Help! Hymns are Dying Off!

Whenever I talk music with older generations, they seem to have this large and visible fear that hymns are going extinct – and that we need to be singing more of them.

No we don’t. You know why? Because most hymns are terrible. Just like most modern Christian music is terrible. How many songs are you singing this weekend that were written in the 90s? Probably none? And those that you sing this weekend, it’s likely that none of them are going to make it 10 years in our playlists.

But, great art survives. There’s a reason every church in America sings Amazing Grace at least a couple times a year. It’s a perfect song. Likewise, there are Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley hymns with such poignant and profound lyrics that they will never disappear.

But bad art dies over time. And it’s a good thing. We’re not anti-hymn. We’re anti-bad.