Making Truth Soar in Song

Songwriter Don Wyrtzen spells out the cost of commitment to excellence.

Don Wyrtzen is increasingly being recognized for his contributions to Christian music. Son of evangelist Jack Wyrtzen, he has composed and arranged scores of gospel songs and anthems, including “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” “Worthy Is the Lamb,” and “Finally Home.” He is director of music publications for Singspiration, which is part of The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan. The following interview, conducted by Ruth Dinwiddie, is adapted from “Spectrum,” a program produced by the Moody Broadcasting Network, and used by permission.

What is your main goal in the music that you produce, that you compose?

I have really thought that through and can sum it up in a simple sentence: it is to set God’s truth to music in a simple, attractive form. I believe it was Aristotle who said, “You serve a far better chance of hitting the target if you can see it,” and this is the kind of thing that keeps you on target.

The three key elements are commitment to God’s truth, to the music, and to attractiveness—that it should be beautiful, at least when appropriate musically. I think music should have reality and integrity. If I were setting the Apocalypse to music, for instance, I probably wouldn’t use beautiful nineteenth-century, romantic tunes, but strident, dissonant music.

I am concerned about simplicity; I want our music at Singspiration and the music that I write to be simple. For example, a lot of church pianists don’t play in sharps, so I try to publish a lot of music in flats so they will be able to play it. I try to watch page turns.

What education did you have?

I went first to Moody Bible Institute, then to The King’s College in New York. I went to Dallas Theological Seminary for four years, took Hebrew and Greek, and got a master’s degree in theology, and finally at North Texas State University I worked on a master’s in composition. One of my professors told me he thought I was highly qualified to be utterly useless!

I think I went to school that long because I was struggling with my identity. My dad was well known as an evangelist, and I feel he would have been happy had I followed in his footsteps. But music runs very deep in my psyche, and it would be impossible for me to make it a hobby.

Also, to be real candid, right after I left Moody I began to face the question of the intellectual basis for my faith. I started to wonder if I was a Christian because I had been brainwashed to be one, because of my dad, or because I really believed. I went through a lot of internal turmoil that I’m not even sure my family knew about. About that time somebody gave me a copy of Francis Schaeffer’s notes from a Wheaton “intersession” (which I believe later became The God Who Is There). It was almost like being thrown a life preserver while I was drowning in a sea of intellectual and emotional anxiety.

How do you feel the years of study—like the Greek and the Hebrew, and the other things you got in seminary—are used in what you do now?

I was left with a value system that holds the text of Scripture to be very important. To find out what is really there you have to look into the original languages; to this day I look into the meanings of the words of the text. I have a very lofty view of the words, and it relates to my writing. Lyrically, for example, I’ve recently been setting some of the psalms to music. When I worked on the Twenty-third Psalm a few years ago, I went into Keil and Delitzsch and looked up the Hebrew meanings of the words and wrote my lyrics with them in mind. I wish more lyrics were being written today with that kind of background. I think there is a theological thinness to a lot of the lyrics being written today.

I suppose there is something to be said for poetic license, but it seems to me that when it comes to theology one had better not go too far with it.

I really feel this is a crucial area, because you teach whether you are conscious of it or not. For instance, even if I’m a bad father to my children, I still teach them. I’m still a model to them—although I may be a bad model. They are going to catch what I really am, and I communicate no matter what I do. And it’s the same way with music. Even if we’re not conscious of the theology of the lyrics, we’re still teaching theology—particularly to our children. It may be a bad theology, but we are still teaching it. I think this area is one the Christian world should really examine. Are our songs actually zeroing in on biblical truth or not?

I’m not saying we should throw out every hymn that has a problem in it. For example, in “And Can It Be?” Charles Wesley wrote that Christ “emptied himself of all but love.” Now, the self-emptying of Christ (from the famous kenosis passage of Philippians 2) is a debatable issue, but I’m not sure we should throw out the whole hymn because of it. Maybe a word about that third verse would be appropriate, or even deleting it and saying, “This is a wonderful hymn, except I’m not sure about this phrase.” It would be excellent for a church to do that; it would be educating to our congregations.

Let’s talk about lyrics. We know you started in music at an early age. But when did you discover you had a knack for writing the words? Did this come out of necessity, or what?

You’re getting into an area about which I have a lot of insecurity! I have much more self-confidence in my music than I do in my lyrics. I am not a “commercial” songwriter. All of my songs come out of my own experience—my devotions, sermons I hear, experiences with my family. I drive out in the country and pray out loud, “Lord, help me with this lyric.” What has been intriguing to me is that the Lord has blessed some of my songs more than the arranging in which I have more confidence.

Writing lyrics is hard work. The challenge is to take the old-fashioned message of Christianity and put it into today’s terms. Interestingly enough, the Christian world’s culture is sort of midway between the King James and the Living Bible [versions]. I’m not against the King James—I love it, I was raised on it, it’s my Bible—but I want my lyrics to be more like the Living Bible. It is written in a style that is simple and elegant, and which any person can understand. That’s very hard to do. I think we have a lot of what are really seventeenth-century lyrics written to today’s music. To me, there is a dichotomy there.

So today’s generation doesn’t understand what they mean?

Again, I agree with Francis Schaeffer: the challenge is to write in today’s thought forms and frames of reference to communicate eternal truth. That is a great challenge, and in my opinion, we don’t cheapen it. Many people seem to think the King James Version represents some sort of “holy” language, and that “thee’s” and “thou’s” are a holy way of addressing God. When Paul talks in Romans about calling our Father “Abba,” that is simply “Daddy” in modern English. I think we’re on the right track in using simple, everyday English to convey our faith to people.

Do you start with an idea or an experience, or something you want to express, and then build the rest of the text or lyrics around that?

I start with a seed thought, an idea that I get excited about. Often it’s a title, and I’ll write a chorus or a main theme around that and develop the rest of the song—hopefully through craftsmanship—around that seed idea. In popular music they call it a “hook.”

But I think you have to get excited about that main concept. It could be a melodic fragment or a chord progression. Sometimes I’ll just compose a tune and write the lyrics later. Sometimes I’ll write lyrics and set them to music.

So the lyrics don’t always come first?

Not always. One of the most frequent questions people ask is, Which comes first, the words or the music? It’s an interesting question, but I can only say, “I don’t know.” Songs come all different ways to me.

I’ve heard you say there is a difference between a Christian musician and a musician who happens to be a Christian. What do you mean?

I got that concept from Howard Hendricks in seminary. It simply means that a musician who happens to be a Christian may be like any non-Christian musician except for the fact that he knows Christ as Savior. But he hasn’t gone through the process of developing a Christian world view or philosophy of music.

A Christian musician not only knows Jesus Christ as personal Savior, but he has searched the Scriptures and developed a philosophy of music that is Christian that makes him distinctive from non-Christian musicians. I think there is all the difference in the world between the two, because a Christian musician not only knows Christ: he also has a genuine Christian philosophy and follows biblical principles in his work. A musician who happens to be a Christian has never taken the time to search the Scriptures for biblical principles or develop a Christian philosophy or world view.

How does a person develop a Christian world view, or—as you say with music—a Christian view of music?

If we go back to the Reformation, Luther was saying that [with the coming of the printing press] any layman could study God’s Word in his own time in his own language for himself. I think any person can take, for example, the New International Version of the Bible and study all the biblical passages on music, write them down, categorize them, and develop principles. A person could go a long way doing that. We also have some fine Christian scholars, like Donald Hustad and your husband, Richard Dinwiddie, who have very sharp minds in the church music field, and who can help the rest of us with our own development of these things. What I think is important is for each person to go through the process individually and study the passages for himself.

What you’re saying is that studying the Word is the first step.

Well, I’m a biblicist—I like that term (not that I’m not an evangelical or a fundamentalist)—and I take the Bible very seriously. It’s my authority for life and I try to read it every day. I read Psalms and Proverbs through once every month. I read two chapters from the Old Testament and two from the New, and I try to take notes. This takes me through the New Testament three times a year and the Old Testament once, and Psalms and Proverbs once each month.

How much time does that take each day?

I’ve never clocked it, but I don’t think it takes longer than half an hour. I try to read part of it in the morning and part of it in the evening. It has worked beautifully for me because, as a musician, I’m really into Psalms, which is the ancient Hebrew hymnbook. I’m starting to get a feel for the psalms, and that is helping me, not only in my personal life, but also in my writing. It helps me personally because I think I have a lot of melancholy. A famous Christian author once said to me, “I hope you don’t write when you feel depressed.” But later I thought, “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. If King David had followed that advice, a whole lot of those psalms would never have been written.” I can really identify with his despair, but in the last half of those psalms he elevates me to praising God.

Do you have any idea ahead of time which songs are going to be widely accepted and sung?

I don’t think anybody in the world knows how to sit down and write a great song or a “hit”—what we call a favorite. I think we try to do the best job we can, and then the Lord just blesses certain ones. They are almost like your children. You kind of watch them grow up and go out into the world and be used, and you get a bit detached from them.

Music has tremendous power, and I suppose this can be either good or bad. How do you feel about that? How much power does music really have?

It is a complicated thing, but I believe most people take music for granted. They don’t take it nearly as seriously as the Bible does. I feel that no matter how you view music as an art form, it is an incredibly powerful communication tool. For example, if you look at it as great art—like Bach’s B Minor Mass or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—it can be a very powerful tool to speak to a person’s emotions and also to the mind.

I think music can evoke patriotism. It can sell products. I believe you can teach concepts from music. Colossians 3:16 talks about the early church using music for teaching and counseling and admonition.

Economically, music is a much greater power than the average person would guess. For instance, just the record industry alone is a bigger money maker than all the spectator sports in the world. It’s also bigger than movies. It is an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the mind-set of young people because the record industry is basically youth-oriented—in both the sacred and the secular fields. That makes it very contemporary. When you put all of these things together—all the music on the radio, on television and films, serious music, jingles to sell products, plus all of the church music—you have a very powerful tool to communicate in our culture. I’ve often wondered what would happen if you shut off all the music.

I can’t imagine it.

But I think it’s so pervasive that we take it for granted. I remember that when I graduated from seminary people would often say to me, “And you’re going into music!’—as if I were wasting my life. Maybe the reason people don’t take music seriously is simply because it is so pervasive in our culture. But I think the Enemy (and I believe he is real, with a real personality) takes music very seriously and uses it every day to undermine Christianity and biblical ideas—God’s truth.

And he not only does it often in rock music, but he loves to use opera, too. Most Chrisrians don’t stop and think that legitimate forms of music that nobody questions can be used by the Enemy. For example, Hitler used the march form. Nobody questions “Onward Christian Soldiers” as a march form. But Hitler used the march form for a very evil purpose in Nazi Germany. The Enemy uses music or anything else in very clever, subtle ways to get his message across.

Do you feel that Christians, then, have not taken music seriously enough and have not taken proper advantage of the powerful tool it can be for Christianity?

Christians need to take music much more seriously as an art form, and they need to take it more seriously as a tool to communicate truth to people—if the music has words. I think there is an incredible theological thinness—a “schlock” factor—in lyrics. We have virtuoso orchestrators, we have some exciting performers, we have some very gifted people musically. But very few of them are really writing good, solid, Christian lyrics today. We’re getting things like an artist who has known the Lord a very short time saying, “I was in bed last night and the Lord spoke to me,” and then they write this stuff in songs and it sells big. It appalls me. There is not a whole lot of depth in this music. It’s not that I think my stuff is so great, but I guess what bothers me is that a lot of people aren’t even aiming at excellence—or they’re unaware of real quality from a theological standpoint.

We should apply to music the six adjectives the apostle Paul gives in Philippians 4:8. Is this piece pure? Is it lovely? Is it just? Is it honest? Is it true? Is it of good report? I’ve done that with young people when they ask what I think of a certain piece of music, and it’s very powerful. I’ll ask, “Have you done that? If you’re a Christian, here’s Philippians 4:8. Now you apply it to this book, or this song, or this record.”

What can parents do with their children to help them appreciate the right kinds of things and be discerning in their listening as they grow up?

What parents listen to has a great influence on what the kids are going to end up with. Parents need to listen to good music and be discriminating. I think they should play a lot of Christian music in their home. They should have cassette decks in their cars for when they go on long trips. I’m not opposed to radio, but when they get out of range of [WMBI] fine Christian stations, they need to have good Christian music to listen to.

One of the things we often did when our children were younger was to put on a Christian recording when we put them to bed so that while they were dozing off to sleep they were hearing Christian music. They were learning theology through that music on a subliminal level while drifting off to sleep!

Do you think a lot of Christian people are going through the motions—sort of on “automatic pilot”—and not really thinking these things through, even though they may go to church and do all the other things that are expected of them?

I do. I’ve noticed that people in church kind of put themselves on an automatic pilot in the sense that they don’t prepare their hearts for worship. They don’t ask, “Lord, what can I get from you today? What can I give to you? What can I give to encourage somebody else?” If a sermon seems boring, we tend to blame it on God or say the church is dull and archaic. But maybe our purpose that morning was to encourage somebody else. We need to prepare ourselves for worship, but I don’t think that occurs very often. We get to church and automatically open the hymnbook and sing. If somebody should ask, “What did you sing this morning?” we would find that by Sunday evening we had already forgotten because we just went through the motion of singing the words. When somebody asks us to lead in prayer we use automatic phrases that are all sort of run together. We get into a kind of Christian lingo or cultural way of expressing ourselves. We don’t really get personally involved in some of our praying and our worship in song. I think the Lord must sit in heaven and say, “I want to hear a new song!”

In so many of our churches we not only sing nothing but the old hymns of the faith—which are precious—but we never do anything new. Why isn’t our faith for today? Why isn’t it alive now? Why isn’t there an urgency about it?

So while you don’t want necessarily to exclude what is old, you want to add fresh things to it.

Absolutely! I believe the old has to be blended with the new. Some of the churches I visit seem to use the same 12 songs. Now, “He Lives” is a wonderful tune—but I’m tired of it. I go to some churches where even the angel Gabriel couldn’t move the dust! I know young people aren’t so much against church as they are against a dull, lifeless, predictable, archaic, boring, out-of-it service. Unfortunately, when you’re young you equate that with truth, with the message. We’re losing some of our most gifted people simply because we’re lazy and boring and dull—and with God’s truth, of all things. These same people will go to a movie or be exposed to something else that looks exciting to them but has nothing to offer in terms of answers to the ultimate questions of life.

You can have it both ways: you can have truth and theological stability and excellence, and you can still put it in a beautiful, attractive form if you work at it hard enough.

What are the things that you struggle with professionally in terms of your ministry and your work?

One of my major struggles is the whole area of how to handle my time, particularly as it relates to setting priorities and concentrating on the writing to which I feel God has called me. You can get to traveling, to running around a lot. Many times people don’t understand. You’ll come home from a trip and need to spend time with the family, and somebody will call you to come over and do a devotional or something—and if you don’t do it they think you’re unspiritual. Sometimes they’ll press, and you’ll say, “But I’m committed tonight.” Then they’ll ask what you’re doing, and if you say you’re going on a picnic with your family, they’ll react as though there’s something unspiritual about picnics.

Another problem is the whole area of stewardship of time and money: how do I handle what God has given me, not only in terms of talent, but how do I invest, what projects should I do, what projects should I not do?

There is the pressure of being involved in a ministry that is also a business, a sophisticated business where computer technology can tell us how anything sells on any given day. We can identify the sales history of any product, and try to bring together ministry and business and art—and still keep our priorities straight. It’s very difficult to do that. Sometimes I’ve tried to cop out and said, “Lord, send me to the mission field. Get me out of this. Why should I be in business?” But the Lord led me to do what I am doing, and he is saying, “No! Christianity can work right here in this business. You just need to ask me for guidance every day.”

Recently my life was getting very confused and complicated and overly committed. I decided that I am going to do one thing: I am going to get into God’s Word every day. I’m going to hone in on that one thing. Do you know what I’ve found out? God’s Word has satisfied me richly inside, and it has given me much better judgment in coping with the extraneous things on the outside.

Ruth Dinwiddie is a producer and program host for Moody Broadcasting Network, Chicago. Her nationally syndicated program “Sugar ’n’ Spice” is aired over some 45 stations.

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