Tanglewood Hymnal

(This is a work in progress. Please be patient. When you see this section in parentheses disapear, you will know I am finished – which may never happen. Send me an email if you like, but don’t be ugly: pwh at theplowman dot org)

Dedication: First Baptist Church, Tanglewood Community

My wife and I, and our three children owe an incalculable debt to the saints at Tanglewood. That small, rural, independent, Reformed Baptist congregation in Northeastern Oklahoma that existed in the last quarter of the 20th century could out-sing most congregations three times their size. This is where my family learned about God’s glorious sovereign grace, and where we learned how to sing about it through the historical hymns of the church. To all those who led, served, and poured themselves into our lives; thank you.

To Our Children

May this little hymnal bless you in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that it will aid you in teaching your children to sing the faith into their hearts.

A Hymnal Supplement

Tanglewood Hymnal began as less than a full-fledged church hymnal. After all, the “first edition” in 2015 only sported just over a hundred hymns. We called it a hymnal supplement, since it was intended to atone for and fill in the “gaps” of the various editions of The Baptist Hymnal.

”100 Hymns That Are Not in the Baptist Hymnal But Should Be. “

The subtitle of that first edition was intended to be a gentle poke with a sharpened stick at my own Southern Baptist Convention for producing, not one, but four editions of The Baptist Hymnal over the last half of the 20th century that were over weighted with hymns from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, at the expense of the rich, theological hymns that preceded that era.  Including editions of the Broadman Hymnal (1940) and Christian Praise (1964) cause the number of mediocre hymnals to increase even more.

Beginning with the middle of the nineteenth century in America there emerged a light, sentimental hymnody, matching a more watery theology prevalent in those times. These were hymns typified by a man-centered emphasis and a more emotional musical composition; hymns meant to tug on your heart strings without overly filling your mind with the glorious truths of Scripture and doctrines of God. This was the era of Christianity in America known as Revivalism. To a large degree emphasis had begun to move away from a Sunday morning service centered around an adoration, praise, and worship of the triune God. Worship services were more and more centered around evangelism. Reaching the lost came to be the all-important aim of a church service, culminating in an alter call instead of communion. New music, intended to woo the “seeker” was needed.

Not all hymns from this era are of this mushy sort, but many are. At the publication of each new edition of The Baptist Hymnal there was an attempt to modernize and freshen, but something was always missing. As a whole, not much really changed from one edition to another, except that each new edition ever-so-slightly appeared to be getting more and more watery. I am not saying that any of the editions of The Baptist Hymnal are really bad hymnals, it’s just that they are not all that good. Before this digital age, when we still had hymnals in the pew racks, occasionally I would hear the younger generation complain that much of what was in our hymnals was too old and worn out. On the contrary, I believe that one of the problems with all of the Baptist Hymnals is that they continued to gradually,  systematically eliminate the older hymns. Baptist Hymnals are actually filled with many hymns that are too new, that are influenced by philosophies that emphasize man more than God. Slowly, from one edition to the next, great treasures of our past were being tossed out. Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold.

In the recent past in the Southern Baptist Convention there were rumblings from a younger crowd “restless” for theological depth, so a committee was formed to look into the matter in order to produce something more substantial. In the summer of 2008 LifeWay Worship published a new edition of The Baptist Hymnal. Almost a year before its debut it was much heralded by Baptist Press and others as a project in hot pursuit of theological depth. When I finally got a copy, what I found was many of the same hymns that previous editions contained, although they sported fewer verses. Many hymns included last-verse arrangements, and were connected to one another by means of musical segues and responsive readings. Many contemporary “praise choruses” – straight from the concert tours and CCM radio – also found their way into the 2008 Baptist Hymnal. On the whole I found the changes of the new Baptist Hymnal to be long on style, and short on substance. It was a hymnal tailored for the modern style of church singing: worship choruses, musical transitions, no pauses, no silent spaces, and never linger very long with one hymn, or in one key.

For some time now I have used a simple test to  judge the theological depth of any hymnal I pick up. That test consists  of how the editors/compilers of a hymnal present the classic hymn Rock of Ages. I have more respect for the editors of a hymnal if they simply leave it out of their hymnal than if they include in it the commonly mangled version. Looking into the latest Baptist Hymnal nothing had changed from previous editions. If any editorial staff were to go about to theologically deepen their new hymnal, I would hope one thing  they would do would be to at least return Rock of Ages to its original  text of four verses.

A Much Maligned Hymn

Rock of Ages was written in 1776 by Augustus M. Toplady, an Anglican clergyman mostly noted for his hymns and poems. The hymn was altered in 1815 by Thomas Cotterill, also an Anglican clergyman, mostly noted as an editor of hymns and hymnals. Cotterill disliked the biblical emphasis of the original lyrics of Rock of Ages, feeling that the language was too harsh and direct., so he eliminated words such as guilt in verse one, and judgment in verse four. He combined portions from verses two and three to make just one verse, resulting in a hymn with three verses instead of four. He would have made a fine Southern Baptist. Every Southern Baptist hymnal ever published has used this altered and inferior version of Rock of Ages. In the Tanglewood Hymnal I have used the version found in the Trinity Hymnal, which is mostly in keeping with the author’s original wording. The slight alteration of the oddly macabre phrase in verse four “when my eye strings snap in death” has been changed to read “when my eyes shall close in death“. This is the only variant found in the edited version that I decided to keep.

Hymns that Should Never Be in Any Hymnal

I have just recently discovered another quick test of the quality of a hymnal, which is quite different from my first test: Hymns that are in the Baptist Hymnal but should never be there. There are some hymns that should never be included in any hymnal. One perfectly awful example, that has made it into every edition of the Baptist Hymnal since the 1956 edition is God of Grace and God of Glory, by Harry Emerson Fosdick. On the merits of Fosdick’s theological beliefs alone, nothing he ever wrote should find its way in a decent hymnal. Harry Emerson Fosdick was a liberal pastor who did not believe in the wrath of God, an inerrant Scripture, the deity or virgin birth of Jesus. The lyrics, though not explicitly heretical, contain many catch phrases which points to a social gospel rather than the saving gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Fosdick actively campaigned against orthodox Christianity in the early 20th century. Fosdick was the photo negative of J. Gresham Machen. Fosdick was to Machen what Arius was to Athanasius.

How the Hymns Were Selected for Tanglewood Hymnal

The claim in the subtitle that a hundred of these hymns are not found in The Baptist Hymnal needs a bit of clarification. Many of these hymns are indeed exclusive from all editions of the Baptist Hymnal, but there are in deed quite a few hymns that are found in some form or other in at least one of the editions of The Baptist Hymnal, so let me explain the reason or reasons for those inclusions.

1. First of all, this work is made up mostly of hymns from the Trinity Hymnal and Hymns for the Living Church because those were the hymnals we used while at First Baptist Church, Tanglewood Community, which is, alas no longer an independent, rural, reformed Baptist church. More about that below. This hymnal supplement is largely a tribute to that assembly of faithful believers. About three quarters of the hymns in this supplement were regularly sung at Tanglewood. The remainder I have discovered since the Tanglewood era, but are much in keeping with the spirit of what was going on in those days.
2. A few of the hymns I have included in this slim volume only appear in one or two of the earliest editions of The Baptist Hymnal, and the editors of subsequent editions did not see fit to retain them.
3. Some of the hymns in the Tanglewood Hymnal also appear in various editions of The Baptist Hymnal, but with an incomplete set of verses. This is the most common complaint that I have with the editors of The Baptist Hymnal. It seems that they believe hymns never should contain more than three verses. This is also my main complaint with most Southern Baptist congregations. It appears they don’t think you should ever sing more than three verses of any hymn at any given service. Two would be even better. The concept that many fine hymns tell a story in the singing of all of the verses is obviously lost to most Southern Baptists. They would never read the first, third, and sixth chapters of a novel, but they do so regularly with their singing every Sunday morning.
4. Some of the hymns included here are paired with a different tune from the tune used for the hymn in The Baptist Hymnal. It may seem trite to include such hymns, but music does contribute to the overall import of a hymn, adding to, or taking away from the hymn as a whole. In most instances this was not the only reason such a hymn was not included.
5. Some of the hymns included here appear in The Baptist Hymnal with considerable editorial license taken. Usually simpler words have been exchanged for older, richer words; not so bad. Sometimes the alterations are more substantial, as in my example above of Rock of Ages; much worse. When I see you, your, and yours substituted for the older ye, thee, thou, and thine I’m greatly saddened and angered by an obvious dumbing down of a congregation.
6. Above all else, the hymns that have made it into the Tanglewood Hymnal are God-centered and soaked in the Scriptures and teach sound doctrine.

Extra Verses, Different Tunes

I love to browse through hymnals from different traditions. I find it fascinating to see what other denominations include and what they leave out, and what hymns are paired with different and/or unfamiliar tunes. All Protestant denominations share a common body of hymns, but there are still quite a few variants of one sort or another. One of the favorite variations that I find is additional/different lyrics from what I grew up singing. Many hymns in the Tanglewood Hymnal contain “extra” verses that I have found in this way. A good example is Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness. I originally learned this hymn with five verses, from the 1961 Trinity Hymnal. Not too long ago I stumbled across this wonderful hymn in The Lutheran Hymnal (LCMS, 1941) containing seven verses, three of which were not found in the Trinity Hymnal. When it comes to historical hymns, more verses are always better. At the bottom of the hymn sheet I have credited the hymn with th439; vs. 5-7, lh371. Many such credits adorn the bottoms of the hymns herein to denote extra verses or lyrics from one hymnal paired with the tune from another hymnal. Another example is of the beloved Christmas carol All My Heart This Night Rejoices, lyrics by Paul Gerhardt, I first learned it in the Trinity Hymnal with seven verses. Now with the addition of verses from The Lutheran Hymnal – and all of them first rate verses – the hymn sports fifteen verses and spans three full sheets.

My Sources

The seed for this project was planted almost fifty years ago, in the mid 70’s, when my wife and I, just out of college with one toddler in tow, moved our small family near to First Baptist Church, Tanglewood Community; a tiny, formerly Southern Baptist congregation gone rogue in rural northeastern Oklahoma. A small band of young married couples, with a few young men, fresh out of Moody Bible institute settled on the north bank of the Arkansas River and transformed Tanglewood. All of the Baptist Hymnals were boxed up and stored in the attic. What we sang from for the next quarter century was the Trinity Hymnal, and Hymns for the Living Church (closely associated with Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois). These two hymnals, and the people there that we came to know and love, locals and transplants, would change our lives for ever. Most of the hymns in this volume come from those two hymnals. Alas, Tanglewood, as we called it ceased to be a Reformed Baptist church, and eventually closed her doors. We moved on to a Southern Baptist church in the city, where the preaching was reformed, but the music sadly was not. What a vacuum we have felt.

Not long after the 2008 Baptist Hymnal was published and I had already begun work on my own Tanglewood Hymnal, I stumbled across a third, relatively new hymnal, published by Canon Press, named Cantus Christi. Although it contained many of the hymns my family came to know and love from the Trinity Hymnal, we discovered in it a number of old hymns that were totally new to us, quite different in musical style, and even to some degree, content. Possibly a dozen or so hymns from this source have made their way into the Tanglewood Hymnal. I should have realized all those years ago, with the discovery of the first two non-Baptist hymnals, that there existed other musical traditions, unknown to most Southern Baptists. When I discovered these “new” hymns found in Cantus Christi, I was struck by the fact of the existence of these multiple musical traditions, some containing rich, deep, theological hymns set to bright and complex tunes, expressing God’s truth using new and different images and metaphors. Why have we never heard of them for all these years?  Baptists can be funny about hymnals that don’t have the word Baptist on the cover. Are we Baptists a bit sectarian? Are there ethnic or political reasons this has happened? Are there more hymns somewhere yet to be discovered, that are even now being faithfully sung  by other denominations, that all of the Church could benefit from?

Over the years I have become a modest hymnal collector. The remainder of the hymns, hymn texts, or extra verses included here come from those volumes. A brief bibliography is included below.

Musical Scores

Many of the hymns in this hymnal seemed to be set a bit high musically, so I re-scored them in a lower key using Sibelius notation software. With my limited musical abilities I may have inadvertently created problems for piano accompanist and/or those singing parts. If anyone encounters such issues, I would love feedback in this area. This latest iteration of the Tanglewood Hymnal has been engraved using Frescobaldi/Lilypond software on a Linux-based computer, which makes corrections and tweaks very easy. Another feature of this new rebuild automatically generates a midi file, which is included with each hymn page in the Hymns tab, all downloadable, so enjoy.

A Note on Copyright

To the best of my knowledge all of the hymns – lyrics and scores – are in the public domain. None of these hymns were scanned out of a published hymnal. The score and text of each hymn was built from scratch by myself using Frescobaldi/Lilypond engraving software. References to particular hymnal sources at the bottom of each hymn sheet only indicate one of the numerous hymnals where the lyrics and/or score may easily be found.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to my wife Suzan for her support and proofreading of this hymnal. Without her it never would have seen the light of day. If it happens that we missed something, keep in mind that the content was produced by myself and any mistakes found herein are all mine.

Contact Me

If you come across any mistakes, please feel free to contact me at pwh at theplowman dot org.

Bibliography

The following bibliography lists the sources of  the hymns I have selected. The codes found at the bottom of each hymn indicates the source and page number where the hymn may be found. It is my wish that this small, one-man project would spur a new generation of singers to go out and dig up the old hymnals listed below and discover the Church’s rich heritage in its hymnody.

• 1912: The Psalter, 1912;
• bh: 2008 Baptist Hymnal, also published as The Worship Hymnal, Nashville, TN: LifeWay Worship, 2008
• cc or cc2002: Cantus Christi, Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2002.
• cc2020: Cantus Christi, Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2020
• chs: Spurgeon, C. H., ed. Our Own Hymn-Book: A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for Public, Social, and Private Worship. Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 2002.
• crc: Psalter Hymnal, Grand Rapids, Michigan: CRC Publications, 1987, 1988.
• gad: Gadsby, William, ed. The Gadsby Hymnal: A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship. Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2009.
• hlc: Hymns for the Living Church. Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Company, 1974.
• hlg: Hymns to the Living God; Religious Affections Ministries, Fort Worth, TX, 2017
• lh: The Lutheran Hymnal, Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1941.
• oh: Newton, John; Olney Hymns, Glasgow, 1829.
• pec: The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America 1940, New York, N.Y., Church Pension Fund, 1940.
• ph: Psalter Hymnal, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Publication Committee of the Christian Reformed Church, 1934
• phlg: Psalms and Hymns to the Living God, G3 Ministries, 2023.
• sc: Songs of the Church, West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing Co., Inc.
• th: Trinity Hymnal, Philadelphia: Great Commission Publications, Inc., 1961.
• tp: Trinity Psalter Hymnal, (2018-2019).
• tph: Treasury of Psalms and Hymns, Denver, PA: NoteWorthy Music Service, 2022.

Common Ground

At some point into this project it dawned on me that there was common ground between the hymnals we had discovered at Tanglewood Church and the Baptist Hymnal that we had grown up with. Even though we were introduced to many new hymns at Tanglewood Church we had never sung or heard of before, we did of course sing many familiar hymns from our Southern Baptist childhood. In light of the fact that the typical Southern Baptist church today is jettisoning hymnals left and right, I decided to include these familiar hymns in the Tanglewood Hymnal. Most (but not all) of these common-ground hymns are listed in the Hymns page, with their 2008 Baptist Hymnal references listed in parenthesis at the end of the title. The hymn sheets of these common-ground hymns also have their titles set in italics with a “bh” reference in the credit at the bottom of the sheet.

A Word About the Subtitle

If you are one of those kind of people who count the tiles on the floor to make sure there is an equal number of blue and green tiles in the room, then you will notice that the numbers referenced in the subtitle are not strictly speaking equal. “Common ground” hymns found here are somewhere less than eighty, while those not defined as “common ground” hymns number at significantly over one hundred and twenty.

The explanation for this is easy. One reason is that I did not want a subtitle so long and awkward so it didn’t look like a theological work by one of the Puritans. “100” is way shorter than “one hundred and twenty-three”. The main reason is that the wording of the subtitle is intended as an attention grabber, to prod folks to look further into a nearly lost heritage that they are missing out on, in corporate singing in a worship service.

Defining “Common Ground”

One difficulty in this project has been deciding which hymns should be included in “common ground”. Obviously, if a title cannot be found in any edition of the Baptist Hymnal, then it is not included. You cannot include something that does not exist. But what if a hymn with the same (or very similar) title can be only found in one of the older editions; or what if it can be found with diminished verses or altered texts? What if a title exists coupled with a different tune? To gain some insight into my selection criteria the About chapter should be helpful. As a rule, if the hymn uses the same tune, has most of the verses found in our Tanglewood Church hymnals, with minimal word alterations, then I have included it as “common ground”. Obviously I would never reference the 2008 Baptist Hymnal (or any other edition, for that matter) for Rock of Ages. Again, the About chapter explains this in more detail.

Same Tune

The tune of a hymn carries the lyrics; lyrics should never carry a tune. Sometimes a hymn easily can be carried by many different tunes. Keep in mind can and should are two totally different words in the English language. Just because you can does not always mean you should. The tune to a military march should not be paired with the lyrics of a lullaby, nor should the theme to a horror thriller be set to the words of Happy Birthday. There have been a number of ventures in modern church hymnody to take the old lyrics and pair them with modern, more upbeat tunes, which I believe is a great mistake, and an injustice to the old hymn tunes. Many find the old tunes plain and too simple. In some respect this is true, but the reaction is unfortunate, for this done with a purpose. Douglas Bond explains that Isaac Watts wrote his poetry “for everyone to sing in the worship of God—children, the poor, the uneducated, and those with no musical training. He confined himself to writing in only a few simple meters that had existing tunes that were familiar to congregations.” (The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts; 2013 by Douglas Bond, Reformation Trust, Sanford Florida 32771; page 155). There is a simple beauty in the older, simpler hymn tunes. They are easy to sing by worshipers of all ages. As I said, the tune of the hymn carries the lyrics, not the other way around. Let the simple tunes carry the real jewel of a hymn – the lyrics. This one good reason to reject most of what is being offered up today in modern hymn writing: much more elaborate, ornate music, paired with much more simple watered down lyrics.

For the purpose of this project, generally if a familiar (common) hymn lyrics was paired with a new tune discovered at Tanglewood Church, then that is not considered common ground. In some instances this can be somewhat subjective because I am aware that people as a general rule like what they know. I use the word subjective with caution because there are limits to the term. Music, just like all of the arts, contains the element of beauty. Despite the near universal belief, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. In Philippians 4:8 we are commanded to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise…” (Philippians 4:8; ESV) This verse is one of the foundations of the commonly used (mostly among Presbyterians) phrase: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful. All rational beings of faith have no problem understanding that there is objective goodness or objective truth, but when it comes to beauty, many good people roll out the worn out “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” excuse. But nowhere in the passage does Paul make any distinction between the three concepts. All three are objective realities that we are commanded to think upon. To be sure, Goodness and truth are different from beauty in that something is either true or false. There is nothing in between. Only God is good in the ultimate sense. Beauty in human terms can be graded on a scale, but everyone knows what is beautiful, and we all know what is ugly. As Christians we should strive for the best in all of our pursuits. In the visual arts it is much easier to discriminate, but with training critical appreciation of music can be cultivated.

Number of Verses

Of the ninety-two common-ground hymns I chose to include here, only one sported more verses in the 2008 Baptist Hymnal than in the Tanglewood Church hymnals. There were forty-four hymns that were missing one or more verses. If you choose to sing these from Tanglewood Hymnal, you may be in for a surprise/treat. You are welcome. There are some hymns here from the original set of about one hundred twenty which may have some commonality with Baptist hymnals of one edition or another but do not show any reference to that hymnal on the sheet. It simply did not fall into the scope of the project.

Missing Verse: O Come, All Ye Faithful

It was hard to place this carol/hymn in the section of “common ground” , not because the 2008 Baptist Hymnal only included three verses while the Trinity Hymnal contains four, but because of the particular verse that the Baptist Hymnal omits:

“God of God, Light of Light;
Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb:
Very God, Begotten, not created;”

Why would any one leave out a verse that contains a first-order doctrine of the Christian faith? Beats me. Against my better judgement I decided to add the reference to the 2008 Baptist Hymnal.

Minimal Word Alterations

“Hymnal editors would do better to hold up hymns as a means of recovering language rather than tampering with hymns and thereby becoming complicit in the demise of hymnody.”

(The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts; 2013 by Douglas Bond, Reformation Trust, Sanford Florida 32771; page 281)

One of the things I cannot bear to see in the old hymns is the substitution of the older personal pronouns – thou, thee, thy, thine, and ye – for the modern forms – you, you, you, you, you, you, your, and yours. Oh, and you, you, you… ye get the point. These older pronouns persisted in church hymnody long after they were no longer used regularly. Although I do not know the purpose of their use in later hymn writing, but my guess is that it symbolizes an elevated sense of formality, reverence, and respect for God. The period of the English language where these usages were common/regular is called Early Middle English, existing from about 1450 to 1700. It is the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Old English (450-1066) and Middle English (1066-1450) are basically unreadable by most of us, but Early Modern English is easily doable.

Here is a chart explaining the usage of the older second person pronouns:

	Subject	Object	Possessive	Adjectival Poss.
2nd Person Singular	thou	thee	thy/thine	thy
2nd Person Plural	ye	you	yours	your

And here is how we handle these pronouns today:

	Subject	Object	Possessive	Adjectival Poss.
2nd Person Singular	you	you	yours	your
2nd Person Plural	you	you	yours	your

When it comes to verbs, Early Middle English tends to tack on endings we are not familiar with such as “behold, he prayeth” (Acts 9:11; KJV). Many of the helping verbs – are, was, were, have, do, shall … – also have their Early Modern English counterparts: art, wast, wert, hast, doth, shalt …

It is interesting to note that even though the period typified by Early Modern English ended around 1700, and thus the above type of usage began to change more to the way we speak today, the earlier usage persisted in hymn writing for more than two centuries. Much of the cause was surely due to the King James Bible, but not exclusively.

So much for this brief and incomplete tutorial on Early Modern English usage. No extra cost. You are welcome. The take away of it is: Get over it. Grow up. Stop dumbing yourself and your children down. It’s not really all that hard. Enjoy the novelty and the wonder of an earlier, simpler age. In addition to lending formality, reverence, and respect to hymn singing, there is something refreshing in experiencing a different, unique quality when we walk into a worship service; the sense that we are about to take part in an activity that is not like anything else we do the rest of the week. I think that is what corporate worship should be. We miss this when we come into a service filled with music we can hear 24/7 on our iPhone or car radio. I’m Just saying; but that is not what this chapter is about.

Fanny Crosby

The Trinity Hymnal is organized similar to most all other hymnals, with hymns grouped according to theological categories. Beginning with hymn 663 to the end is a section titled Hymns for Informal Occasions. I have always wondered what would constitute an informal occasion when it comes to the church and singing of hymns. Regardless of what it means, it surely must be a separation between regular worship in a Sunday church service, and something other than that. The sixty-eight hymns that were placed in this section at the end of the Trinity Hymnal were placed there for a reason: they do not make the cut of what should be sung in a Sunday morning worship service, according to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination in 1961.

Of the eight hymns authored by Fanny Crosby, that are common between the 2008 Baptist Hymnal and the Trinity Hymnal, only one has been placed outside of the section titled Hymns for Informal Occasions in the Trinity Hymnal. That one hymn is All the Way My Saviour Leads Me. That is the only Fanny Crosby hymn from the 2008 Baptist Hymnal that has been included in Tanglewood Hymnal.

Section placement of hymns does tell something about the philosophy of the editors (and denomination) of a hymnal. Trinity Hymnal has an informal section at the end, and it has a small five-page section at the beginning, just before The Hymns. Included here are three brief musical responses: To the Ten Commandments, Offertory, and Prayer, followed by the Gloria Patri and the Doxology. The pages are numbered with small Roman numerals, and the hymns themselves have no numbering as do the other 730 hymns after them. The implied message is “These come first. They are indispensable. They are to be used regularly.” In the 2008 Baptist Hymnal the Doxology and Gloria Patri are relegated to the very end: hymn 668 and 669 respectively out of the 674 total. I know that Presbyterians as a rule have a higher liturgy than do Baptists, but this is telling. The Doxology and Gloria Patri represent crucial doctrine that was hotly fought over in the first centuries of Christendom. Baptists would do well to include these two short, simple hymns in worship services more often. They make great opening and closing hymns.

Categorical names in hymnals is also an interesting topic to pursue. I have not done extensive research on the topic, just one observation. Toward the end of the 2008 Baptist Hynnal there are a few interesting category headings: PATRIOTIC, CHILD DEDICATION/CHILDREN’S HYMNS, and HOME/FAMILY. The last section, just before SERVICE MUSIC discussed above, is a section headed as SPIRITUAL CONFLICT. This section begins with Luther’s signature hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. The section only contains thirteen pages; just ten hymns. The only sections that correspond to this in the Trinity Hymnal are CONFLICT WITH SIN (468-475) and CHRISTIAN WARFARE (476-490). How one names their categories may be influenced by ones eschatology. It’s just an observation. Something to think about.

CCM

What Are the Hymns of the Church?

Recently I heard the phrase “Hymns of the Church” in reference to the content of a church’s congregational singing, and it made me wonder: What is it that makes a body of church music the “Hymns of the Church”? Can it be any religious piece of music sung in church without regard to its source or content, or are there criteria not readily obvious to the casual observer? Does the phrase have any real meaning, or is it used to validate what one likes to sing in his church?

Hymnals

Not so many years ago most ministers of music – they call them worship leaders now; ugh – most ministers of music had an operating manual for leading music in church worship services: a church hymnal. It was a safe world for the man leading congregational singing because of this one guard rail. Even though hymnal versions and editions would vary in quality and content, it was safe to assume that there was some kind of guiding, controlling influence in effect. After all, hymnals don’t just fall out of the sky.

Most hymnals are products of denominational committees made up of churchmen in their particular denomination. These committees would be made up of pastors, theologians, musicians, worship leaders, and seminary professors. Hymns that made it into a hymnal had to be evaluated by these committees for merit, based on theological soundness and musical appropriateness. Introductions in the opening pages of hymnals can be quite interesting reading for insight into the methods and philosophies of hymnal creation.

Many hymns found in hymnals were written and composed by clergymen, church musicians and church choir leaders. In an earlier age pastors would often compose a hymn to sing the next Sunday, to compliment the sermon they were to preach. Men such as John Newton, Isaac Watts, Horatius Bonar, and Martin Luther were of this kind. Just a few weeks before his death, the clergyman Henry Lyte (1793-1847) wrote the hymn Abide With Me, with the intent of having it sung at his funeral. Many hymns found their beginning at the hands of amateur poets such as William Cowper and Ann Steele, who usually had a close connection to the church in some way. Cowper was a close associate of John Newton, and Steele was an invalided daughter of a Baptist pastor. All in all, most hymns created up to the end of the nineteenth century were closely connected to the church and were created expressly to be sung in church.

The Digital Age

Somewhere near the end of the twentieth century the traditional hymnal in the pew began to be burdensome. With the advent of FM radio stations with a Contemporary Christian Music format, playing 24/7, buying new hymnals felt like a futile effort if one wanted to stay current. For years the “serious” Christian had been marinating 24/7 in CCM at home, on their daily commute, at the office, or out jogging . In church, the traditional hard copy hymnal just didn’t fill the need. Projection systems and internet resources seemed to be the solution; so, many if not most churches opted for going digital. All of a sudden the “worship leader” had access to the “hymns” of the world; from every age and in every language. But what did he typically choose?

Once the hymnal is gone, switching to some kind of “contemporary” style of worship is easy and inevitable. A “blended” style is really never an option, but many music leaders don’t realize it at first. Even though lyrics to the old hymns are also available on the internet, they are typically overlooked. The marinating multitude, drunk on modernism, clamored for the new stuff. That’s what they like. The older set would still like to hear the “traditional” hymns, because that’s what they like. Music leaders try to “keep it even” by including these “old standards” in the mix, not realizing their order of services during their “hymnal” days had been gradually shifting the mix towards more modern hymns all along, so that the ”old standards” were really quite new. The typical result in this new scheme is a service made up of one late 19th century offering, one late 20th century offering, and three 21st century songs. This can hardly be regarded as a “blended” approach to a worship service. Over time it will continue to be more and more “contemporary”. There will always be the “new hit” that is so moving and has a catchy turn of phrase, and “must” be included in the rotation at church.

Issues with a Contemporary Style of Service

There are a number of issues with a CCM driven worship service. Here are just a few:

1. Contemporary Christian Music is not connected to the church in any meaningful way. It is not vetted by any denominational committee of pastors, theologians, musicians, worship leaders, and seminary professors. Regardless of the content of this kind of music, or the faith tradition of its author or composer, it is not tied to the church. It is, to be blunt, the product of the commercial music recording and producing industry. It is being ground out the same way that mainstream pop, rock, country, hip-hop, etc., etc., is being produced. To be blunt, they are just a bunch of flashy bands that make money from concert tours and record sales. Ask yourself if these authors and composers would be producing this material “for the Church” at such a rate if there was no monetary profit in it. Just ask yourself. And since it is a matter of commerce, the content is driven, not by the church, but by the masses; maybe church members, maybe not. To answer the opening question by way of negation, this type of music can hardly be regarded as “The Hymns of the Church”.
2. Most contemporary style services usually come with a praise team. Because of the nature of the instrumentation of the original “radio” version of a song, worship teams tend to perform the music the way they have heard and learned it, with all of its embellishments and intonations, and way too loudly. This tends to make the musical portion of a worship service a concert to be experienced, rather than an act of congregational singing.
3. When the hymnal is replaced with a projection system, musical notation disappears. Lyrics are all that remain. This inevitably results in sloppy congregational singing, a loss of music literacy and a general inability to sing harmonic parts. Congregational participation usually declines. Musical notation can be projected up on the big screen, but this takes extra effort, and an extra set of skills, and the worship leader usually does not bother.
4. Our children and grandchildren are being cheated. When hymns from earlier ages are largely ignored, something of the historic church is lost. A connection with believers in all ages is severed.
5. To borrow an idea from C. S. Lewis’s essay on reading old books, every age has its own strengths, and every age has its own weaknesses and blind spots. To concentrate only on the past century and a half, at the expense of the previous millennium and a half cannot be safe. It tends to multiply the weaknesses and overlook or take for granted the strengths.
6. The gratuitous use of a few 19th and mid 20th century hymns in a worship service, leads folks to believe that it is the “old stuff”, when in fact it is just the “old new stuff”. This reinforces their belief that “old” is to blame and “new” is the solution.
7. One little noted effect of trading physical hymnals for projection systems is the inability to go back and look at a previous verse or hymn at a later time, to muse over something that perhaps gave you comfort, or stirred your thoughts to pursue inquiry into the matter. It’s all locked up in the projection system.
8. Related to the previous point is the fact that a projection system ties down a service to a set that cannot easily be altered on the fly. While I am not a big fan of spontaneity in church, there can be occasions where a different hymn comes to mind that better suits the needs of the situation.