The Story of the Church is Encoded in Her Hymns


I believe the history of the church is encoded in her hymns, and the story of Christianity is enfolded in its songs. If you know the hymns of the ages, you’ll know the history of the church. If we lose the hymns, we’ll lose a priceless legacy; and we’ll be the first generation of Christians to ever do so. Every other generation of believers has added its songs to the hymnal without discarding the contribution of earlier eras.

We need to teach, emphasize, and celebrate hymns in our public gatherings; and I’m also an advocate for keeping a hymnbook by our devotional materials for daily singing and personal use. The hymnbook is one of the richest treasure troves we have for biographical, theological, historical, and personal enrichment.

For us today, hymns are portable units of praise, capable of being sung in the heart and with the voice, as needed by the soul, seven days a week.

–From my new book, Then Sings My Soul, Book 3.