Heritage Lost

A terrible truth came to light last Sunday night. The great hymns of the Christian faith are being lost. Maybe I have known this for some time, but been in denial. Sitting in front of the youth group during a hymn sing last week brought this reality home.
Now, I do have to say that I was impressed with some of our young people. On the songs that they did know, they sang. But how sad to hear one of them admit that they had never even heard "Wonderful Grace of Jesus"!

I blame this on the church at large. So many worship services are completely neglecting the rich songs of our heritage in favor of the quick choruses. It's just too much work to read and understand the old hymns, and there's way too many verses, and, well, they're just Old. That mentality makes me want to cry. The hymns have been a great source of encouragement as well as conviction in my life. I can't imagine worshipping without them. The old hymns hold a great deal of doctrine and deeper meaning than many of the more shallow choruses. Many of the choruses are also centered around man and not God.

I am not opposed to new songs. There are quite a few of the newer songs that are rich in doctrine and a joy to sing. The Bible itself tells us to "sing a new song". I believe that is not only speaking of singing a song that is different than the world, but also singing new, fresh music. But not at the expense of losing a part of the tradition of the church that has been with us for a very long time.

So I have a two-fold challenge to the youth groups in our churches today:

1. Learn the old hymns. Not all of them, but some of them. If you determined to learn one song each week, it would only be a couple of years before you knew 100 hymns!
2. Write new songs. Do it alone, or together. We don't have to depend solely on the music companies for the music that we sing in church and in our private worship. You don't even have to have a degree in music to write music.

We have already started to do this in our family. I am going to compile a list of "The Top 100 Hymns of the Christian Faith" and we will teach them to our girls. I will also post them here. What hymn do you think should be on the list?