There are plenty of reasons why our church will always sing old hymns. It’s not just so that those among us whose hair has a ‘grey tinge’ can reminisce about the days of old - it’s for all of us.
For starters, it’d be such a shame to turn our backs on the musical and lyrical gems that’ve been written over the years. You only need to think of songs like “Amazing Grace”, “How Great Thou Art”, or “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” to know what I’m talking about. We’ll never tire of singing or benefiting from these beauts.
Then there’s the benefit we gain from fellowshipping with Christians of ages past. In a very real way, when we sing the words of Christians who’ve endured before us - and who are likely to already be with Christ in heaven - we’re spurred on to continue enduring today, as we struggle on following Jesus ourselves. It’s the musical version of being spurred on by Christian biography - singing the words of a faithful believer penned a hundred years ago or more.
But I reckon the greatest argument we have for singing hymns today can be summed up in a single word: Richness. The lyrical richness of hymns of old, by and large, far surpasses the lyrical richness of Christian songs today (Keith Getty and Stuart Townend are notable exceptions, with songs like “In Christ Alone”, “How Deep the Father’s Love”, and “Jesus Draw Me Ever Nearer”). One of the Church’s great failures in the 20th-21st centuries is to produce so few songs with lyrical richness - especially in comparison with previous centuries. Don’t hear me wrong - it’s not that we haven’t produced any - it’s just that we’ve produced so few. Musically we’re coming up with plenty of great stuff. But lyrically, we’re often wading around in the shallow end of the pool, if not in the land of heresy. We’d be fools if we didn’t mine the riches available to us in hymns of old, whose words put most of our modern lyrics to shame. That’s why we’ve recently added some hymns to our church playlist - “Come Thou Fount”, “All Creatures of Our God and King”, “Take My Life”, and “Rock of Ages” (a few of which you’ll find on out Featured Items Page).
One of our new songs - “Here Is Love” - is another great example. The words are wonderfully rich - beautifully expressing biblical truth. They were written in 1876 by a pastor named William Rees. The music is a modern adaptation by Matt Redman.
On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast a gracious tide
Grace and love, like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
And Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love
That’s rich. Songs like this help the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly. They help the Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Church to become a reality: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17b-19)
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Mark
// Jun 22, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Hi Pete,
I agree, that hymns are good to sing in church and it would be a shame if churches decided not to sing them, which is the case for many churches now. Everything is becoming modernised, and i feel that we too fall in this trap.
Just wondering what some of the reasons are for modernising the music? Why not keep the original version, especially for the morning service in the context of congregational singing. ?
Thanks for the blog and thoughts on singing hymns.
2 steve
// Jun 25, 2008 at 8:11 am
Thanks Mark for the question. I’d be interested in Yocky’s thoughts and others too. In my view we actually need to modernize some hymns or we’ll lose them completely. While there are many hymns with enduring tunes (‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘How Great Thou Art’ are a couple of obvious ones), there are many others that are less enduring musically. But that doesn’t mean we have to lose their rich lyrics, if set to new music. While some of us will have some sadness if we’re more fond of the older tune, our greater joy will be a new generation enabled to sing the same rich gospel words.
After all, we’re people of the Word not the Tune, and we sing so that the Word of Christ will dwell in us richly (Col 3:16). We need to always remember that it’s the gospel we’re called to guard (2 Tim 1:14) and pass on to a new generation (2 Tim 2:2), not any particular cultural expression of it.
We don’t have to choose between the two unhelpful extremes of either freezing our music in the 19th century on the one hand, or abandoning hymns altogether on the other. It’s worth remembering that the great hymns of the 1800s were not welcomed by all when they were first written (oh this new stuff!), as they bumped the old favourites of the 1700s off the playlist!
3 Jasmine
// Jun 25, 2008 at 8:38 am
There is so much in some of the old hymns (”richness” is a good word to describe it) and it has been a blessing to hear some of the older hymns with new music as well as having the mix of the old hymns with the classic tunes and the modern day hymns.
From my perspective of spending time in a church where only hymns were played, the words were often drowned out by the organ. The younger members of this congregation tended to tune out and be drawn to more modern Christian music where the words were often shallow and self-focused.
It would be a pity for many of our young people to miss the goodness of these old hymns just because of the tune accompanying it.
It has been really helpful to think about the songs and music we have in church. A challenge to remember that its not just noise but an opportunity to give praise and thanks to our great God.
A big thank you to the music team!
4 peter yock
// Jun 26, 2008 at 10:04 am
Thanks Mark, Steve, and Jasmine - it’s great to hear each of your thoughts about hymns.
Mark, 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 is a great passage that helps to explain why it is we ‘modernise’ the musical style of some of our hymns. Paul sums up his own gospel ministry in this way: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor. 9:22b). By modernising the music, we’re aiming to do the same thing: take the same old rich words to a new generation of people who have a different musical culture than previous generations. Obviously our church family has a mix of generations - which is why we have a mix of musical styles. But as time passes and generational demographics change, so too should church musical styles change. There’s nothing particularly ‘holy’ about any one style of music (there were no organs in Bible-times!) - it’s the words that count.
But even more importantly than playing songs in a style that our church family will like, we want to play songs in a style that will attract the non-believing people of Lismore into our church. We want to take the unchanging message of the gospel to the non-believers around us, and do whatever it takes (such as ‘modernising’ the music) to make coming to church and hearing about Jesus more attractive to them. While some INSIDE the church family might appreciate the older musical style of hymns, you can just about guarantee it’ll alienate those OUTSIDE our church family who walk in the front door of Lismore High on a Sunday morning. It can alienate younger believers too - as Jasmine helpfully pointed out in her comment - thanks for that Jasmine. If we as a church family are serious about ‘becoming all things to all men so that by all possible means we might save some’, then we should be willing to sacrifice our own musical tastes for the sake of the lost people around us.
Hope that helps.
5 Mark
// Jun 26, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Hi Pete,
Thanks for the reply. I understand where you are coming from and i agree to a point. However 1 traditional hymn will not alienate people in our church. We usually have 1 hymn amongst a range of other (more modern songs).
Therefore we can have a mixture (with majority being modern) of songs to sing on Sunday. You also mentioned that it will alienate young believers and outsiders. Therefore you are saying that we have no older people in our church, they must be all young?
Otherwise wouldn’t we be alienating the older people in our church if we didn’t play a traditional song, even just 1.
You said also that we should be willing to sacrifice our musical tastes. However who is actually doing that? If we play only modern versions of hymns and songs then we (young people) are not making the sacrifice here, only the older people.
Seems to me that it is all a 1 way street.
In saying all this, i believe we need to be reaching all people for the gospel, not only young ones, although they are a big part of it. My point is we play plenty of modern songs at church, but would it hurt to play 1, just 1 traditional hymn every week or 2nd week?
As you said we have a mixture of people in our congregation and “There’s nothing particularly ‘holy’ about any one style of music (there were no organs in Bible-times!) - it’s the words that count” - so if words are most important then why worry about the traditional music for only 1 song?
Thanks again bro
Mark
6 Trev Voltz
// Jun 26, 2008 at 5:57 pm
So Pete does that mean we are only out to see the younger generation saved and the older people put out in the unsaved basket?
Music does not save or draw people to enter a church but God alone saves.
7 peter yock
// Jun 27, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Thanks Mark and Trevor for more of your thoughts - it’s good to see you both keen to see that all people/ages in our Church family are served.
Mark, firstly I’d just like to encourage to go back to the original blog, and see that one of my main points is that we’ll ALWAYS be a church that sings hymns together. Most weeks we have at least 1 hymn, and a lot of them are in a ‘traditional’ style. We’ve already planned out the song choices for Term 3, and I can assure you there are plenty of hymns in there. The mixture will always be there. For example, on the Sunday just passed (June 22nd), we sung a hymn from 1885 (”How Great Thou Art”), a song from 1980 (”Blessing, Honour”), a hymn from 1863, with modern music (”Before the Throne of God Above”), a song from the late 90’s (”Loved”), and a song from 2007 (”Love Came Down”).
“Before The Throne of God Above” is a good illustration of why ‘modernising’ music to old hymns can be a wonderful thing. Many people in our Church family love the song - and the words are incredibly RICH. But before the music was re-written in a modern style (within the last few years), no Churches in Australia really knew it existed! The modernisation ‘resurrected’ a forgotten beauty. Quite a few of our ‘resurrected’ hymns come from a similar ‘forgotten past’.
Having said all that, we don’t want anyone to be settling for just ONE song each service - “one for me” - since ALL of the songs are about Jesus. EVERYONE can rejoice in every single song - and should do so for the sake of encouraging the believers standing around you in the congregation, as well as for the sake of making our relationship with God attractive to the non-believers amongst us. To do otherwise is to advertise to believers and non-believers alike that God is boring, fellowship is ‘ho hum’, and singing to him is a waste of time.
In terms of the ‘one way street’ - that’s actually the direction the Bible points us in! (Eg. Titus 2). As we grow to be older mature Christians it’s because people invested in us… now it’s our turn! It really is the job of the older to make sacrifices for the younger so the gospel doesn’t die with us. You may be underestimating the grace of some of our older Christians who have actually joined with us because we’re a missionary church - not a “my needs” church – and their favourite moment isn’t the hymn, but when a swarm of kids go out the front for a kids talk followed by a kids song that’s not their taste at all – but a new generation is following Jesus.
Trev - Amen brother, it’s God alone that saves. Totally with you. But it’s a hard question to answer: “What style of music is best to serve the WHOLE community of people in Lismore?” There’s no one style that all of the North Coast loves together - there’s so many! The most popular radio stations in Lismore are ABC North Coast and ZZZ FM - I guess that’s the closest thing we have as a guide to what musical styles will most appeal to all ages around us. We do work hard to play in a range of styles that will appeal to all who walk in our Church door - but it’s definately a work in progress. We don’t want to leave ANYONE in the unsaved basket! But - as I’ve already said above - as musical styles change over time, so too should the styles change within the church. There’s a reason we’re not playing music with the Harp and the Lyre anymore - it’s because that style hasn’t appealed to any of us for hundreds of years. This is picking up on the ‘becoming all things to all men’ theme again from 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.
And - just to publicly embarrass you both! - Mark and Trevor, you’re both a GREAT encouragement to me when it comes to singing together. Being in the music team up the front, I enjoy the privilege of being able to clearly see all of the church family. Both of you two really spur me on by your heart-felt singing, week after week. Keep it up!
8 Trev Voltz
// Jun 28, 2008 at 11:27 am
Thanks Pete for your reply and i agree with it , i guess if i was an older person and read your reply to Mark it would have hurt me? Maybe i am an older person in this congregation.
For me i love hard rock which is what i grew up on but i also sang in a choir which sung the”rich words”. But its good that you are changing the words to some of the more modern songs to bring the true meaning to them.
Thanks Pete for what you do its a great job you do with the music and that your faithful to Gods word keep it up brother.
Yeah i have not been at church lately to share my singing talents with everyone hopefully I can get a job that allows me to get to church again.
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