I've been thinking a lot about the songs we sing on a Sunday morning during worship. Most of them come from the Presbyterian Hymnal which was published in 1990 and is now twenty years old. Work on the hymnal began in 1985 and concluded in 1989.
I decided to do a little unscientific research on the hymnal here's what I discovered... I am a lifelong Presbyterian and an ordained Presbyterian minister. I went through the hymnal, 605 pieces of music, to see how many of them I readily recognized. The number I came up with was 112. Now of those 112 some should no longer be sung in worship, Kum ba Yah for example is best left in the past.
The question I have to ask is do I represent the typical forty-plus year old male in the church? In some ways most definitely, in other ways probably not. Most men my age have had much less exposure to church music that I have had and so would most likely recognize far fewer hymns than I do.
What has our congregation done with these 605 songs? Fortunately we have had people keep a diligent record of the songs we have used since acquiring the hymnal in 1990. Since 1990 we have sung 260 of the songs three or more times,(three was an arbitrary cut off) although three times in 20 years is hardly enough to instill them in the collective memory. Of the 260 we have sung, 72 of have not been used in the past five years. I wonder how many really form part of the collective memory of the congregation?
I also have a book titled, "The Best Praise and Worship Songs Ever" containing 80 songs. Of the eighty songs listed I would be happy singing over seventy of them.
I can go see U2, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Bruce Cockburn and a host of other artists and sing along with almost every song they play without any music or lyrics to follow. Why's that, because the music moves me and I listen to it frequently. I have thousands of songs on my i-pod, hundreds of which I can sing along to, yet in worship we still see the need to provide music and words each week.
Before anyone thinks I'm bashing classic hymns, here's my top ten list of hymns. As you can see only one of them is a modern song, the rest have proven themselves over time.
My top ten hymns:
1. And Can It Be (not in our hymnal)
2. Be Thou My Vision
3. How Great Thou Art
4. A Mighty Fortress
5. Amazing Grace
6. Christ The Lord Is Risen Today
7. I Sing The Mighty Power of God
8. Praise Ye The Lord, the Almighty
9. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
10. I Live For You (a little known song from Mosaic in LA)
What are your favorites... old and new?
