Writers say hymns still needed in worship

United Methodist News Service
Hymn composer Colin Gibson’s inspiration includes hair and fishbowls. He also writes about global conflict, environmentalism and homosexuality.
Gibson celebrates our diverse hairstyles in a hymn about God’s inclusive love for all.
In another, he equates our feelings of inadequacy with the image of Christians in a fishbowl yearning for the ocean. He said he aims for a broad audience by pairing modern themes with traditional music.
“I’m quite sure music slips under the closed door very often,” said Gibson, a leader in the Methodist Church of New Zealand. “If I can inspire conservatives to embrace a broader perspective through my music, that makes me happy,”
Gibson has written some 600 hymns. Many have been translated into at least four languages.
“Music has no political allegiance and no theological allegiance,” he said. “It’s open territory, so we can meet each other and discuss things in an open field of music.”
Many composers are striving to assert their art’s relevance at a time when hymnals and traditional worship styles are giving way to more contemporary Christian music at some churches.
Congregations are eager to embrace today’s youths with worship steeped in the Christian music they hear on the radio, said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association.
“Churches are finding if they use this kind of music, they grow, and if they don’t use it, they shrink,” Styll said.
Methodist hymn composers say their art is thriving. They note its long history in the Methodist tradition and point to the hundreds of hymns penned by Charles Wesley, who with his brother, John, formed the Methodist movement in the 1700s.
Composers say hymns are as much a part of worship as the sermon and readings from the gospels.
“It’s the heartbeat of the church,” said the Rev. Carlton R. Young, editor of The United Methodist Hymnal. “It’s difficult to think of a gathering of United Methodists without song.”
Many of today’s most prolific Methodist hymn writers live outside the United States. They include England’s Andrew Pratt, a Methodist minister who has written more than 250 hymns and received honorable mention in a contest seeking new hymns.
Like Gibson, Pratt addresses modern themes in his hymns—the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and war casualties, for example. He believes hymns endure because they address these issues theologically better than a contemporary Christian song can.
Jane Marshall, a United Methodist hymn composer in Dallas who has collaborated on 70 published hymns, uses traditional music on some and more contemporary music on others.
Marshall said she believes many of today’s youths prefer traditional hymns to contemporary Christian music. She cited growing interest in Taize, contemplative services rooted in old Christian traditions using candles, chanting and meditation.
“It’s some of the younger people who have tired of the praise and worship, and not all of them but some of them want more than that,” Marshall said. “Those young people love a formal service. They love the reverence and silence. They love more prayer candles and all the things you would associate with the early Roman Catholic Church.”