The hymnal that is used in worship is one of the most important elements in shaping the faith and worship of a given congregation. Therefore, great care must be given to selecting the very best hymnal for use in a congregation. The following article describes some of the most important considerations that should be considered when a congregation selects a new hymnal.
Choosing a hymnal for corporate worship is one of the most important theological decisions a church ever makes. If that seems an exaggeration, consider the facts: compare the number of people in a congregation who read theology to the number who sing hymns on Sunday. Week after week the hymns of your church are giving people the basic vocabulary of their faith. Hymns shape the landscape of the heart, planting images that bring meaning and order to people’s understanding of life. Hymns keep congregations in touch with the history from which they have sprung, reinforcing their identity as Christians and directing their understanding of how they are to live in the world. Hymns do all of this with extraordinary power because they are coupled with music which opens the heart to the more profound resonances of reality, those motions of the Spirit that move through us in “sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).
In choosing a hymnal, we are doing more than selecting a book of songs. We are deciding how the faith, theology, and values of the church will be celebrated and transmitted to others in the worshiping community. Therefore, our decision must rest on something greater than personal preference. Our selection is an act of discipleship whose guiding goal is the praise of God.
How much easier this is to state in principle than to carry it out in practice! We recall seeing at the International Hymn Convocation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a videotape of Erik Routley doing a presentation on the new hymnal that he edited, Rejoice in the Lord. After he had carefully explained the theological basis of the selection process, the first response from someone in the audience was to ask if his favorite hymn was in the book. That is an understandable human reaction, and one that is all the more prevalent in our highly personalistic culture in which most people are “limited to a language of radical individual autonomy” (Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985], 81).
The sense of theological responsibility and corporate identity required in choosing a hymnal cannot be taken for granted. They must be consciously claimed by the selection committee before individual books are considered. Rather than assume that the committee shares a mutual understanding of your church’s tradition and a common vision for your community’s worship life, begin by identifying the essential principles and characteristics of your liturgical life. Here are two important questions to guide you:
- What hymns and liturgical materials must be preserved (or regained!) for you to maintain your historical identity?
- What new concerns and needs have arisen in the church and in the world that you need to incorporate into your worship?
By historical identity, we mean more than simply the denomination you grew up in as children. Who are the founders of your tradition? What was at the core of their belief and practice? What were the important movements and developments in your worship tradition that have given it a distinctive shape and character? Without this knowledge, you are not ready to begin considering a hymnal. Do not be embarrassed if you do not know this information. Many churches do not. Instead, use this opportunity to do some research. Part of your work can involve looking into the history of hymns that are central to your tradition. How did they get there? What were the movements in society or in the church that they reflect? This will raise the committee’s consciousness of how hymns have functioned through history and give you a sense of the cloud of witnesses that is with you in this process. Share your new knowledge with the whole congregation through reports and education so that the selection of the hymnal becomes an occasion for the church to reclaim and strengthen its corporate spiritual identity.
Our hymnal selection process has begun by clarifying the theological nature of our task and by locating ourselves in history. We are now ready to establish criteria that will guide our decisions and become a basis for reasoned discussion about conflicting judgments. Of course, people will always have different perspectives and opinions. But if the selection committee covenants to discipline its deliberations by mutually acknowledged theological and historical criteria, it can avoid the tyranny of imposing individual and transitory preferences upon the congregation.
Although each tradition and congregation have needs that are unique, our work on worship renewal with many different denominations and parishes reveals a number of criteria that are essential to the selection process in all churches. We now want to explore these criteria and suggest how they can make the selection committee’s work more incisive.
Historical, Pastoral, and Liturgical Considerations
The first major criterion that flows from our theological understanding is that a hymnal, assuming it is not a supplemental work but the major collection of congregational songs for a church, must have a historical, pastoral, and liturgical breadth.
Our culture has a low historical consciousness. We are immersed in the present with little or no sense of our connection to the past. We tend to “talk of socialization rather than of tradition” (Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 60). But a church that loses its tradition will lose its identity. Therefore, in choosing a hymnal we must resist the temptation of reducing the church’s corporate members to what we remember personally. We need to sing the hymns of our ancestors in order to recall the “dangerous memories” of history “which make demands on us.” Such memories remind our generation of the sacrifice and struggle that have kept the faith alive through the ages (Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society [New York: The Seabury Press, 1980], 109).
Sometimes people object to the ancient hymns because they are not instantly engaging and accessible. But to break our connection with history on these grounds is to accept uncritically the culture of mass media in which we are “amusing ourselves to death” by replacing the enduring values of our traditions with a “supra-ideology” of “entertainment” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [New York: Viking Penguin, 1985], 87). It is ironic that many Christians who are upset about the loss of values in society settle for a range of congregational songs whose lack of historical depth reinforces the cultural shallowness they deplore.
In our own congregation, we recently sang a hymn attributed to Augustine. At first, we struggled a little with the words and the setting, but quite quickly we mastered them. Then the sound filled the chapel and we sensed the cloud of witnesses (cf. Hebrews 11–12) that surrounds us as we worship. We left the service ready to face the present difficulties of our lives because of the strength that had been poured into us from the past. How wise the hymnal committee did not limit us to what we already knew! That committee provided us with sound pastoral care. They gave us not simply what we wanted but what we needed.
Selection committees are making a decision that will shape the church’s ministry to future generations of worshipers. Consider the range of pastoral and social needs represented by the users of a hymnal: people in grief reaching for assurance, people filled with joy eager to sing God’s praise, people in doubt seeking faith, people in moral confusion seeking clarity. Choosing a hymnal is an act of ministry that extends over time to hundreds, even thousands of people. Like all acts of ministry, our decision requires a keen self-awareness, the ability to distinguish between personal desires and the needs of others.
It is essential to remember that our decision must allow not only for individual needs but for the corporate need of the church, especially as this is expressed in its liturgical life. Does your congregation follow the church year closely? Then a hymnal that adequately represents the liturgical year will be essential. What sacraments or ordinances are of central significance to you, and what hymnic resources do you need for them? What is unique about your local congregation? Do you want to use this hymnal at church suppers, weekday prayer meetings, or other special events?
In responding to these liturgical questions, do not limit yourself to current or past practices. One of the exciting things we have discovered in working in a highly ecumenical setting and in workshops on worship renewal with many denominations is that there is an increased openness to sharing the treasures of other traditions. Also, there has been a profound impact on many Reformed and free churches through the use of the ecumenical or common lectionary and through the scholarship of liturgical renewal. For example, we know many free churches that have started to celebrate the season of Advent as a way of countering the over-commercialization of Christmas. They now find themselves wanting more Advent hymns. In a similar fashion, many churches have begun to celebrate the Lord’s Supper more frequently, or they are holding services of baptismal renewal. These are not worship fads that will quickly disappear. Rather they are substantive shifts in liturgical life that are founded upon the best scholarship and creative thinking about worship. Before choosing a hymnal, it would be helpful to research these matters through your pastor or someone from a seminary or denominational office. In this way, your choice of hymnal can become an occasion for renewing your congregation’s spiritual and liturgical life.
By striving to achieve historical, pastoral, and liturgical breadth, we make a faithful witness to the fullness of God. We do not constrict ourselves to the perceptions of our era, the desires of our hearts, or the limitations of our current worship practices. Instead, we draw on a spectrum of resources, moving beyond the idolatries of our subjectivity to consider the vast treasures of the Christian faith through the ages.
Language: Reverent, Relevant, and Inclusive
The language of the church is always in tension with the surrounding culture. But in recent years this tension has nearly reached the breaking point. Under the stress of psychological and individualistic values, popular culture has replaced the language of transcendent values with the language of self-actualization.
So in the list of words deliberately missing from expressions of the current dominant ideology we’ll find, for example, absolutes, humility, transcendence, truth, wisdom, wonder, soul, sin, grace, gratitude, and God. We’ve seen many of the specific ways that such words are kept out of our currently dominant discourse: the way absolutes are scorned by relativist lines, the way wisdom and truth are displaced by opinion and consensus, the way humility is lost sight on in systems thinking, the way transcendent purpose is rendered inoperable by self-fulfilling evolutionary development.… Nor is there any place for sin in a positive self-image permitting only good feelings; and the very concept of soul is lost in psychology which, though coming in name from the Greek word (psyche) meaning both self and soul, confines its attention now to self. (Peggy Rosenthal, Words and Values [New York: Oxford University Press, 1984], 256)
The rampant psychological nature of our language and the attendant values that such language expresses create complex problems for the church’s language. On the one hand, we need to use language that connects with people’s experiences and how they express themselves in daily life. On the other, we cannot afford to lose the gospel by over adopting the language of our society. For example, hymnic language that relies excessively on the first person singular—I, me, mine—tends to reinforce the self-centered values of the culture. We believe it is appropriate to have some first-person singular hymns because hymnals are often used for private devotion as well as corporate worship. But avoid any book that is preponderantly individualistic in its theology.
To sing in the vernacular does not mean we must stoop to slang and the passing fashions of common speech. In looking at contemporary hymns in any collection, the committee needs to ask: Does this represent the way we speak and think about reality without replacing essential Christian theology and values? In short, is the language simultaneously reverent and relevant?
Any talk of relevance in the closing years of the twentieth century will inevitably lead to the issue of inclusive language: that is to say, language which does not discriminate against people on the basis of gender, race, or handicap. To call a mute person “dumb,” to use “black” as a symbol of evil, or to assume that “men” refers to women strikes increasing numbers of people as offensive to the wonderful news that all of us are created in the image of God. Even if we are not personally offended by this language, we need to consider those who are, and the coming generations who will be using the book we choose. Their consciousness will be even more sensitive on these matters for there is no way that the movements for civil rights and liberation are going to fade away. Whatever our politics, whatever our position in society, whatever our personal preferences, forces have broken loose that will not die and that the church’s hymnody must recognize.
Generally speaking, this shift in consciousness is easier to accommodate at the level of language about humanity than about God. For many Christians language about “Our Heavenly Father” awakens and expresses the joys and yearnings of their hearts. What we need to remember is that the desire to balance such imagery with feminine language about God is in fact an effort to be faithful to the fullness of who God is and often grows out of a profound pastoral need in the human soul. This is a perspective better shared through a story than rational argument: We recall a motherless child who had been beaten by his father with a two-by-four and was subsequently taken from the home and raised by an aunt. In teaching him the Lord’s prayer in Sunday School, we discovered it was impossible for him to say the words “Our Heavenly Father.” He was terrified by the language. So he learned the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Aunt, who art in heaven.” The whole church cannot rewrite the words of Jesus’ prayer to fit the experience of any one individual, but this is not the point of the story. We believe the story illustrates the exciting pastoral and theological possibilities for a church that is open to the holy and gracious power that breathes more freely through inclusive hymnic language. There are people who will be reached by the grace of God in new ways through the use of inclusive language. No major hymnal that adequately represents the church’s history will be entirely inclusive, but any new hymnal that will stand the test of future generations must evince an openness to inclusive language. There are many contemporary hymn writers who are drawing more completely on the range of biblical imagery for the divine and who are developing metaphorical speech that is faithful to the Spirit and substance of God’s Word. Look for their work in the books you consider.
Tunes: Singability, Enduring Quality, Variety
If it is difficult to speak about our preferences in the poetry and language of hymns, it is even more complex when it comes to their musical settings. It may seem initially that it is entirely a matter of subjective taste. But in fact there are some clear standards that can make our discussion more precise.
The first and most obvious one is that the music should be singable by the congregation. As an organist friend of ours has said, “Hymns are the congregation’s chance to get in there and to sing the praise of God that is in their hearts.” Singability means a maximum range of about an octave. The rhythm must not be too complex or tangled looking when it is printed on the musical staff. Remember: many congregation members do not read music or read it minimally. The melody itself must be memorable—not just a string of notes that have been chosen to go along with a progression of chords. A good melody is marked by the sequential development of a musical idea which brings satisfaction to our ears, mind, and heart. Afterward, we may find ourselves humming it repeatedly without growing tired of its progression of sound. As distinct from a merely “catchy tune,” a good melody is one that grows on us. It holds up over time.
And yet this does not mean that every tune will have the same quality. That would be deadly for the spiritual life of the congregation and would completely negate our earlier goal of being pastorally inclusive. A well-balanced diet is a useful analogy for thinking about the variety of musical styles (as well as the range of texts). Most people love sweets, but we know that our health requires that we limit our intake of sugar. There is a need for protein, vitamins, and minerals in order to build up our bodies and maintain our health. The same is true of our hymnody. Chorales, broad unison tunes, meditative hymns, rousing, march-like declarations, plaintive spirituals, metrical psalms, lyric folk-like songs, carols, sturdy hymns, and other styles make up the musical diet of a healthy congregation. The variety involves forms of spirituality and faith that are not constricted to a single idiom of speech and music. The variety helps to keep the soul open to the sovereign wind of the Spirit and stretches the spiritual imagination of the congregation. Therefore, do not settle exclusively for what is immediately liked by people. To do that is to leave them spiritually malnourished on a diet of “sinfully undemanding” hymnody (Erik Routley, Christian Hymns Observed [Princeton: Prestige Publications, Inc., 1982], 84).
Technical Considerations: Layout, Arrangement, and Service Materials
All of your work will amount to little if the worshipers must struggle to read the words and the notes. This is a book for people to use in concert with everyone else in the congregation. It is not like the book they read in their favorite easy chair where they can adjust the light or re-read what they missed. Those words and notes must be instantly available while they are standing and looking at the page in your church.
Are the words clearly and easily placed under the melody notes? We are aware of the great debate about the effect of this upon the poet’s work. As creators of new hymns, we treasure language, but we still want to have the words directly under the notes. After all, the purpose is to sing the hymn, and everything that facilitates the heartfelt and enthusiastic singing of the congregation moves us closer to our ultimate goal of corporate worship.
That goal will be even more fully realized if there are complete and practically organized indices to the hymnal. Worship leaders are always seeking to find hymns that match the theme of the sermon or the theological emphases of the liturgical year or the pastoral needs of the congregation. Imagine yourself seeking a particular theme: grace, comfort in a time of grief, the struggle with doubt, recommitment to Christ, ecology, peace, marriage, and so on. Can you find what you need by using the index?
Furthermore, are the service materials you need in the book? Depending on the tradition, people may expect to have responsive readings, sacramental rites, creeds or affirmations of faith, and psalms in their hymnal. Are these available and are they laid out in a way that makes them easy to use without intrusive instructions from the worship leader about which prayer is to be read or which response is to be offered?
Finally, how does the book feel in the hand? Is it too heavy? How does it open? Are the binding, cover, and paper of sufficiently high quality? This book will get heavy physical use. It will be taken out of a pew rack and opened thousands of times over the years. Is it pleasing in appearance and format, a hymnal that invites you to sing with joy to your Lord?
The Hard-Detailed Work of Final Decisions
When you have narrowed your selection down to about three hymnals, you will need to do a thoroughly systematic analysis of each of those volumes you are considering. Every text and every tune must be evaluated. Make a chart based on the principles we have laid out in this article. Examine each hymn and decide which of the criteria it fulfills and place its number under the appropriate heading on the chart. Do not hurry to your decision. You would not buy a house without examining every room and all of the mechanicals. Surely your church’s praise of God deserves equal attention. If substantial areas are not covered, these weaknesses will be visually apparent on the chart.
No hymnal will be perfect. There will be complex judgments and tradeoffs in any final decision. That is why you must take the time to make a complete assessment.
More Than a Book: The Necessity of Education and Spiritual Leadership
Because a hymnal is such a central resource for a congregation’s corporate life, it is not enough simply to make a decision and present the final choice. The principles of theology and liturgical and pastoral practice that we have described here must be interpreted to the people. This education must go on during the selection process and after the book arrives. Look at this as an opportunity to revitalize your congregation’s life, as a way to examine and expand their relationship to Jesus Christ, to each other, to the larger church, and the world. It will never be possible to please everyone, but in our choosing a new hymnal and learning to use its resources with grace and joy we grow in Christian maturity. We are preparing for the ultimate goal of all human existence: to know and enjoy God forever.