60 Christian Songs That Explain the '90s: "Shout To The Lord" by Darlene Zschech
A decades-old worship song still makes an impact today
So it’s somewhere around, say, 1988 and you’re sitting on a hard, wooden pew in the small sanctuary of a Baptist church. On stage, you have the pastor, the music minister, and the choir. If it helps with the visualization, the choir is mostly men and women, all 65 or older, standing dutifully in pea-green robes.
The music minister, or choir director, or worship pastor, or whatever mix of titles works for you, moves to the pulpit and faces you and the few hundred others in the congregation. He or she motions you to stand and retrieve the hymnal from the back of the pew in front of you. They tell you to turn to hymn #389: “Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus.” And because you’ve been going to this particular church for quite some time, you already know the next sentence that’s coming from the music minister’s mouth: “Let’s do stanzas one, two, and four.”
I never understood why for so many hymns we’d skip certain verses. Chances were if the hymn had more than three stanzas, one of them was being tossed. Usually, it was the third one. Why the third? I never knew. Did the third verse of hymns contain something unsuitable for young eyes? Was it like certain passages from Song of Solomon?
I wondered if it was just me. Did I misremember my youth? A quick Google search took me to a message board where many had the same consternating questions. This meant that every Sunday we did a longer hymn, a line was getting cut.
“I Need Thee Every Hour”, #379. 5 stanzas. SEE YA LATER VERSES THREE AND PROBABLY FOUR. “Amazing Grace”, #165, 5 stanzas. NO NOT AMAZING GRACE? Yep, I’m afraid we’re trimming down the world’s best-known hymn to just a handful of verses. IT GETS TO BE TOO LONG.
“When We All Get To Heaven”, #491. 4 stanzas. You guessed it. ONE, TWO, AND FOUR ONLY. Even the great Alan Jackson only wants to do two verses. ONLY TWO. Oh, well. Hit it, Alan!
There was always one hymn, however, that would not be cut short. It would not be denied the full power of all, yes, count them, SIX stanzas. I bid you to turn in your hymnals to #187 as we sing all six verses of “Just As I Am.”
“Just As I Am” is often played during altar calls. These are at the end of a service where the speaker asks the congregation to come forward if they want to dedicate their lives to Christ. The lyrics were penned in 1835 by an English woman named Charlotte Elliott.
At the age of 32, Elliott was dealing with a severe illness that kept her secluded from friends. On a visit from Dr. Cesar Malan, a pastor, Elliott was asked whether or not she was at peace with God. She was angry at such a question, being bedridden and alone. She refused to answer.
Days later, plagued by guilt, she phoned the pastor and apologized. Charlotte told him she wanted to be cleansed before coming to God. Cesar Malan simply told her “Come just as you are.” She became a believer that day.
A few years later she would recall those words as she wrote “Just As I Am.” It’s been used as an altar call hymn for decades. And if you think doing all six verses at the end of a church service is a lot, imagine being at a Billy Graham crusade and hearing it. Because I can promise you when thousands of people are leaving their seats in the nosebleed section of a football stadium to make a decision for Christ, six verses ain’t gonna cut it.
I grew up a child of a Southern Baptist pastor. The Baptist Hymnal was my unofficial childhood songbook. All these spiritual anthems that I largely glossed over at the time now bring back fond memories. Songs I ignored as an 8-year-old I love now as a 43-year-old.
At some point in the ‘90s, my Sundays transitioned from stained-glassed sanctuaries to more contemporary venues. Hard, wooden pews made way for cushioned chairs. And the music, long entrenched in centuries-old songs accompanied by only a piano or organ made way for more instruments on stage. The pea-green-robed choir? Gone. Make way for the praise band! And make way for this classic worship jam. Hit it, MacKay United Spirit Band!
I don’t know why this is the song I think about when I think about the earliest days of praise and worship music in churches. “Shine Jesus Shine” was always my least favorite worship song. It always felt weird to sing. The register was always higher than my teenage voice cared to attempt. And who am I to tell Jesus to shine? Who am I to tell him to shine twice? I do feel justified to know Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of The Catholic Herald, once described “Shine Jesus Shine” as “the most loathed of all happy-clappy hymns.” Can’t say I disagree.
Maybe the first time praise and worship songs replaced the catalog of hymns for me was at youth camp. I don’t remember much about the sermons during those summer weeks spent with hundreds of other teenagers from across the southeastern U.S. But two things stuck out: among my friends and I, the one least expected to find a girl was the one leaving camp at the end of the week with a girl’s phone number. And I remember a guy named Todd leading the worship time, singing this song at least twice each day.
I didn’t even know until just now that was a Degarmo & Key song! That’s cool.
So yeah, the world of church music was changing. For me, at least. And sure, I tease a bit about the hymns of yore and some of the cheesiness of early worship music. And I haven’t even gotten into the motions that go with some of the songs. But the enduring truth behind many of these songs is a genuine desire to worship God. It’s why we go to church in the first place. Sure, it can be something to check off the list. It can be a cultural expectation. Show up, smile, shake a few hands, act like you’re singing the songs, and go home. But when you go to church with the desire to worship, the lyrics, the sound, it can all be filled with corniness. As long as the words honor the Lord. As long as the soul honors the Lord. And in the 1990s, a woman from down under, from Australia, penned a song that could only come from someone wanting nothing more than to worship God.
This week we’re talking about “Shout To The Lord” by Australian singer-songwriter Darlene Zschech. You pronounce her name “check”, by the way. Like checking off a list. It’s incredibly difficult to type over and over again. Copy and paste functionality was made for names like these. But I digress.
Darlene Zschech became a Christian as a teenager. She met her husband Mark and began attending Hills Christian Life Centre in Sydney which would later become Hillsong Church. In the early ‘90s, Darlene was doing jingles for big brands like Coca-Cola and KFC. In 1993, however, she and her husband were facing the hard truth that their dreams and reality were, in her words, “polar opposites.” With two young children at home and a failing business, the stress was becoming too great to handle.
Then one day the Zschechs get a tax bill in the mail. For most families, it would’ve been to proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back. For Darlene Zschech, it was a reason to go to the little room in their house, the one with the piano. The piano Darlene’s mom bought for her when she was five years old. And on that piano, Darlene began to play. And write.
Using Psalms 96-100 for inspiration, it took 20 minutes for Darlene to write “Shout To The Lord.” When Hillsong’s worship leader Geoff Bullock asked her to play the song, Darlene requested he turn his back because she felt so embarrassed. After she was done, he had one question. “How long have you been sitting on that?”
The song that Darlene Zschech was embarrassed to play for her worship leader is now sung by 25-30 million people each Sunday around the world. It’s been a while since I’ve sung it in a church, but I do pull it out and listen to it from time to time. Often it’s the version performed by the Supertones on their Any Given Day album.
Or, on occasion, when I feel a bit more spirited, I’ll listen to a different ska band’s version of the song.
But for someone who didn’t know the back story of the song, what makes it so powerful? Why now would so many people 30 years later sing it with such conviction? There’s no catchy chorus. There are no motions. It’s a bit slow. But what makes it strong is the foundation.
Psalm 97:5 says The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. The visuals in that verse alone capture the imagination. But they were not written as an embellishment. That God, the Creator of the universe would be so much greater than something so massive boggles the mind. So when we sing “Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name”, we’re not simply hoping God is more powerful than these things. We are acknowledging, with full awe and wonder, that it’s true.
The most meaningful moments of worship in my life came during college. It’s a time most of us look back on with joy. We all love college, right? But those years were so incredibly transformative for my faith that the worship will forever be embedded in my mind as what helped to break me and reshape my life. Songs like “Here I Am To Worship”, “Prince of Peace”, and “Better Is One Day” feel like soul anthems. “Just As I Am” was replaced with “Heart Of Worship”, a song that made all of us, from freshmen to seniors, introspective about where our wild hearts were.
It would be fair to say “Shout to the Lord” was somewhat of a catalyst for what Hillsong’s music legacy has become. A seed that grew into a massive tree, branching out into various sectors of Hillsong such as Hillsong UNITED, Hillsong Young and Free, Hillsong Worship, and even Hillsong Kids. The millennial in me wants to veer toward something called Young and Free, but the 43-year-old bald married man with teen daughters makes me feel a bit more like Hillsong Worship is my cup of tea.
Whatever. At least I’m not to the point of preferring pea-green robes and skipping verses of songs because they might go a bit long. I’m also not as out of sync as this drummer playing one of my favorite Hillsong tunes.
There was a church we attended in Knoxville that played “Oceans” monthly. The woman who sang it, I think her name was Katie. Maybe Kaitlyn? I’m not sure. But she was married to the drummer, and let me tell you this: God wants us to make a joyful noise, but when the noise sounds beautiful and incredible and perfect, I only think it pleases him even more. Those Sundays Katie/Kaitlyn and her drummer husband were on stage with the guitarists, bassist, and keyboard player were incredible. Worship leaders who use their talent well make any Sunday service better.
At some point over the past few decades, churches began segregating themselves. They created two different Sunday morning services: traditional and contemporary. The tradition gives you your three stanzas from a hymn with piano accompaniment or, perhaps an organ. The contemporary service has guitars. Keyboards. Probably some drums. It’s going to lean more HIllsong than hymnal.
But I say, why stop there? It’s 2024. Everything is fully customizable these days. Make worship the same thing. Tell me what songs are being played BEFORE I get to church on Sunday. Are we doing “Graves Into Gardens”? I’m there. Is the band leading off with “Shine Jesus Shine”? Meh…I’ll probably just sleep in. Is Katie singing “Oceans”? I’ll be there for the 8:45 and 10:30 service. What color are the choir robes this week? There are important decisions to be made before we drive to our local house of worship.
In all seriousness, this idea of separate services based on worship music preferences makes me a bit sad. I love a good worship chorus as much as I love singing “Victory In Jesus” to the top of my lungs. I’m cool listening to a Southern Gospel trio sing “Standing On The Promises Of God” just as I am hearing three different electric guitars riff on a new Maverick City song. In the King James Version, Psalm 100 starts with a command: Make a joyful noise to the Lord. We aren’t told with what instrument or what style or what genre of music that noise must be created with.
Several years ago when our girls were younger, they were in a homeschool children’s choir. There were two musicals each year: one at Christmas, the other to wrap up the school year in late spring.
During the spring performance, the younger kids did their performance first before the senior high choir stepped up. These teens were mostly high schoolers, ranging from 14 to 18. During the show, one girl who I assume was around 16 or 17 stepped up to the microphone and began singing this song.
“What A Beautiful Name”, a song popularized by Hillsong. The girl’s voice began with the song’s opening lines:
You were the Word at the beginning
One with God the Lord Most High
Your hidden glory in creation
Now revealed in You our Christ
But as she got to the chorus where the lyrics say What a beautiful name it is/ The Name of Jesus Christ my King, she froze. She stopped in the middle of the chorus while the song’s music kept playing. She was in tears. Overwhelmed by simply singing the Name of Jesus.
People in the audience stood. Some clapped. Some said “Amen!” Eventually, she was able to compose herself and finish the song. And the other boys and girls joined in, some singing with beautiful voices, others just doing their best to make a joyful noise. But they did more than sing a song that night. They worshipped. And they invited us all to be a part of it.
I get choked up even now thinking about that evening. How someone so young could be so in awe of God’s presence that singing the Name of Jesus was almost too much.
“What A Wonderful Name” is a massive song. But “Shout To The Lord” remains iconic all these years later. It’s so big, in fact, that the contestants on American Idol sang it during an episode.
It’s surreal to see pop star hopefuls joining to sing it. But maybe God isn’t stirred any deeper when trained singers worship versus people like you and me. God loves to hear us worship, to sing, to play, to pray, to live lives that honor him. All of that is worship.
Sometimes that worship gets so heavy it causes us to stop mid-song and weep in silence. Sometimes our lives drive us to the piano in a little room inside our house to cry out, to shout to the Lord. Sometimes our worship is a song from a hymnal and sometimes it’s a song from a Spotify playlist. Whatever it is, God simply wants us to do this: make a joyful noise to Him.
Take a minute to listen to Darlene Zschech sing her beautiful worship song “Shout To The Lord.” We’ll catch you next week.
I am really enjoying this series! It’s so creative and fun. Love all the backstories. You are so right…the music I didn’t get as a child is the music I love now! Keep up the good work!
Thank you for sharing this! Looking forward to more installments of this series!