Before You Throw Away Your Hymns

I don't like all hymns. Let's just get that out there right now. Some are lame and had to be lame even by the standards of the day in which they were written. Most, however, were written out of tremendous challenges and suffering, real life situations that made/make them so relevant to life. Here's one example, "Near to the Heart of God," written over 100 years ago (taken from 101 More Hymn Stories):

"Near to the Heart of God was written and composed by Cleland B. McAfee, in 1901, while he was pastoring the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Illinois. He received one day that diphtheria had just claimed the lives of his two beloved nieces, and while in his saddened, shocked state, he wrote this hymn as a comfort for his own soul as well as for the other members of his family. He first sang it with choking voice just outside the darkened, quarantined house of his brother, Howard, the day of the double funeral. The following Sunday, McAfee's choir repeated it as a communion hymn at his own church service. Another brother, Lapsley, was so impressed with the simple buy comforting message of the hymn that he carried it back to his pastorate, the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California. From that time to the present, it has continued to be a source of great encouragement to believers everywhere."

A lot of Christians today don't like hymns simply because they are old. Because they are old, they have an old sound, don't work well with clapping and jumping (at least if you don't play them to an upbeat tempo). More sophisticated critics would argue that such "old music" isn't relevant to today's seekers because "if they don't like the music, they're probably not going to come back, even if the message is good. It has to connect to the 21st-century people you're trying to reach."

What I think lies behind such thinking is a false choice: either play hymns or be relevant. Can't there be a third option: play hymns (in an exciting, modern way) and help people understand the "old" lyrics? Sharing the stories behind the hymns, explaining archaic lyrics, and providing the biblical context that inspired many hymns is not a waste of time or too much work to be worth it. We need modern songs, but not at the cost of excommunicating something because it's old. Progress is not to abandon the old, but to help people worship better and more from the heart. Helping people understand the enduring quality of hymns IS progressive; ditching them just because they are old is chronological snobbery and lazy.

Volkswagen Commercial: The Force

Favorite Super Bowl Commercial

Slow motion high FPS compilation

Don't care for the music, but this is some fun stuff. I'd hate to be the dude getting kicked in the face (or the guy getting slapped)!

Reading, Have Read, Will Read

Reading: Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups (Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas); Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck)- a thorough yet light-hearted response to the growing number of church-is-lame-so-quit-going-and-be-Christians-apart-from-institutional-Christianity; Sticky Church (Larry Osborne); God of the Possible (Gregory Boyd) - Boyd's popular level introduction to open theism.

Have Read: The Christian Atheist (Craig Groeschel); The Ten Dumbest Things Christians Do (Mark Attebury) - currently using this as our small group study; Everyman's Battle (Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker) - my second time through it, full of good reminders.

Will Read/Want to Read: Most Moved Mover: a Theology of God's Openness (Clark Pinnock) - it will be my second time through this book; the first was a little rushed as I read it while doing research for a paper; Appealing to Scripture in Moral Debate: Five Hermeneutical Rules (Charles Cosgrove); The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry: A Troubleshooting Guide for Church Leaders (Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson).

What I'm Reading, Want to Read, Have Read

Usually, when I read a book, I end up reading several books together. Maybe I have trouble finishing what I start when it comes to books; maybe the book starts out boring and I don't want to have to endure it if I don't have to. Somehow, though, I still read a good deal, even after graduating from seminary, when many people would like to take a few years off from reading.

One book I'm reading is The Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel. The subtitle reveals the gist of the book: Believing in God but Living as if He Doesn't Exist. It's not deep, but it hits right where many (most?) Christians are at.

One book I've barely started but am interested in digging through is the Calvinist classic The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination by Lorraine Boettner. This work is a classic presentation of Reformed theology (5-point Calvinism). Why am I, a non-Calvinist, reading it? A quote I heard long ago comes to mind: before you can say, "I disagree," you need to say, "I understand." There are some things about Reformed theology I don't understand.

I have recently read Glenn Sunshine's Why You Think the Way You Do: the Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home. I reviewed this book for the Stone-Campbell Journal, which will come out in the spring. Sunshine traces major ideas from the Roman Empire through modern times and how those ideas affect our ethics, actions, priorities, etc. In short I thought it was too big of a task for a popular-level book of less than 250 pages, and I would refer the reader to the works of Rodney Stark for better stuff in this area.

Then there are many books to which I turn when preparing for lessons, sermons, and answering general inquiries. These books are read a chapter here, a chapter there. Recent shelf pulls include The Kingdom of the Cults, The Quran, The Book of Mormon, The Faith Once for All, Heaven, What the Bible Teaches About Spiritual Warfare, Pagan Christianity?, The Apostolic Fathers, BAGD, NIDNTT, TDNT, NIDOTTE, A Reader's Greek New Testament.

Oh yeah, and The Bible. :)

Quote for Today

"Grace is not permission to sin without limits, but permission to pursue God without limits in spite of our sin."

This was a key statement in a sermon I preached last Sunday. The sermon was about Romans 1:16-17 and about how the good news about Jesus is the reason for, the motivation for, and the substance of our message to the world. I ended the sermon with a call for Christians to understand their identity in Christ: they are children of God, not employees of God. The difference is remarkable: people who think they have to be a perfect parent/spouse/friend/etc. in order for God to love them are thinking like employees. They think that performance earns God's love. But that thinking misunderstands grace. Grace has multiple sides to it: on the one hand, grace is God withholding from us what we deserve while giving us what we don't deserve, and on the other hand, grace is margin for error in our lives as Christians. God loves us not because we've earned it, not because we're perfect, but because we are his children.

Quote for Today

"Now faith will totter if the authority of Scripture begins to shake. And then, if faith totter, love itself will grow cold. For if a man has fallen from faith, he must necessarily also fall from love; for he cannot love what he does not believe to exist."

- Augustine, On Christian Instruction, book 1, ch. 35