The Rise of the Modern Hymn Movement

You may not know it, but today there is a modern hymn movement. I think I can call it a movement. Writers such as Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, and ministries such as Sovereign Grace Music, and Indelible Grace are each contributing to a modern drive to bring hymns back to a prominent place in Sunday morning worship.

Common Vision

Behind the hymnwriting of Getty and Townend, and the hymn promotion of both Sovereign Grace Music and Indelible Grace, lies a common vision. Keith Getty expresses his concern that: “It’s been several hundred years since Christian worship was as shallow as it is today.” Sovereign Grace Music specifically aims to write and promote songs with “biblically based lyrics” with “a passionate, Cross-centered focus”. Indelible Grace aims to set older hymns to modern music in an effort to “enrich our worship with a huge view of God and His indelible grace”.

It seems from these quotes that all these different groups agree that there is much music being used in worship these days that is relatively shallow. I would tend to agree. But people and ministries like these are aiming to do something about it. There would be other names to give and groups to mention if this post centered on the modern movement for doctrinally rich modern praise and worship songs. But I am focusing on the modern movement to bring hymns back to the church. And while the names I have mentioned share a similar vision, they take different (and ultimately complementary) approaches.

Different Approaches

Indelible Grace explains their particular approach: “Our hope is to help the church recover the tradition of putting old hymns to new music for each generation, and to enrich our worship with a huge view of God and His indelible grace.” They further clarify their mission as follows:

Up until the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for people to compose new music for each generation for many of the hymns that they loved. There is no rule that says each hymn can only have one musical setting, and in fact, hymnals are designed for you to be able to mix and match words and music — that’s why they have a metrical index. But unfortunately, we lost this tradition and got stuck in a more modern traditionalism of associating one particular tune with one particular hymn….

Our goal is not change for change’s sake, but to rekindle a love of hymns and to invite many who would never associate rich passion with hymns to actually read the words. We believe that we are impoverished if we cut off our ties with the saints of the past, and that we fail to be faithful to God in our own moment of history if we don’t attempt to praise Him in forms that are authentic to who we are….We believe that the words of a hymn actually have more emotional nuance than one piece of music can adequately capture.

We want to be a voice calling our generation back to something rich and solid and beyond the fluff and the trendy. We want to remind God’s people that thinking and worship are not mutually exclusive, and that not everything worth knowing happened in the last three years. We want to invite the Church to appreciate her heritage without idolizing it….We believe that this theological poetry is supremely suited for expressing the seeming paradoxes of the faith that drive us to worship. Our prayer is that Jesus would be made more beautiful and believable, and we have found few things better suited for this than hymns. [There is much more to this quote that I had to leave out, go here to read their whole statement.]

Indelible Grace’s website is really a great resource on hymns in general. They not only provide high quality CDs with new music for many familiar hymns, they also resurrect many hymns that the church has largely forgotten. You can listen to long previews of their music online, and also read the stories behind many hymns. I highly recommend spending some time over on their site, and perhaps ordering some of their music.

Sovereign Grace Music specializes in writing modern praise and worship songs. They also, however, have given us new melodies/arrangements of older hymns {Alas and Did My Savior Bleed; Hallelujah, What a Savior; Like a River Glorious}, additional lyrics (reworded verses, additional verses, or additions of a chorus) along with new music for older hymns {Before the Throne of God Above; O God, Our Help in Ages Past; Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me; The Look} , as well as writing some songs that would pass as new hymns {I Will Glory in My Redeemer; Mercies Anew; The Glory of the Cross; Receive the Glory}. Also, they recently produced Upward: the Bob Kauflin Hymns Project, which showcases much of their excellent work with regard to hymns. Many of these alternate versions of older hymns are being used in contemporary churches. This is why I include Sovereign Grace Music as contributing to the modern hymn movement. [Use Sovereign Grace’s songsearch tool for finding mp3 samples or to purchase albums or mp3s with the above songs.]

Stuart Townend and Keith Getty have taken the approach of writing modern hymns. With the writing of “In Christ Alone” in 2001, they began a movement for writing modern hymns. Since then they have written, either conjointly or independently, many of these modern hymns and in effect created a new genre of worship music. Keith Getty’s website explains:

Keith Getty is a modern hymn writer. His hymns such as “In Christ Alone”, co-written with Stuart Townend, have created a new genre of ‘modern hymn’ unique today in popularity throughout traditional, contemporary and liturgical churches. In these new hymns they aim to both teach people the big picture of the bible and create a form of contemporary worship which relates to both the past and the future….

This article on Getty’s website gives a brief history and description of Getty and Townend’s work. Let me quote a few paragraphs by way of explaining the philosophy and vision behind the work of these men, who have given us such great modern hymns as “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us“, “O, Church Arise“, “Beautiful Savior“, and “The Power of the Cross“.

With an endless stream of new worship songs being written, recorded, and sung these days, what is the particular contribution of these new Townend/Getty creations? Keith Getty explains that the hymns provide a worship genre in which the texts are both wide and deep. By this he means that they tell the big story of the Bible””covering many biblical and liturgical themes””and do so at a depth of understanding that draws richly on the full counsel of God as revealed in Scripture. The church sings the faith in a way that not only voices praise and adoration to God, but also feeds the flock with the truth of Scripture.

Stuart Townend contends that current worship practices have tended to focus so heavily on subjective experience and personal feelings, that the proclamation of objective, life-changing truths about God and our position in Christ is often ignored. These hymns have been crafted in such a way as to redress that imbalance and provide corporate worship music that faithfully proclaims the great truths about God, the stories of the Bible, the seriousness of sin, and the beauty of the gospel of grace.

Another important goal is to find and refine a poetic and musical style that can unite people of diverse traditions and generations. Getty and Townend have chosen an aesthetic “voice” that draws on influences of both folk and classical music as well as contemporary songwriting and standard hymnody. The composers are producing hymns that speak the “heart language” of modern worshipers in a style that is singable and, to some degree, “timeless” “”a musical vocabulary that avoids the fickle lure of the ever-changing “popular” sounds of the entertainment industry. Such an experience of sung worship unites people in a comfortable vernacular rather than dividing them out of frustration. [Read the whole article.]

In an interesting article from the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship quotes Getty in regard to his overriding goals for his music, and his sources of inspiration.

“We try to write theological and Bible truth that speaks in everyday life, as Charles Wesley did. And I try to write melodies that large groups of people can sing. That is my filter: Can all ages sing this melody?”

From a lyrical point of view, we use Bible terms in a poetic way””to give the lyrics class and artistic credibility. But we write in language we would speak, that you can imagine saying.”

…

Getty’s always searching for new melodic ideas. He rarely finds inspiration in Christian contemporary music because “it’s mostly copies of the last five or ten years.”

Instead he looks for melodies that transcend every generation and have been recorded in many genres, such as folk tunes.

“Most of our best hymns are based on folk melodies and tend to be equally accessible to rock and pop bands as well as to organs and choirs and orchestra arrangements.”

On a side note, you may be interested to know that Keith Getty is quite conservative theologically. He is currently based in America and attends Allistair Begg’s church in Cleveland area. And recently, Bob Kauflin wrote that Getty has rejected numerous requests to change this line from the very popular hymn “In Christ Alone”: “And on the cross as Jesus died the wrath of God was satisfied”.

Before I leave Getty and Townend, let me provide a few more links to resources for you to learn more of these men and their hymns. Click here for an interesting interview of Keith Getty hosted on his own site. If you click here, you will get a long list of resources (lyrics and chord sheets and music samples) on hymns by Townend, Getty, or both of them. And this is Stuart Townend’s blog, where you can find some background stories to songs, and a good article on how to write hymns.

I hope the modern hymn movement will be embraced and encouraged by us more conservative folks. We should not snub our noses at songs written in the last 15 years or on new tunes to older hymns. Rather we should be happy that God is stirring people to set rich theological truths to accessible music in an effort to spread the truth to today’s generation.

UPDATE: Reformed Praise is another organization which is “dedicated to bringing together the rich tradition of hymnody, especially from the reformers or those directly influenced by them, with the modern worship song movement”, much like Indelible Grace mentioned above.