I haven’t heard any Hillsong albums. Quite a feat, I think. I’ve only ever interacted with the stuff that has been played in churches/conferences I’ve been at. So my impression, on the whole, is that since Geoff Bullock left, there’s been nobody writing lyrics that are what I’d call either coherent or biblical. But what do I know?!

But if your favourite lyric quoted above is the best, I’m not much reassured. It still sounds a bit off to my ear, and I was trying to think about why, and got to this…

Why go with the singular? Plural (congregation rather than individual) is equally viable. It feels like I’m eavesdropping on somebody talking to God. But yes, the psalms go with ‘I’…so what’s the difference? Well, the psalms were meant to be shared; the ‘I’ is testifying to the congregation. Whereas here, it seems like the first half is personal, and then the second half abruptly switches to mutual exhortation – and loses coherence at the same time, interestingly.

It seems like it would work better if the first section was ‘he/me’ pronouns, then ‘so you’ exhortations. Or ‘he/we’ then ‘let’s’. The switch in addressee bothers me. Can’t put my finger on it, but it leaves me feeling like God is worthy of praise because he got his priorities right and looked after number one: me.

(Can’t say I’m envious of their success – more grieved for their massive failures)