Should Christians Across Denominations Be Singing the Same Songs?

If you feel like it’s hard to keep up with the cascade of new worship music, you’re not alone. The industry is producing new releases at a quicker clip, and the typical lifespan of a worship song—the time a song remains in regular rotation for church worship teams—has shortened. 

Faced with a seemingly endless supply of new music, worship leaders are looking for ways to incorporate new music without skipping over the process of discerning whether the style and message of a particular song is right for their church. 

For some, the ecumenicism of contemporary worship music is both a strength and a weakness, and they fear that not enough has been done to make sure that musical worship within their churches still reflects the theological commitments that bind them to a historical or denominational strand of Christianity.

Denominations are stepping in to help by offering new resources as guidance, or, in the case of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), holding on to their old ones. Last year, the SBC’s Lifeway Worship scrapped plans to shut down its online media database after an outcry from church musicians who trusted the site’s musical offerings. 

“Leaders rely on us to provide some guardrails,” Brian Brown, director of Lifeway Worship, told CT. “If it’s been vetted by Lifeway, they have an added layer of confidence.” 

Lifeway’s online resource isn’t as tech-forward but functions similarly to SongSelect, the popular Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) platform, and PraiseCharts. CCLI was formed to offer churches protection from copyright litigation, and PraiseCharts was founded by a worship pastor who wanted to create an alternative to mail-order music for church musicians, so they could have quicker access to arrangements of new worship songs like “Shout to the Lord.”

As the ecumenical digital songbook of new worship music has grown, the influence that denominations used to exert through their curated hymnals has weakened. Some leaders are concerned that the dominance of popular music produced by a handful of megachurches and artists—think Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation—is washing away some of the elements of musical worship that reflect the doctrines and historical practices of their traditions. 

In 2015, the United Methodist Church (UMC) launched its CCLI Top 100 Project, which resulted in “green” and “yellow”  lists of popular songs and a set of downloadable criteria. Nelson Cowan, who oversaw the project, told CT in 2021 that sung doctrine is more than just an affirmation of the “right” words, “it’s doctrine we are learning and inhabiting and feeling and processing through song.”

Last year, the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM) released its first list of vetted songs from the CCLI Top 100 list in its journal CrossAccent. Clayton Faulkner, dean of the chapel at Wartburg Theological Seminary and editor of CrossAccent, oversaw the pan-Lutheran vetting project. 

“Theology was the main focus,” Faulkner told CT. “If a song isn’t theologically sound, it doesn’t matter if it’s singable.” 

Faulkner and his team adapted the UMC’s criteria to reflect a Lutheran theological lens, emphasizing the centrality of the Trinity, sacramentalism, and liturgical time. Previously, Sundays and Seasons, an online and print resource for Lutheran churches, had suggested songs based on the liturgical calendar that aligned with Lutheran doctrine, but there was no centralized collection of evaluated contemporary songs.

Earlier this year, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) released its CCLI Vetting Project. Historically, the singing of Scripture has been central in the Reformed tradition, stretching back to Calvin’s preference for unaccompanied metered psalms, unencumbered by ornamentation and focused solely on the singing of Scripture. 

“The Christian Reformed tradition has a history of being theologically mindful about what we sing,” said Katie Ritsema-Roelofs, who led the CRC project. “The denomination started with psalm-singing, and that deeply informs how we think about congregational singing.” 

Keith Getty, cowriter of the popular song “In Christ Alone,” grew up singing metrical psalms in his Irish Presbyterian church. Getty has persistently spoken about the need for greater attention to theological depth and care in the writing of contemporary worship music. 

He and his wife, Kristyn, emphasize “modern hymns” and are in the process of producing a hymnal with Crossway, scheduled to be released next year. 

For this year’s annual Sing! conference, hosted by Getty Music in Nashville, the Gettys selected the theme “The Songs of the Bible,” reflecting their ongoing commitment to cultivating the practice of singing Scripture-focused music within the modern worship landscape. 

“God is hugely concerned with what we sing,” Keith Getty told CT. “God has made us to understand him through what we sing.” 

Kristyn Getty sees a return to a more Bible-centered mode of congregational singing as a way out of worship war skirmishes and conflicts over trends. 

“Singing Scripture is a timeless call on our lives, throughout generations. To sing Scripture is to sing lyrics that have been around for thousands of years, not written in America or Europe. It’s a way to lift our song beyond the moment, toward something more timeless.” 

The Gettys aren’t the only prominent figures in the contemporary praise and worship scene advocating for renewed attention to theological content in song lyrics. 

Songwriter and worship artist Matt Redman recently wrote for CT that church musicians need input from pastors and theologians to enrich the worship of their congregations. Redman will appear alongside other songwriters and theologians at the upcoming WOR/TH conferences—convenings that aim to cultivate cooperation between artists and theologians. The responsibility of overseeing the singing of doctrine, he says, is too great for one person: 

Many of us, myself included, admit we need assistance in that area. We likely didn’t come into this via seminary or intense theological training; we came in through the avenue of loving music and being able to play or sing.

We humbly recognize we cannot do this on our own. We need help from thinkers, theologians, and pastors. We need to be sharpened by fellow songwriters and worship leaders too.

Redman and the Gettys see a need to reanimate the global church’s commitment to singing songs with theological depth. 

Neither Redman nor the Gettys write music for a particular Christian denomination; their songs are among the most widely sung contemporary songs in the global church, and their ecumenical appeal is what makes them so popular and powerful. 

But some denominational leaders fear that there is a downside to primarily singing music that is theologically general enough to be sung by Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, and Pentecostals. Vetting existing music isn’t enough to correct what they see as doctrinal vagueness; they want to instead support the creation of new music within their traditions.

In 2020, a group of songwriters and creatives in the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) gathered to write new songs that more explicitly reflect the denomination’s commitment to missions and the global church. 

Alliance Worship grew out of that gathering and continues to write, record, and release new music, including “Yesterday, Today, and Forevermore,” a reimagined version of the hymn “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” by the CMA’s founder, A. B. Simpson. 

“There are thousands of worship songs being released every year that are nebulous, kind of a catchall,” Tim Meier, vice president for development at the CMA, told CT in 2023. “What would it look like to sing our theology again?”

Most of the individuals involved in vetting projects find a lot to love about popular worship music and recognize that many of their congregants have developed deep spiritual and emotional ties to particular songs, even songs that might have a theologically murky line or two. Ritsema-Roelofs pointed out that the hymn “I’ll Fly Away” doesn’t reflect a particularly Reformed view of heaven, but it holds a special power and taps into something for some (especially older) congregants that is more than just nostalgia and sentimentality. 

“I’ve served in congregations where they sing a song with questionable or poor theology, but it’s a heart song,” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “Pastorally, you can’t take that away. There is soul work that happens when people sing a heart song, and it’s deeper than just making us feel good.” 

In the list of CRC-vetted songs, the team includes notes about their strengths and “opportunities” (generally, for improvement or adaptation) and potential liturgical uses. 

There are a few songs that get the equivalent of a warning label, such as Charity Gayle’s “I Speak Jesus,” for its “concerning association of depression with spiritual warfare” and treatment of Jesus’ name as an “incantation,” and Bethel Music’s “Raise a Hallelujah,” for its “overemphasis on human agency and human responsibility.” 

Even though there are songs that get a “red light” from the CRC’s vetting team, the list isn’t meant to be a set of rules. Ritsema-Roelofs says she hopes that the list and the principles used to compile it will serve a denomination that already has a history of prioritizing the careful selection of congregational songs. 

“We talk a lot about ‘song diet,’” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “Is the diet of songs in the church balanced? Are you singing psalms? Are you singing Scripture? Are you singing laments? Are you playing favorites with the members of the Trinity?” 

One concern articulated by the CRC team was that the amount of individualistic language in popular worship songs is out of balance. 

“When our primary language week after week is individualistic, it gradually forms us to contain worship to MY service, MY relationship with God, MY, MY, MY,” they wrote in an introductory note. “When we worship corporately we experience both the joy and the responsibility of living in community.”

In addition, the vetting team noted that popular songs tend to be songs of praise and celebration—an important part of any balanced song diet for a body of believers—and that making space for songs of lament will require intention and effort. “A continual barrage of ‘Be happy—God’s got this!’ minimizes pain and presents a problematic long-term understanding of God’s presence or absence in human suffering,” they wrote.

Despite different theological lenses and priorities, the vetting teams from both the CRC and the ALCM categorized the songs “Raise a Hallelujah” and “Battle Belongs” (by Phil Wickham) as “not recommended” or in the “red light” category. 

Both groups noted the triumphalism in each song, as well as the use of battle/warfare language. 

“Much care should be taken when singing about spiritual warfare. It is too easy to slip into making our neighbors our enemies,” the Lutheran team wrote in the comments on “Battle Belongs.”

Although lyrical content is the primary focus of these vetting initiatives, singability and playability are important aspects of song selection, especially in small churches. 

“We looked at chord progressions and considered whether they are achievable for amateur musicians,” said Faulkner. “We also thought about whether a song can stand on its own when played and sung with just a piano and voices.” 

When questions arise about the ethics of promoting or using the music associated with a particular megachurch or leader involved in a public scandal, local churches are entrusted with those decisions. 

“Our goal in this process was not to give a stamp of CRC approval. Our primary goal here was formational,” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “We wanted to help people think about what their congregations are singing, because over time, it forms you. It forms your theology and faith. This was never meant to bring experts into a room to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do.” 

As of now, the CRC doesn’t plan to keep vetting every new CCLI Top 100 (which is updated twice a year), nor does the ALCM. The UMC published an updated list of vetted songs in 2019. Alliance Worship will continue to write and record new music for the CMA, and the Gettys will launch the Sing! hymnal next year, offering their “vetted” collection of songs old and new. 

Keith Getty says that the process of cultivating a body of theologically rich, musically accessible songs for the church is not a quest for perfection, and that getting lost in the minutiae can mean missing the beauty of the gospel.  

“The gospel story is our strength and our song. I would warn against trying to take every single song and make sure it’s right,” he said. “It’s not about getting everything right, it’s about understanding the big picture and getting most of it right.”

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