follow-up on accessibility of lyrics

January 11, 2007

I had a great comment of note from my 01.02.07 entry about the accessibility of lyrics. I would like to reprint it here for your edification…

It comes from my new friend Ron Rienstra, who teaches homiletics at Western Theological Seminary and is a frequent contributor to Reformed Worship magazine.

This comment comes from another blog I contribute to called Worship Helps, where I reprinted the accessibility of lyrics entry:

Thanks for this post. I’ve used this song before, and like it a lot, especially for services that are dealing with issues of idolatry.

Two comments: First, you helpfully give some of the background to a phrase like “God of Jacob.” Of course, its origin was in an exclusively patriarchal culture, and so I’ll often use a balancing phrase elsewhere in the service to remind congregants that our God is God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel.

Second, I also like the phrase “God of Jacob” so well because of all the Patriarchs, I find Jacob the most deeply flawed and hence the most like me. He had many good qualities, but he was a liar, a cheat, and didn’t let scruples interfere with his ambition. Just the same, look what God was able to do with him! If God can speak powerfully to him and through him, there’s a chance that I, too, can be a useful tool in the hands of the “God of Jacob.”

Something that Ron says in his comments struck me as a worship leader. He used the expression “balancing phrase” to describe what the worship leader can do to help explain a seemingly ‘unaccessible’ lyric. Futher, his example is didactic, rather than purely instructional. I like that…

We have a great responsibility as worship leaders to bring understanding and clarity to the time of corporate worship. Accessibility sometimes depend on what we do in the spaces between the songs, namely our talking.

In addition to the accessibility of lyrics, we need to be equally conscious of how to make those phrases or statements in our worship songs that could confuse more ‘accessible.’ This is truly ’seeker-sensitive’ worship…

Posted in music, planning, quotes of note, worship