Left align lyrics?

I'm working for a church, and I cannot seem to align lyrics to the left. When I hit ctrl-L to enter lyrics, the middle align button is highlighted by default. If I try to unclick that button and click the left align button, it has no effect. As soon as I start typing anything, the middle align button "presses itself" again. That means, if I have six stanzas or verses in a hymn, say, I have to manually align the first word of each verse. (And be very careful that it doesn't slip up or down in the process of trying to move it left or right!)

It would be very helpful to have all the verses line up orderly along the left part of the first measure. It would be even MORE helpful if there were a way to number the verses automatically.

And since we're wishfully thinking, we do some Anglican chant, which is unmetered, so it would be great if we could "left align" a whole note in the left part of the measure no matter how much text comes after it. We've cheated on that a little by putting a bunch of hard spaces before the first word of the text so the text lines up with the left edge of the note, but it's such a pain!

Thanks for any help you can give me. It's a wonderful program.