Where do hymns get their power of influence?
It’s the corporate feeling, because we sing them together. Baptists are really healthy, hearty singers together. For a long time, we had that common song, that hymn that everybody knew because everybody was taught it in every Baptist church. It sort of distresses me that kids today don’t know hymns. Q Is the power of hymns more personal or corporate? For me, it’s both personal and corporate, because of my history of singing hymns together with so many churches and the memory of being with those churches. When I go to a piano, there’s always a hymnal there, and I just start playing through it. To me, it’s prayer life. Q What is the role of hymns in worship? Maybe it’s education–doctrine and faith and values, all in one hymn. Hopefully, it’s all there. The newer music seems to be so me-oriented toward “my” expression of faith, but in the older hymns it was everybody’s expression of faith–the life we had walked through, the trials we had been through–there was a corporate experience of
