10 Worship Songs We Should Stop Singing

4. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin

Chris Tomlin is an interesting case. I met him once before he made it big. I was in high school, and he was the camp worship leader. If he’s like he was then, he’s the nicest human being on the earth. And a few years later he became the golden boy for the worship industry. Young, good-looking, and extremely marketable. And he does seem like the perfect guy – kind, mostly writes his own stuff, active and generous in philanthropic causes.

I want to say all of these things, because I want to be careful to demonstrate that I’m not attacking his character. But Chris Tomlin writes poor texts. They sound good at first listening, but they are full of mixed metaphors, non sequitur, and lack even a basic grasp of rhyming. This is all very  important because he’s not a small child writing a poem for his mother. He’s a professional, perhaps the worship industry’s biggest and brightest star. The American church sings his songs more than any others on Sunday mornings. That can’t be okay. We’ve simply got to do better.

“How Great Is Our God” is one of his more popular songs. When you first hear it, it sounds good, even with some biblical imagery, but you wait and wait for it to tie everything together. And it doesn’t. It wanders around for around five minutes without actually saying how great God is. No complete thought, no substantiated premise, no thesis. Just bits and pieces.