Death of the hymn

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here but I thought I’d write about something very sad for me. I think the hymn is dead.

Now don’t misunderstand this because I’m sure that we will still sometimes sing hymns and it is still possible that a great hymn writer might emerge again but I think the days when worship was dominated by hymn singing is finally over. It has had a good innings to be fair. The great revival of hymn singing came with the Wesley’s and we Methodists have enjoyed singing them, and some of us still do, but let me explain why I think that age has now passed. These are my own opinions, of course.

No one can produce a good hymn book anymore

Have you noticed that hymn books are a shadow of what they once were? Hymns were once collected for their spiritual value into a collection which worshippers could then use to express what they needed to both at home and in the service. Now they are a collection of popular songs and a compromise for those who want different styles of song. All the old great hymns are re-written to express modern language hangups which often seem to remove some of the greater thoughts and poetry that they once expressed. Every new hymn book that comes out seems to have less of the old good stuff in it.

No one is writing good hymns today.

There is the occasional exception to this but even the ones that are good don’t seem to have the longevity that hymns used to have. Now, not all of the hymns we used to sing were/are good so maybe things are not that different than they used to be but I can’t help but express my own feeling that somewhere things did change and hymns written today are just not what they once were. You could learn theology from some old hymns but today you seldom can. Don’t misunderstand me here I am talking about hymns not worship songs – proper hymns with several verses and occasionally a chorus. It is hard to define what a hymn is but I hope you see the point.

Some of the older hymns are now pretty much unsingable

There are hymns I find I can’t pick because the tunes are so complex that unless you sing them regularly they are just not singable by a modern congregation.

Congregations are different than they were

When I came into the church as a young man churches still had good sized congregations and some people would still sing the hymn in parts. This all went to making the experience of hymn singing something very different than it is today. Whilst I admit this might be pure nostalgia on my part, in my humble opinion it does make a different when you are trying to worship.

Generations of people have voted with their feet

So many people have left the established churches and have joined alternative churches where the music is very different. I’ve had conversations with some of them who have expressed a complete boredom with the old styles of worship (that is the hymn sandwich). We might tut and say they are wrong (and let’s face it that is pretty much what churches have done in the past) but the reality is that the church is dying out and in part because of an insistence on a particular style of music.

I think, honestly, if I was a young man today and came to a Methodist church and sang what most Methodist churches offer today I would not have stayed long. Even as a mature Christian I have found much of the Methodist worship to be dull and often tedious to attend. Gone is the great hymn singing to be replaced by soft sentiment hymns with little gospel but lots of social justice.

Music is such an important part of worship that it can make a world of difference.

But there is hope for church music

There is a style of music that seems to appeal to the lost generations. It is a more popular style and whilst at times we might wonder if we have lost some of the reverence and depth the old hymns gave, some of the new songs are able to provide a rich worship experience suitable to the contemporary worshipper.

Perhaps it is time to admit that the old hymn style is dead and move on to the new worship song style at least for the sake of future generations.