Jared Wilson suspects that “the main reason hymns don’t resonate with people much any more is because we don’t preach the gospel.”
Well, the gospel may not be being preached but folk will probably be hearing about: “the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
I’m not certain that the Gospel is absent from every context where hymns have been abandoned, but a certain vocabulary does tend to go missing when preaching becomes a form of life-coaching and not an exploration of what God has given us through Christ.
Another thought that comes to mind, is that we live in an age where segments of the Christian church, not content to simply add their own songs of praise to the stream which has flowed down through the centuries, are so conceited, arrogant and self-centered that they only want to sing words from their own generation.
You will hear tell of churches where those who attend talk of songs that are ten or twenty years of age as being ‘old’ and only desiring to sing something ‘new’.
They feel songs from the past belong there and sever themselves from a form of unity the saints have shared among all generations prior to their own.
So, while they stand and sway for thirty minutes Sunday by Sunday, repeating phrases in order to experience God’s presence and fellowship with Him, they ignore the opportunity to experience fellowship with the saints in ages past that comes when we stand and sing ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ or ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ or ‘A Mighty Fortress’ or ‘To God Be The Glory’ or ‘Jesus Loves Me’.
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Steady on there. You’re sounding like a grumpy old man đŸ˜‰
Some people who sing only new songs don’t stand and sway for thirty minutes Sunday by Sunday, repeating phrases in order to experience God’s presence and fellowship with Him. The songs that are sung are picked carefully by people who understand the gospel and who would leave the church if the preaching became non gospel-centred.
Hymns are cultural. We can be a Christian and not part of the hymn culture.
while you can certainly find poorly done content-light hymns and well done content-heavy contemporary songs, neither of those are the norm. Most hymns tend to focus on the objective truths of the Gospel as meditated upon by the believer. Many contemporary songs are more about what we want God to do for us and what kind of experience we want from God. From what I have seen, there are very few churches who BOTH almost exclusively use contemporary worship music AND think carefully about the Gospel content and Christ-centeredness of the music. These are the exceptional churches that would not fit the otherwise valid observation that Jared Wilson has made.
On a personal note, being in a worship service without Christ-centered songs is a completely discouraging and frustrating experience (which I’ve written about here: http://www.dahlfred.com/en/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field/242-what-is-christ-centered-worship)
Al and Karl, thanks for the comments.
As you can read by the comment thread on Wilson’s blog, the idea is not a new/old thing but a good/bad thing. Preaching that won’t center on the Gospel will cultivate hearts that won’t miss not singing about it, and will gravitate toward singing about what’s really on their hearts.
I don’t imagine that my thoughts on the issue are particularly distant from your own.
And yet, Christian worship being not primarily an evangelistic activity, but one that involves God’s people gathering to hear Him and respond to His revelation, there is something which is lost when we actively divorce ourselves from elements that remind ourselves of our continuity and community with those who have preceded us.
You can sing only modern theologically sound stuff, but why would you want to, and what sort of Christians does that grow?
I’d count the stuff from EMU as actually being representative of a ‘hymn culture’, as I would Getty/Townend and those writing new tunes for old words.
So it’s not an old versus new thing, but a lament over the impoverishment that an exclusive diet of new would represent.
Even an exclusive diet of the best of the new.
(Thanks for the link, Karl.)