Yesterday Oli was listening to this song “You raise me up” on Youtube. What made me curious was that he kept listening to it over and over again. So I went up to him and asked him why he kept repeating this song. He said, “because this song can rest my soul”. I can feel the peace and comfort in him while he’s enjoying the song. It is of no wonder that when I woke up this morning, I went to the room where he slept and realized the computer was on, playing those songs from Taize. I felt peace in my heart. I know that these hymns can rest my soul.
When I was young, I used to go to church for service every Sunday evening together with my family sitting on my dad’s car. I remembered on the way to church, I always hear hymns playing on one of the radio station’s in Singapore. Most of them are slow tempos sang by the choirs. I always felt peaceful whenever I hear these hymns being played on the radio. At that time, all I know is that whenever we enter into the church sanctuary, the ushers will pass us a hymn book, and we sing hymns from the book. There was no OHP or LCD projectors; no drums and guitars, just a pianist playing on a piano, the worship leader, and hymn books. I don’t remember at that time I appreciate hymns a lot, except for those well known, grand and high climax ones that would give me goose bumps whenever we sing it in church. Even so, I felt that hymns can make my soul feel at rest. I guess singing hymns is one of the important part in service liturgy.
After several years as a teenager, I came across Christian music like Hosanna Music and Hillsongs. It became an impact to all the churches in America and in Asia simply because these songs are catchy, with simple chords progression and nice melody, and the lyrics contain only 1 verse and chorus as compared to several verses in hymns, so it’s easy to remember and not too many verses to absorb. Because of these reasons, churches started to use these songs to sing in church service. Soon after they’ve realized these songs are very much similar with secular songs in terms of the music genre, they started to adapt more of these songs as a way to not just attract believers, but also non-believers to come to church, in a way of achieving numbers in church growth. They also “invested” in musical instruments, good sound systems so that these people would know that “Christian music” is not all about hymns.
So with all these songs being sang in churches, hymns and hymn books are slowly fade away. Hymns were used to be “the” songs in church, but now it has been replaced by these catchy songs with different genre. I believe part of the reason why many churches are not singing hymns is because hymns are boring, it will not bring significant impact towards church growth, and probably because they want to follow the music trend that was being publicized well by mega churches in America and Australia. For them, it is good for bringing numbers to church. For me, it is bad for their souls.
Hymns are lying on a critical state now. People particularly Christian believers that understand and appreciate them became lesser. Modern churches have turned to “gospel music” for earthly tangible results. I cannot imagine how long more could hymns survive.
What would you choose to rest your soul?