Throwaway Worship Songs, Underutilized Hymns, and Lament: Three Articles

Responding To The Increasingly Short Shelf-Life Of Worship Songs

Things are not as simple for worship leaders/church music directors as they used to be. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a more complicated thing.

There are now more songs to choose from than ever, at an increasingly rapid speed, coming from big publishers, independent artists, local churches, Christian radio, social media feeds, conferences, carrier pigeons, and their distant relatives, hipsters. Just when we’ve gotten a handle on introducing a new song to our congregation that was written in 2012, a newer new song comes along that’s even newer, making the new song we thought was new feel pretty old. Confused? You should be. Keep reading

Hymns We Should Sing More Often: Holy God We Praise Your Name

This is the first installment of an intermittent series I’ve called “Hymns We Should Sing More Often.” The aim is to remind us (or introduce for the first time) excellent hymns that are probably not included in most church’s musical canon. A few hymns–like Holy, Holy, Holy or Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing—are familiar to many congregations and get sung in conferences and other large gatherings. Unfortunately, for a growing number of churches, there are no hymnals in the pews (or on the chairs), and consequently there is little opportunity to draw from the deep well of Christian hymnody. Most of the hymns in this series are not unfamiliar, just underutilized. I hope you will enjoy learning about these hymns as much as I have and enjoy singing them even more. Keep reading

Why Sing Sad Songs When I Don’t Feel Sad?

By nature, I am a cheerful person. When I am sick, for example, I never want to talk about how I am feeling because I loathe dwelling upon distressing details. One co-worker actually described me as “pathologically optimistic.” I am still unsure if that was a compliment.

So you can imagine my initial discomfort when I read the lament psalms and felt the sorrow found there and elsewhere in the Bible. Believing the entire Bible is profitable (2 Timothy 3:16), and mindful that Jesus himself quoted psalms of lament (for example, Psalm 22:1 in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34), I began including confession and lament into our worship service plans. But you can see how it resonated with me when one of my church members came to talk to me. “When I don’t feel sad,” they asked, “why should I sing sad songs?” Keep reading

Photo credit: Pixabay, public domain