Recently, the church brought back two older songs for Palm Sunday. Both were popularized by Chris Tomlin, one of the nation’s most influential worship leaders, two decades ago: “You Are My King” and “We Fall Down.” And both really connected with the congregation. The song choices bucked church music trends, said Walker.
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“In a lot of churches, a song has to be either 300 years old — or it has to be three days old,” he said. “The middle ground is purgatory.”
Will Bishop, a former church worship leader and now assistant professor of worship leadership at Mississippi College, said his students often feel anxious and worried they are missing out on the next big thing in worship music. They essentially have “FOMO” — the fear of missing out — when it comes to worships songs, he said.
Bishop said he tries to remind aspiring worship leaders not to overwhelm the people in their churches with new music.
“We want to move on to the next shiny thing, but our people can only absorb new songs so fast,” he said.
When Bishop began leading worship, he had access to a hymnal and then to lists of new worship songs from publishers. Now he has endless options, with more coming each day.
“Spotify is the new hymnal,” he said.
Steven Guthrie, a former church musician turned theology professor at Belmont University in Nashville, wonders if the decline of hymnals plays a role in the pace of new worship music. In the past, he said, church musicians had hymnals filled with hundreds of songs for every occasion in a church’s life at their fingertips. Now, as many churches have abandoned hymnals, musicians are trying to fill that void.
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While new songs are important, said Guthrie, there are some downsides. Songs can create community, he said, something that takes time and is hard to do when songs disappear so quickly. Songs are also no longer passed down from parents and grandparents to younger generations — and there isn’t time for a song to work its way into people’s hearts, he said.
When his mother was dying, said Guthrie, he and his sisters stood for hours at her bedside, singing one hymn after another that they had memorized — all songs their mom knew.
“Sometimes I think, what are my kids going to sing by my bedside?” he mused.
This article originally appeared here.
