Where have all the hymnals gone?

Two of our grandchildren performed in a piano recital last week. A small Presbyterian Church hosted the young students of a beloved, talented piano teacher. After some twenty students took to the keyboard, ranging in ages from seven through high school, our two were last - the grand finale. And what a finish. Our grandson (age 14) played Prelude in C Major and Maple Leaf Rag. Our granddaughter (age 16) wrapped up the evening with Serenade for a Doll (from Children’s Corner) and Debussy’s The Snow is Dancing. They brought down the house.

I played the role of proud grandfather.

Northkirk Presbyterian Church, by my guess, would have been built in the 1950s or 60s, back when modest sanctuaries held maybe three or four hundred. Small stained glass windows depicted biblical scenes along the side walls, letting in colored light. White cloths with religious symbols draped the pulpit, communion table, and baptistry. The plain, large Cross behind the stage on the back wall did not include the crucified Jesus. The American and Christian flags adorned the front, one on either side. Colorful banners hung just so, with inspirational phrases taken straight from the Scriptures. Solid oak pews were cushioned with book racks that contained Bibles and Hymnals, along with the visitor’s registration card (to be placed in the offering plate during the service). The only sign of modernization in the room would be the two large flat-screen TVs on either side of the stage, just inside the flags.

It’s been years since I have been in a church like this. It so reminded me of the churches of my childhood - and the first church I served as a pastor way back in the 1970s.

Intrigued, I picked up the hymnal right there within my reach. And again, memories flooded my mind. And heart. I hadn’t seen a hymnal in, well, decades.

Apparently, there are churches out there that continue the tradition that I remember from the earliest days of my weekly church-going ritual. We didn’t attend until I was in the second grade. Somewhere in the mid-fifties, my Mom and Dad decided to follow Jesus, honor God, and raise their growing collection of children in “the way of the Lord.”

So Sunday in church has been a weekly tradition, well, for most all of my life.

We had a piano in our house. The one book you would find above the keyboard on the little wooden shelf would be a hymnal. Church would not be church (at least in our tradition) without a Bible and a hymnal there in the church pew, alongside that registration card and a sharpened pencil. (The ushers were sure that it was all there, ready to go, before the service began.)

So right there in Northkirk Church, I pulled that hymnal off the rack, and began to page through it - all five hundred pages. There were some hymns I did not recognize - but to my surprise, almost half of them were familiar as yesterday. Somewhere in the folds of my brain, somewhere in the massive collection of cells, where the neurons fire off sparks, all of those hymns are somehow stored away. Usually stanzas 1, 2, and 4.

Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die

Would He devote that Sacred Head for such a worm as I?

While I enjoyed the recital and the little elementary school kids fingering out a forced strain, I found myself in another world. Old melodies and harmonies and lyrics came flooding back like a dream. For good reason.

Not only did I grow up in a church that included at least three hymns at every gathering, but I am also a Bible School graduate. For three years, a full-time college-level student, we started every class, every class, with a hymn. Add a couple more in the daily chapel. Then on to seminary - more hymns. When I was a pastor, every week, I would write a sermon, bring the main theme to the planning team for the selection of the three hymns for that Sunday, just in time to include the name and page number in the bulletin (printed on a mimeograph machine).

The overhead projector.

It would signal the beginning of the end of the hymnal. But it was a slow evolution. That overhead projector would be a precursor to the jumbotron and light shows of the mega-church that today rival arena concerts. Back then, overhead transparencies enabled the preacher and the music minister to project the lyrics up there on the big screen. We called them Choruses. And then Worship Songs. Looking down at the hymnal became passé. We should look up, heads high, and sing. And we did.

Slowly, the hymnal hit the dustbin. At least in my world. Where we once debated the presence of a guitar, no less a drumset in church, today the Worship Team is a full-on band. In the late 70s, when the Jesus Revolution was in full swing, I spent a week in Estes Park, Colorado, listening to a new generation of Jesus Rock. The most tame of them all was Evie, a Swedish vocalist who loved Jesus.

The times, they are a changin’... it was the birth of CCM - Contemporary Christian Music. It would become a mega industry. From then on, those projected lyrics on Sunday morning would include copyright detail, to be sure the writers and producers of the new music would get paid.

Occasionally, we hear a subtle reference to a lyric from an old hymn in one of those Worship Songs. But truth be told, those old hymns have pretty well disappeared, replaced by songs designed to connect with a new audience. Folks who only know mega-church probably have little or no awareness of the old hymns.

At the Cross, at the Cross, where I first saw the light,

And the burden of my heart rolled away.

It was there by faith, I received my sight,

And now I am happy all the day.

I must say, I’m pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. The memory of sitting passively in the pew Sunday after Sunday, mechanically taking the hymnal in hand, turning to the selected page, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, as the piano and organ played an intro and a guy (always a male) took to the pulpit to wave his arms, raise his eyebrows, start the melody in full voice and guide us through a repeat of an all-too-familiar hymn… well, it rarely led to profound spiritual transformation. More like “going through the motions.”

On a hill far away, stood an old Rugged Cross

The emblem of suffering and shame

But I love that old Cross, where the dearest and best

For a world of lost sinners was slain

Sitting there in the Northkirk church, leafing through that old hymnal, I realized that in those early days, I spent at least as much time in the hymnal as I did in the Bible. The theology I inherited back then came as much from the hymns as it did the Scriptures. We assumed that all those verses were rooted in The Text, so the whole exercise would be “Biblical.” But it didn’t occur to me at the time that maybe those hymns were as much a product of American revivalism as historic Christian orthodoxy.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine

Oh - what a foretaste of glory Divine!

Heir of Salvation, purchase of God

Born of His Spirit, washed in His Blood.

But I kept turning pages. What A Friend We Have In Jesus. Just As I Am. Rock of Ages. Great Is Thy Faithfulness. In the Garden. The lyrics and melodies all came back, even as the recital continued up front there in Northkirk Church.

* * * * * * * * * * *

As a little boy in Wheaton, Illinois, we had a little toy record player in my room upstairs. Somehow, I managed to get my hands on the 45 RPM recording of “How Great Thou Art” featuring Billy Graham’s beloved soloist, George Beverly Shea. I curled up around that little plastic player and listened over and over again, singing along with the deep, rich baritone voice, trying to mimic “How greeeeeeaaaaat Thou art,” and imagining the throngs in the stadium moved by the heart and soul of my voice… like his.

Later, because my grandfather and “Bev” were close personal friends, I would meet Bev Shea and sing along with him at the piano in this Western Springs home. He told me to call him “Uncle Bev.”

* * * * * * * * * *

I look back at some of those hymns (Washed in the Blood, Nothing But The Blood) and realize that much of the religion I inherited included some pretty bizarre ideas.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me.

There’s a whole lot of blood in there. Substitutionary atonement. Obsession over the hereafter (When We All Get to Heaven). God loves me, without one plea (Just As I Am). Submission (Trust and Obey). I’m a wretch, a worm, but I’m safe and secure (Leaning On The Everlasting Arms).

Safe and secure.

* * * * * * * * * *

All that said, some of it, I miss. Really. I miss standing there in a full church singing in full voice with the pipe organ blasting and a pianist who really knows the keyboard filling in the space with runs up and down…

To God be the Glory, great things He has done

So loved he the world that He gave us His Son

The vilest offender who truly believes

That moment from Jesus a pardon receives!

Praise the Lord!

And then, more than once in my memory, I would sing along with my fellow church goers, “It is well (it is well), with my soul (with my soul) - it is well, it is well - with my soul” and tears would form in my eyes.

* * * * * * * * * *

Two nights later, we gathered to celebrate another granddaughter, this time, High School Graduation, along with her best friend. About sixty of us came together to honor their achievement, including Kate’s other two grandparents, John and Betty.

I overheard Kate ask Betty, “Grandma, will you play something for us on the piano?”

Betty hesitated. We grandparents are about the same age, the same lifestage. We all know Betty as a fine concert pianist with extraordinary talent. Before our kids found each other and married, she played for my grandmother’s funeral there in her hometown. Later, she would play at our kids’ wedding. She brings that rare combination of technical skill and heart to the keyboard that takes you beyond listening - you feel the music.

In recent years and months, Betty has battled cancer. Her hearing, too. Not long ago, she had a cochlear implant installed. Impaired hearing has affected her ability to play the way she once did.

“Grandma, please? I love to hear you play,” Kate pleaded.

“Oh, alright…” Grandma Betty relented.

She took to the upright Kawai piano in the living room, surrounded by teenagers. She put the microphone she carries (to aid her hearing) on the top of the piano, and began to play. How Great is Our God.

It took me by surprise. I choked up. It was so beautiful to see our Kate (a fine pianist herself) so tuned in to the grandmother who not only taught her to play the piano, but also to know of a great God who will energize and sustain and comfort even through cancer and lost hearing - and aging.

“OK, one more,” Betty said. She began again, hitting the notes and chords with charm and grace.

Abide with me: fast falls the Eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.