2 Chronicles 29:30 King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with gladness and bowed down and worshiped.
A few years ago there was a difference of opinion about the use of ‘choruses’ in worship in the church. Some wanted only hymns, those songs printed in books. Others wanted to sing songs that had the words on transparencies and projected onto a screen with an overhead projector.
In some places this almost became a fight to the death. And some congregations died in the battle.
I think the real battle had to do with the way the hymns were sung, and not so much the hymns themselves. They had become too familiar and therefore seemed to lack enthusiasm and energy. Sometimes the archaic words like ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were turned younger people off.
What I find interesting is that during the life of both the Jewish communities after King David and on into the New Testament, the Psalms found in the Old testament were their hymn book. They returned to them repeatedly to tell the story of the LORD’s work among them. They anchored them in the past and sustained them in the present.
If only this perspective could have been highlighted when churches were walking through the hymn chorus battle. And today we see a resurgence os some of the hymns, updated musically and intertwined with some modern twists. But I think there is a deeper issue at stake here.
Many of the modern worship songs lack the theological depth of some of the hymns. I’m not saying that all the hymns were theologically rich. There were some real ‘shallow water’ hymns. But many of them had the theological depth that is found in the Psalms.
The difficulty arises when you try to have theologically rich content with singable, memorable, engaging lyrics, melody, and musical structure. This is a very hard thing to pull off these days. We want a melody and message that can easily be grasped and remembered after the first verse and chorus have been sung.
Hymns would not meet this criteria today. The only reason they became memorable was the fact that they were printed and people then sung from the printed page. Hundreds of repetitions made them memorable, not the songs themselves. Some of the melodies were impossible to sing, if I remember correctly.
There are some people doing theologically rich songs today. I would suggest that you seek them out. I might suggest www.sovereigngracemusic.org/ or look up Andrew Peterson or Selah on YouTube. I don’t make any money by suggesting these.
I would love it if songwriters today would go back to the rich well of the Psalms and reword and update these theologically rich and humanly experienced words. We need the stories of our ancient faith presented to a modern congregation in a new way, a way that engages us heart, soul, mind and body in the worship of our Great God!
The Arnold Journey 