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.

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!

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

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.

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!

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.