Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Monthly column on hymns and songs

A tale of two writers

A casual comment, like a whodunnit clue, sometimes leads on to much bigger discoveries. You could almost call them crimes, or at least cover-ups. Earlier this year two friends were chatting and unearthed something like a plot.

She

Let's start with her. She, you will be surprised to hear, does not believe that all the good hymns have already been written. Spurred on by her experience of the Lord's grace, her discoveries of Scripture and her awareness of a rapidly changing world, she writes new ones. Many are already in print. Not being as mobile as some of us, she relies mainly on what goes on in her own evangelical church, where she has belonged for some years.

Result? She is hardly ever able to sing in public anything she has written. Her pastor never chooses it. You will have to take my word for it that she is not a self-centred, self-advertising, publicity-seeking worship freak. Being a genuine hymnwriter, she can actually live with heavy lack of exposure. All the same, it's a bit hard. Not so much on her feelings of achievement or personal worth, as on her ability to sense what works and what doesn't, how things sound with one tune or another, what the congregation may come up with by way of helpful feedback. So far as fellowship is concerned, she is working in a vacuum. Some people have to; it's hard to see why she must.

He

The other is a he. Our male friend also writes hymns. One day his minister did actually choose one he had written. He (the writer) was neither specially bothered that he usually didn't, nor especially excited when he did. He is more established as an author; at least two of his hymns were heard on the radio, though not by him, that very week.

Reaction

It was the reaction of other church members that first amused him and then made him think - and even talk to me. Two or three of his fellow chapel-goers said something like: 'We loved your hymn - is that a new one?' The answer was that he wrote it nearly 30 years ago, before the hymnbook in use there was published, and that it has featured in a dozen other collections in the meantime.

How come nobody knew it? Simple; they had been kept to a diet of one book, no supplement, and the church leaders seemed to agree with the editors that the 20th century is best forgotten. My friend wanted to add: 'Look, there are dozens - hundreds - more where that came from. I don't mean just from me, and that one isn't even in my top ten. But there is a whole world of contemporary hymns out there, some of them exploring old themes in fresh language, others opening up areas never dreamed of before 1900 - or 1960.'

Perhaps I should add another fragment of evidence here to help nail the crime. The two authors I describe are evangelical and Reformed. Neither is a charismatic, a liberal or a 'catholic' in the sense of being ritualistic or Romish. There is no known theological objection to them or their writing; if there were, shouldn't they be told? The result is that two congregations are apparently being kept in the dark about one of the most fruitful periods of English hymnwriting for a century or so. And they think they can discern the times, pronounce on trends, and know where the church is going.

I no more want to flood every service with new writing as I want to stick to Tate and Brady's Psalms of 1696. Just give us all a break, Mr. Pastor, please.

Christopher Idle