWM.

Sixth, only a few songs (10 at most) of the 77 meaningfully express the experience of pain and suffering. The author is surprised by the depth of the contrasts in the lyrics of Blessed Be Your Name (88-89) and offers it as a prime example of a meaningful song about suffering loss. The author longs for more honest worship that "will teach us how to worship God through our pain, in the middle of our suffering, in those lonely places of isolation and in the ambiguity of all the questions that being with 'why'" (90).

What can be done to compensate for the current weaknesses in CWM? The relative absence of Trinitarian language in regard to our understanding and experience of God, the loss of recounting God's story, a low regard for the church, an over-reliance on romantic ideals in our language of intimacy in worship, the lack of a social justice vision, and relatively few songs about human pain and suffering - these are all problematic in the large scope of Christian faith and practice.

Perhaps we could learn from a tool of the past - the hymnal. The abundance of possible hymns forced hymnal editors to publish a book that provided hymns on a variety of themes in order to create a "balanced musical diet."

Most hymnals are structured with sections on each major area of Christian doctrine and life, with sections on creation and providence, the life of Jesus, the work of the Spirit, the ministry of the church, and the life to come... Hymnal editors and selection committees then labor to present some songs in each area of Christian doctrine and life, instead of a lot of songs in one area. (171)

This structure holds the church accountable to balance in its musical expression. The structure does not guarantee balance, but it does make it possible.

What if congregations sought to do something similar with CWM? If we take seriously our role as spiritual dieticians for our congregation, we must recognize that worship shapes our beliefs. In other words, it is a means of spiritual formation. Furthermore, "most congregations--even the best singing among them--rarely know more than 200 songs very well" (190). Since there currently exists about 20,000 CWM songs, we "have the luxury of choosing the very best .01% of all worship songs" for our church. In other words, "we have the luxury of being very, very picky" (190).

CWM is not perfect. But then again, hymnody is not without its faults. But in spite of its many flaws, much good has come from CWM. And the potential for even greater good exists if we are willing to learn from our past mistakes and seek to improve our canon of worship songs to make up for present shortcomings. Our efforts will never be perfect, but it is precisely through our efforts to improve that we grow and mature - and in the process bring great blessing to our congregations.

In reading this book, some of my suspicions about CWM were confirmed, and some of my thoughts were changed. I now have a greater appreciation for some contemporary worship music (CWM). I am also encouraged to hear some of my concerns validated. I do, however, have great confidence that CWM will continue to be a significant means of spiritual formation in the Christian church, and that, over time, if it takes its criticisms seriously, it will mature in its breadth and depth.

Quotes excerpted from The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship edited by Robert Woods and Brian Walrath
© Richard J. Vincent, 2008