Bad worship songs: Send the fire - Fieldes, Ellmore, Hughes (Jesus Culture)

From time to to we examine the lyrics of worship songs. Our desire is not to mock or humiliate, but rather to honestly examine content with a view to calling forth a better worship expression.

With the great volume and variety of worship music available, none of us should have to settle for bad worship songs. We should be able to select hundreds or even thousands of top notch songs very easily.

What makes a song a worship song? Is it enough to contain words like God or holy? How about vaguely spiritual sounding phrases? Should Jesus be mentioned?

We think an excellent worship song should contain the following elements:

• A direct expression of adoration (God, you are...)
• A progression of ideas that culminates in a coherent story
• A focus on God, not us
• Lyrics that do not create uncertainty or cause confusion
• A certain amount of profundity
• A singable, interesting melody
• Allusions to Scripture
• Doctrinal soundness
• Not excessively metaphorical
• Not excessively repetitive
• Jesus is not your boyfriend

It's worth noting the most worship songs contain at least something good. That is, there might be a musical idea or a lyric that has merit. Such is the case with this song, Send the Fire.

Video link.

Lyrics:

vs 1 We Your people, called by name
Humble ourselves and we pray
Come and have Your way

vs 2 For the lost soul to be saved
For the dead things to be raised
Come and have Your way
Come and have Your way

chorus Send the fire, send the fire
We need a move of Heaven
The glory of Your presence
In this city, in this nation
We need a move of Heaven
The glory of Your presence

vs 3 Every stronghold has to break
In the power of Your name
Jesus have Your way
Come and have Your way

vs 4 Give us courage in this fight
Give us strength, God, for what's right
Jesus have Your way
Come and have Your way
Jesus have Your way

bridge 1 In our hearts, fan the flame
Stir up our faith
In our lives, here today
Lord, do it again
We need revival
We need revival

bridge 2 Spirit of the living God
Rushing wind, come breathe on us
A mighty move that never stops
We need another Pentecost

Overview

We should say, this is not a bad song. It is typically pleasant sounding but unremarkable worship song (actually, a song of petition), overproduced and sonically predictable. The mix is thick and harsh, with various pads creating a nearly impenetrable fog obscuring the clarity. But the performances are serviceable. 

With the addition of some background wailing guitars and synthesizers, and with the similarity in mood and chord structure, this could pass for an 80s song by Foreigner, like I Want To Know What Love Is.

Some of the musicians in the background seem to have forgotten that they were supposed to be "in worship," because the video captures some of them fiddling with their equipment and looking around.

Also, half way through the video a woman takes over the lead with a guttural howl of a voice and a pained/angry expression. This is very distracting, and doesn't seem worshipful at all.

Nevertheless, this song is not heretical and not superficial. This makes us happy.

The Music

The melodies pretty much keep to the minor pentatonic scale, and are singable with no extreme high range singing. The chorus melody is perhaps the best of the melodies, while the verse melody is serviceable and mildly interesting. 

The song proceeds in a minor groove until the first bridge, where it jarringly drops onto the I chord of the relative major. This generally could work as a songwriting technique, but to do so it needs to land as the high point of the song. This song doesn't. There's no grand crescendo into a emphatic declaration of the central theme. There's no soaring melody. In fact, the bridge actually sounds like another chorus for a different song. It just doesn't seem to fit. 

The intro chords are IV - vi - V.

The verse chords are vi - V - IV - V IV - V (Verse4 substitutes a ii for the IV in the last stanza).

The chorus chords are IV - vi - V - IV V - vi V (The later choruses switch back and forth with a different progression: ii - iii - IV - V - IV - V - vi -V).

The bridge chords are I - vi - V.

Bridge 2 chords are ii - I - IV - ii - I - V (Repeat).

The Lyrics

As mentioned, this is a song of petition. The lyrics are focused on pleading with God to send revival fire, a theme with which we heartily agree. But there are no statements of praise or worship. This is not necessarily a big problem, but we believe that with as many lyrics as this song has, some of them could have been devoted to worship. That is, if we truly believe God will answer this petition we also ought to sing about the result of revival and glorify Him.  

This would not be difficult to do. Here are some examples:

• And your Name will be glorified

• The nations will come and fall at your feet

• Everyone who calls on your name will be saved

• We exalt you, our savior

• You do mighty deeds, and we will see them and bow down

Thus the song would reach a conclusion with prophetic faith statements that articulate praise.

Problem Lyrics

The song thoroughly covers its topic, the desire for revival, but there are some problems.

The first verse :

We Your people, called by name

Humble ourselves and we pray

Come and have Your way

This is a paraphrase of 2Ch. 7:14:

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

This verse is a promise to the nation of Israel, that if their response to God's judgment is to do these things He will act. How this verse applies to the Church has been covered elsewhere in this blog. What we are concerned with here is that the paraphrased lyrics change the meaning of the verse.

First, the lyrics use the phrase "called by name," which means God called each of us by name, as in what God did in the moment of salvation. But the Bible verse says, "called by my name," which is an specific identifier of God's people, who are already saved and now are being asked to do something.  If they do these things He will act. 

Which brings us to the second problem, the lyric omits the primary duty to which God was calling His people: Repentance. ...turn from their wicked ways... Yes, we realize that this is a song and not a doctrinal treatise, but the fundamental sense and meaning of the Bible verse should never be modified. 

The thing is, there's enough space in the song to remedy these two problems:

We Your people, called by (Your) name

Humble ourselves and we pray

Come and have Your way

Forsake our wicked ways

Oh, Lord we come and pray

So leaving out the pronoun doesn't violate doctrine, but it does violate the meaning of the verse and could could have easily been fixed..

The third and final problem is found in verse 3:

Every stronghold has to break

In the power of Your name

This is vaguely improper to us. The implication is that our invocation of Jesus' name will necessarily bring down demonic principalities, probably based on Mark 16:17:

And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues...

Now certainly we are commanded to pray in the name of Jesus (Jn. 14:13), and there are examples all over the Book of Acts of people doing so (Ac. 3:6, Ac. 8:12, Ac. 9:27, Ac. 10:48, Ac. 16:18). So the Name is powerful. Yet there is also the famous example of the seven sons of Sceva using the name of Jesus and getting beat up by demons (Ac. 19:13). So there is something more to the Name than just inserting it into our prayers.

Ultimately, every knee will bow at the name of Jesus (Ph. 2:10). So it is certainly true that praying in the name of Jesus is powerful. The source of our disquiet, however, is those who make bold declarations of pulling down strongholds. They are convinced they can speak the devil into submission, and as a result shout commands at him. 

We think that we should embrace the counsel of Scripture in this matter: 

2Pe. 2:11 yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.

Because of the Holy Spirit in us, we too are more powerful than these beings. We also should not think we can slander these forces of darkness as well (See also Jude 9). 

We should say that we are dealing with what we infer, not what is expressly stated. But, being familiar with the teachings of Bethel church, we are fairly confident that our discernment is correct.

Conclusion

Is this the best song about revival? No. Is it objectional or heretical in any way? Not really. Does it have some depth? Yes. 

We can therefore tepidly recommend it.