I sent this email to our worship leaders and I thought others might be interested in it.
Why do we try to incorporate a hymn each week into worship?
The shortest answer I can give is to quote C. S. Lewis on old books: “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook–even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. None of us can escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.” (from his introduction to Athanasius’ On The Incarnation).
The same thing is true of songs. There are some great worship songs out today and I want the majority of our worship to feature them. But I don’t want us to just feature them. They have notable weaknesses (pdf link) and so I want the “sea breeze of the centuries” to blow through our worship and keep us rooted.
Having said that, traditional hymn music doesn’t really connect with today’s students. That’s why I urge you to seek out or make up (yes, you are allowed to do that) contemporary arrangements for the hymns that we do sing.
I’ve found a few that illustrate what I’m talking about. Check out http://igracemusic.com/igracemusic/hymnbook/hymns.html
Each one has a sample mp3, lead sheets, tab sheets, and other resources available for worship teams.
Another excellent example is the Dave Crowder band’s recording of “All Creatures Of Our God And King.”
Anyway, I’ve been meaning to explain myself on that for a while but I’ve never actually gotten around to it.
So there.
Agreed, music once held an important place in the church for teaching doctrine, highlighted particularly in the rich textual complexity of some hymns, whereas now many songs seem to be primarily an expression of emotional response. (This is not my original idea, but I’ve had so many discussions on the subject, I’m not sure who noted it first.)
One point of disagreement: I’m not sure that traditional hymn music doesn’t connect with students. I wouldn’t make it a primary type, but there is an elegance in the pairing of the often repititious or simple music of hymns with the complex doctrine contained in their lyrics. It draws attention away from thundering emotional bass tones and drumbeats and back to the truth of the words within.
I’m not against new arrangements, there are a lot of great ones, but sometimes you don’t need to mess with a good thing. And I would argue, in some cases, that hymns, including the music, are good “as is”.