The Mystery About Hymns

What is it about hymns? No matter how great and moving a modern day song is, nothing in all my years of leading worship gets a congregation singing more than a good ol' hymn. This has happens all the time, even in groups comprised solely of people under the age of 30. I just don't understand how something written in the 1700's, in old English with words and phrases we don't use anymore, can resonate so strongly over 200 years later.

The last song of the service last night was Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It was just me on guitar and Pastor Jeremy on keyboard, with the two of us singing on stage, but it was amazing hearing the congregation singing with us. It was so passionate and so powerful. I'm not sure if this statement will make sense to all of you, but you could hear their hearts swelling with love for God.

I've already posted one verse in a previous post but here are all the words, written by Robert Robertson in 1758:

1. Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of God's unchanging love.

2. Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

3. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Hymns, including this one, are generally jam packed with theology. So why is theology so dry to study but so great to sing? On paper it just doesn't make any sense at all when the Evangelical church of North America is continually trying dumb down the Gospel so as not to scare the unchurched away. But time and time again God reminds me not to abandon the heritage of the church especially when it comes to worshiping Him through song.

Matthew.