A great article I found online...

Great article (food for thought) by Kevin Twit on hymns vs. choruses that I found on www.blog.worship.com. When I grow up :), I want to write stuff this well-thought-out.



My Grandmother Saved It, My Mother Threw It Away, and Now I’m Buying It Back: Why Young People Are Returning to Old Hymn Texts


In popular usage, the word hymn can refer to the text only (typical in England), to text and tune only, or to the whole combination of text and music. In this article, the desire to return to old hymns is to return to the older texts, sometimes also the tunes, but definitely not the sounds of traditional hymns. Old hymn texts are finding new life in contemporary musical settings.

Not too long ago I saw a sign in an antique store: "My grandmother saved it, my mother threw it away, and now I’m buying it back!" That little sign captures the story of church music in the last fifty years. In my work as a pastor with college students, I have been taking note of what feels like the beginning of a movement.

There is most definitely a hunger and longing among the emerging generations, college students and twenty-somethings, to connect with something real and solid rather than the faddish and ephemeral. Books like Robert Webber’s The Younger Evangelicals (Baker, 2002) and Colleen Carroll’s The New Faithful (Loyola Press, 2002) well document this phenomenon.

Recently a college student posted this letter on a website in response to an article on hymns.
"Coming from a typical praise chorusreliant high school youth group . . .I didn’t understand a lot of the poetic and imagery-driven lyrics, and the word hymn automatically meant boring music. But I found myself falling in love with the old hymns. . . . The words are so profound and full of truth one can’t help but be broken. Singing hymns has seriously changed my life and freed me from feeling frustrated by surface lyrics that focus on how I feel about God, which is always changing. Hymns have allowed me to center my worship on the Gospel, which in turn compels me to love the God I am prone to hate and wander from."

What thrills me is to see how her discovery of hymns has affected even the way she expresses what she finds in her heart—"Come Thou Fount" has helped orient her to a richer view of what the Christian life actually feels like! For many, the church’s hymn tradition has become a treasured resource; students around the country are scouting out used bookstores for antique hymnals, searching for gems that have fallen out of use and yet resonate with their faith and longing to connect with God in a deeper way. Across the country there’s been an explosion of interest in writing new tunes for old hymns. Grassroots-produced CDs like Indelible Grace (see RW 66, p. 42) as well as recent projects by artists including Amy Grant (Legacy) and Caedmon’s Call (In The Company of Angels) have featured old hymns, many of them set to new tunes in keeping with the musical cultures of emerging generations.

It is worth pondering why hymns are connecting with young people. Few would have predicted this when baby boomers were throwing out anything "old-fashioned" or traditional. But we still need hymns in a postmodern world! In fact, the hymn tradition has tremendous things to offer the emerging generations—things they are really longing for and that are frequently lacking in the praise and chorus music so often marketed as "college worship." What’s going on? Why do we still need hymns in a postmodern world? Here are several reasons:

Because Worship Is Formative

Worship shapes and molds us. Our hearts are drawn from other "treasures"
as our eyes are opened to see Jesus for who he really is. Thomas Chalmers
(nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian), called this the "expulsive power of a new affection." In worship we seek to have Jesus become more beautiful and believable to us. Anne Steele (eighteenth century) captures this in a hymn text: "Thou lovely Source of true delight, whom I unseen adore; unveil thy beauties to my heart, that I might love thee more!" Worship restores our sanity so that we can live in line with the truth of the gospel rather than with the fantasy world in which we must earn God’s favor. Hymns are wonderful for doing this.

Because of the Longing to Experience God
Postmoderns long for experience with God, and hymns are some of the richest expression of Christian experience we have. They are a doorway into sensing the truth in our hearts rather than just "knowing" it in our heads. Wesley’s text "Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears; the bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears" is a great example of crying out to God to sense what we confess.

Because Hymns Help Us Grow Up
Hymns teach us the rich theology we really need. If we have a limited view of who God is and what the gospel is, our experience of it will be limited as well. Paul writes the longest explanation of the gospel to people who are (literally) world-famous for their faith (Rom. 1:8) because, as Luther said, we leak the gospel and it needs to be beat into our heads over and over again! Hymns really stretch us. Why is Henry Lyte’s "Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken" one of my students’ favorite hymns? Probably because it offers us orientation to what the Christian life is really all about and doesn’t sugarcoat the gospel at all:
Jesus, I my cross have taken,
all to leave and follow thee.
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
thou from hence my all shall be.
Perish every fond ambition,
all I’ve sought or hoped or known.
Yet how rich is my condition!
God and heaven are still my own.
Let the world despise and leave me;
they have left my Savior too.
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
thou art not, like them, untrue.
O while thou dost smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
foes may hate and friends disown me,
show thy face and all is bright.

Because Hymns Are Mini-meditations on the "Paradoxes" of the Gospel That Drive Us to Worship
C. H. Spurgeon said, "When I cannot understand anything in the Bible, it seems as though God had set a chair there for me, at which to kneel and worship; and that the mysteries are intended to be an altar of devotion." Hymns are an opportunity to sit in a mystery—like Charles Wesley’s "And can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me?"—until it begins to melt our hearts.
Because Hymns Can Teach Us the Art of Meditation on Scripture
This is an art we desperately need to relearn. Hymns help us take a theme and turn it over; they let us gaze on it from different angles. And they suggest (though by no means do they ever exhaust) ways in which this truth should change our lives. In this way they model how to meditate upon Scripture and the truths of the gospel.

Because Hymns Remind Us That We Can Only Approach God Through the Blood of Jesus (1 Pet. 2:5)
The idea that we only approach God as Christians through the blood of Christ is too rarely mentioned in most modern choruses. We need deeper, richer, and longer looks at the cross and all that it means. As Luther advised, "For every one look you take at your sin, take ten looks at the cross!"

Because Hymns Focus Us on God’s Promises More Than on Ours
We grow by feeding on God’s character revealed and by feasting on God’s promises. We need to recall Augustus Toplady’s hymn "Rock of Ages" (originally titled "A living and dying prayer for the holiest believer on earth"; see p. 25): "Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone, thou must save and thou alone!"

Here is another set of reasons to sing hymns rather than only choruses:
• Hymns offer a fuller emotional range of expression. Hymns help us work through emotions and they cover a wider range of emotions than many modern choruses do. Although we may associate hymns with a lack of emotion and modern choruses with emotional excess at times, careful study reveals that the emotional range touched on by modern choruses is rather narrow.
• Hymns tend to engage our imagination, intellect, and will together. Good hymns give us rich language and images that require us to think and imagine as the way to stir the passions. While praise choruses do use imagery, they sometimes get stuck in clichés that no longer engage our imaginations. The Scriptures are full of diverse images; our songs should reflect this creativity too.
• Hymns tell a story and walk us through the gospel. Some choruses are often more like "images" that flash on the television screen for a moment. They stir us, but they don’t take us anywhere. In a good hymn, the writer offers her story and invites you to try it on and see if it might be your story too.
• Hymns remind us that the church is bigger than the people we know, or even those who are alive today. Through hymns we connect with believers who lived centuries before us. We can have "mystic sweet communion, with those whose rest is won" ("The Church’s One Foundation" by Stone). When I introduce people to Anne Steele’s hymns, they are struck by the powerful way she dealt with her immense suffering. They find that her cries can become their cries, her tears can elicit their tears, and her faith can encourage their faith. Seeing that we can connect with an English woman who lived in a small village 300 years ago and feel what she felt is powerful. All of the sudden the kingdom of God looks much bigger!

First published at "Reformed Worship." Republished at worship.com by permission of Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace Music.
(ktwit@ruf.org) is campus minister at Reformed University Fellowship, Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee, and is the founder of Indelible Grace Music (www.igracemusic.com).

Proud of our Church Family

I'm proud to be a part of the FXCC family.

It's 11:15 pm on Saturday night, and I'm just thinking of all the great people in our church family who:
+ helped with David Callarman's celebration service last week
+ helped with Sarah Bergquist's celebration service this week
+ who shine the light of Christ in the shadow of death
+ raked leaves for 3/4 hours last Sunday afternoon
+ have been rehearsing for 3 months to bring encouragement and peace to others (and tonight's Christmas performance really showed it)
+ started a ministry to chaplains in the military
+ gather for prayer on Wed nights, and Tuesday mornings, and Friday mornings, and every other possible time...
+ came to share their hurts & frustrations & encouragements with our church leaders these past few weeks

I could go on and on...
What an awesome church to be a part of...Thank you, God!

Looking forward to a GIANT celebration

Tommorrow night at 7 pm will be the absolute largest celebration service I have ever been too, without a doubt. I am looking forward to it more than I am anxious about the sadness/grief that will no doubt be a part of it. I just had to post this from Scott Bergquist...it's on Sarah's caringbridge site, but some may not have seen it...his words and all the greetings posted on that site have been an immense source of encouragement, to put it mildly.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2006 03:16 PM, CST

I want everyone to take heart.

This afternoon Sarah slipped away through the great divide that separates our world from God’s kingdom in Heaven. Sarah loved the Lord more than anyone I have ever known. And she loved everything about the life that God entrusted her with. A few weeks ago when Sarah was whispering to me she said the following while gesturing about the immediate world around her, "It’s more than about this. It’s not just about this." When I asked her what she meant she said, "Life was not just about this physical body, and the physical world in which we live." Sarah and I both believe this with all of our hearts. My children believe it too and know they can one day see her again in Heaven….but - only by putting their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Please read on:



Romans 10

9that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

10for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

11For the Scripture says, "WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."

Hebrews 11

11. With respect to the promise of God, she did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God

Revelation 21

4And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away."

5And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new " And He said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true."

6Then He said to me, "It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.

7"She who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be her God and she will be My daughter.


God has definitely been glorified through Sarah’s life and even in her death. I want you to know that she never wavered in her love and devotion for her family, and especially for God!

For those who would like to attend, there will be a "Celebration" Service this Thursday evening, December 14th, 2006 at 7:00p.m. at the Fairfax Church of Christ.


3901 Rugby Road
Fairfax, Virginia 22033
(703) 631-2100
I ask that you please continue to pray for Sarah’s family and especially for our four little children; Hannah, Noah, Jonah and Rachel.

Still your humble friend and brother - Scott

2 Corinthians 4:7
7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

On a road marked with suffering

Jesus, please tell sweet Sarah that we love her, and that we'll always miss her, and never forget her smile. One day, help us understand the incredible joy, pain and suffering we can feel all at the same time.


Blessed be Your name when the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out...I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord blessed be Your name

Funnel our energies to a dying world

Thanks everyone for the meaningful comments. I'm sure there'll be more discussion of this topic in the future, which will be fine, but hopefully the discussion will take it's rightful place...

For example, I'd love for this issue to be discussed on the bus as we go up to Allenwood, PA next month to sing at the prison where Neal works now...visiting the prison...now that's the work of Christ. Discussing worship styles/forms, now that's just filler time discussion. I'm not bragging on those of you who are planning to make the trip, I'm just saying, THAT is what I want my life to be about, not a silly guitar/piano/set of mics. I want to be known for lifting up the fallen, visiting the sick, bringing hope to those in prison. I want Jesus' mission statement to be my mission statement. Even Jesus doesn't mention specifics on worship...He's WAY too focused on the work the Father sent Him to earth for.

Thank You, Father God, for the enduring example of your Son, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus, for being the Way, Truth & Life, and for bearing with us when we fret and worry about trivial things. But grow us up, Lord. Help us get past ourselves and help us to funnel all of this energy to show Christ to a lost world.

Very interesting...

I have really benefitted by reading the post & comments on Mike Cope's blog about the decision of the elders at the Richland Hills church of Christ to add an instrumental service on Sunday morning to their schedule. www.preachermike.com LOTS of viewpoints are represented, and I was forced to think through my approach to this issue.

Understanding that our elders have been very clear to our church about how we will worship God (solely a cappella) what are some of your reflections? I love a cappella music, and I'm thankful for our elders' clarity about how our church will express praise to God. But I also long for the day when we can articulate our practice with scriptural integrity (not making the Word say something it doesn't) and openness without a judgmental tone.