In the modern world, we have come to think of music as one thing and “the words” as quite another thing. They may complement one another, like ham and eggs, but they are also separable and distinct. We therefore have instrumental music only, and we have poetry, or lofty speech. If the poetry is high, or devotional, and if it scans, it might be set to music.
Because we have drifted into this mindset we have come to think that church music should be evaluated in two separate ways. We evaluate the music according to the canons of music, and we evaluate the lyrics (if we do) in accordance with the canons of poetry—resulting in the kind of observation that C.S. Lewis once offered, which was that church music was ninth-rate poetry set to third-rate music.
But in the Bible, the words and music were much more organically intertwined—we are told to sing psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs. The words or lyrics are not an optional add-on, but are an integral part of the song. Words are not this pedestrian thing that we sometimes decorate with music, as we occasional decorate a dining room for a birthday party. Rather, words are not understood as words unless they are frequently sung.
As we are growing in our understanding of congregational music, this means that we are not just amateur musicians, we are also amateur poets, and poetry reciters. I am using the word amateur here, not in its modern sense of incompetent part-timer, but rather in the original sense of one who pursues his love for the sake of that love, and not because he is being paid.
We must reflect on the music, and we must reflect on the words, and since we cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time, we can do that separately. But we must always remember that in worship the two form an artistic whole. The words are not just filler, acceptable just so long as they don’t say anything positively wrong. They are as much a part of the artistry as the music, and they are part of what we are called to grow and mature in.