Not too long ago we ran resources on songs and hymns. A commenter pointed out that one of the links is not working, so here is the article republished for you! Enjoy!

Why Young People Are Returning To Old Hymn Texts

by Kevin Twit

Not too long ago I saw a sign in an antique store: “My grandmother saved it, my mother threw it away, and now I’m buying it back!” That little sign captures the story of church music in the last fifty years. In my work as a pastor with college students, I have been taking note of what feels like the beginning of a movement.

There is most definitely a hunger and longing among the emerging generations, college students and twenty-somethings, to connect with something real and solid rather than the faddish and ephemeral. Books like Robert Webber’s The Younger Evangelicals (Baker, 2002) and Colleen Carroll’s The New Faithful (Loyola Press, 2002) well document this phenomenon. Recently a college student posted this letter on a website in response to an article on hymns.

Coming from a typical praise chorus- reliant high school youth group . . . I didn’t understand a lot of the poetic and imagery-driven lyrics, and the word hymn automatically meant boring music. But I found myself falling in love with the old hymns. . . . The words are so profound and full of truth one can’t help but be broken. Singing hymns has seriously changed my life and freed me from feeling frustrated by surface lyrics that focus on how I feel about God, which is always changing. Hymns have allowed me to center my worship on the Gospel, which in turn compels me to love the God I am prone to hate and wander from.

What thrills me is to see how her discovery of hymns has affected even the way she expresses what she finds in her heart—“Come Thou Fount” has helped orient her to a richer view of what the Christian life actually feels like! Continue reading →