i read an article about church music today at the crosstalk blog that got me thinking about church music choices. ironically, i read this right after searching through a bunch of old hymns. the strange thing about searching through old hymns is that a good number that one runs into are doctrinally inaccurate or at least tend that way. very many mission focused hymns end with a covenant theology perspective of the goal of missions. anyway, that is a different topic.
i posted a comment as follows on that article, please feel free to comment/discuss here.
“i am in partial agreement, but isn’t this slightly misdirected? shouldn’t the question be: why are we not turning to good music, both contemporary and traditional? maybe this wasn’t the intention of the article, but it seems to point to a principle of the older the better. don’t get me wrong i’m not embracing every swing of culture; i agree wholeheartedly with the fact that we should not base our singing entirely on feeling.
i think a greater problem is that our song leaders have become lazy. ( i don’t mean everyone, there are many who pour much effort into their ministry.) we do this in two ways. one way is that we sometimes just pick up a hymnal, as if it is inspired, and just glance through the index for familiar titles. we don’t look at any of the other songs. we don’t check out the songs we pick to see if they are doctrinally accurate. we just pick them.
the other way is more contemporary in nature, but relatively the same. we pick songs that are cutting edge because it makes everyone feel good. it is easy to pick “top 40″ songs, because you can find the music and lyrics anywhere. again, who cares about the doctrinal accuracy of the song.
there are good new songs out there, just as there are good old ones. the new ones are harder to find, because they are drown in a sea of shallowness. i would assert that there were many shallow songs in older times too, but those songs have long since vanished from use and memory. so the question i have (which semi-aligns with this article) is: why are our song leaders so lazy?”
