Growing up I spent every Sunday in a little wooden church pew of the First Christian Church in Beaver, OK. We would hold onto our hymnals, turn to a specific page and join together to sing the verses. I didn’t realize it then, but this was birthing something...a love for the hymns.
We as a culture nowadays are so fixated on what’s new, what’s next, what’s now? My heart can’t help but wonder if we have let the beauty of the hymns slip between our fingers in the pursuit of the next big thing, the next great worship song.
Singing the hymns reminds us that we are not the first generation who have wrestled and prayed, asked and believed. It connects the generations. It unites believers of yesterday with the believers of today.
The hymns are not “too old” and they certainly are not “irrelevant” They hold stories of the past. They declare the works of God. They preach theology in melodies. Some of the greatest sermons are preached by the singing of hymns.
Give me a good hymn over modern worship music any day. There is something so powerful and captivating to the songs written long ago.
I encourage you to study the hymns. Don’t just learn the songs. Research who wrote them, why they wrote them, what inspired them. There is such a purity to worshipping in this way. I pray we reignite the fire found in the hymns and never lose that love for them in the church!
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