In an essay adapted from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Kavanagh Lecture on October 24 2013, entitled “Have Hymnals Become Dinosaurs?: The Costs of Extinction,” Karen B. Westerfield Tucker explores the costs and promises of printed hymnals:
Three scenarios — all of them real — can set the stage to address the question of the “extinction” of hymnals:
A congregation oversubscribes the cost of buying new denominational
songbooks that contain a mixture of old hymns and recently-composed
songs. The congregation’s minister approaches a pastoral colleague
assigned to a smaller, struggling congregation, and offers her the
surplus money for a similar purchase. “No, thank you,” she says. “We
no longer use books since the lyrics are projected on the screen along
with the other texts for worship. Although we are small, this is a
forward-looking community. We are not interested in print books that
are a relic of the past. Besides, we don’t want to be encumbered with
books to hold because we prefer to be free to lift our hands or clap
as we sing.”
In speaking about resources for worship, the pastor acknowledges that
he never uses the denomination’s hymnbook. “I like having the freedom
to choose music from any source. Of course, we have our CCLI
[Christian Copyright Licensing International] and onelicense.net
licenses. I find songs that best fit the theme of the day and that can
get the congregation really ‘in’ to their worship. Hymnals are far too
restrictive.”
A student in my introductory worship course, upon learning that the
day’s session will focus on music in worship, comments in class: “I
hope you aren’t going to talk about hymns and hymnals. They really are
irrelevant to today’s worship. The music is old fashioned and the
words are often boring. I’d like for us to talk about ‘contemporary’
music and music that is produced individually or collaboratively by
people in an emerging-style congregation. That really would be more
helpful for us as future pastors.” Although the Masters of Sacred
Music students in the room cringe at that remark, they are a minority
compared to the heads nodding in affirmation of the student’s request.
The full article from the Yale Institute for Sacred Music Review is available here.