Bad Worship Songs - Worthy, by Mack Brock, Chris Brown, and Steven Furtick - Elevation Music

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 good 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 as many as possible of 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
• A certain amount of profundity
• A singable, interesting melody
• Scripture quotes or allusions to Scripture
• Doctrinal soundness

Further, a worship song should not:

• contain lyrics that create uncertainty or cause confusion
• be excessively metaphorical
• be excessively repetitive
• imply that Jesus is 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 today's song "Worthy" (audio link.). To be clear, there are some very good parts. In fact, there are no egregiously offensive aspects at all. 

But it just doesn't measure up to its potential in terms of lyrical content. The verses seem like a series of random phrases cobbled together. On the whole there's just not enough here for us to consider it a good worship song.

Ok, Let's quote the lyrics:

Verse 1

It was my cross You bore
So I could live in the freedom You died for
And now my life is Yours
And I will sing of Your goodness forevermore

Chorus

Worthy is Your name, Jesus
You deserve the praise
Worthy is Your name
Worthy is Your name, Jesus
You deserve the praise
Worthy is Your name

Verse 2

And now my shame is gone
I stand amazed in Your love undeniable
Your grace goes on and on
And I will sing of Your goodness forevermore

Bridge
Be exalted now in the heavens
As Your glory fills this place
You alone deserve our praise
You're the name above all names

The central theme of course is Worthy is Your Name, and this should be the pursuit of the narrative of the verses. If He is worthy, we should see a development of this idea as the song proceeds. The song has 6 minutes, 9 seconds to accomplish this. Why is He worthy? How is His worthiness described? What ideas of the song establish this?

The worthiness of Jesus is celebrated quite well in the chorus and bridge, which is almost enough to tip this song into the "recommend" category. Almost. However, the two verses fall short in describing His worthiness. Let's requote them:  

It was my cross You bore (He is worthy for the cross)
So I could live in the freedom You died for (He is worthy for freeing us)
And now my life is Yours (I gave my life to Him)
And I will sing of Your goodness forevermore (My response is to sing of His goodness)

And now my shame is gone (He is worthy by taking my shame away)
I stand amazed in Your love undeniable (His love is amazing)
Your grace goes on and on (His grace is endless)
And I will sing of Your goodness forevermore (My response is to sing of His goodness)

There ends up being only three stanzas out of eight that describe Jesus' worthiness. Any one of these three statements could have been utilized as a thematic driving force for the rest of the stanzas, culminating in the grand proclamations of how He is worthy in the chorus and bridge. 

But it seems the ball was dropped, for verse two in particular. Verse two feels like an irrelevant tangent tacked on.

In addition, the verse lyrics unnecessarily personalize the song. Seven of the eight verse stanzas include "I" or "my." The song has a total of 14 stanzas, not including repeats, which means half the song is self-referenced. 

However, Jesus' worthiness is independent of our response to Him. The entire song could have been comprised of declarations of His worthiness, for the concept easily stands on its own. Really, we don't particularly care to know that the songwriters' lives are now His, that they are amazed at His love, or if they sing of His goodness.

There were three songwriters credited. It seems to us there should be enough depth of faith in that threesome to do better than this.

A missed opportunity.