How Your Pastor Chooses the Hymns We Sing

Pastor’s Window on November, 2006

How Your Pastor Chooses the Hymns We Sing

“Why don’t we ever sing my favorite hymn?” “That hymn again?” “The sermon hymn was really difficult this morning!” When it comes to picking hymns, sometimes a pastor feels like he just can’t win. “There were so many verses to the hymns this morning!” or “I love that hymn! Why didn’t we sing all the verses?!” A pastor doesn’t have to be in the ministry very long before he hears all of these comments and more.

It is very important for a congregation to know why their pastor picks the hymns that he does. A pastor should never pick hymns arbitrarily. I don’t get to pick my favorite hymns over your favorite hymns just because I’m the pastor. Nor do I pick hymns at random. I spend hours every month picking hymns because the hymns we sing are important. Hymns place the confession of Christ and prayer to God in our mouths. I want the Word and sound that comes from your lips to be just right. And so I evaluate each hymn on the basis of serious and significant criteria.

The first question I ask is whether the hymn gives us Christ? Every hymnal has its weak hymns, and ours is no exception. Not every hymn is specifically Christian even if it was written by a Christian for Christ. I always ask myself a test question: Would a Muslim or Jew be comfortable singing this hymn to his god? If the answer is yes, I don’t pick it (another important question is whether the hymn confesses a generic god, or the Triune God). Secondly, I ask what, specifically, the hymn says about Christ. I’m looking for hymns that clearly sing of the saving benefits of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and how He gives those benefits to us through Word and Sacrament. Hymns that simply point to Christ as the Exalted One or as an example of Christian behavior don’t get the job done. I want to choose hymns that clearly speak Law and Gospel to us; that is, hymns that rightly condemn the sin in us and tell us how our Savior, Jesus Christ, has won our forgiveness, life, and salvation, and made peace with the Father on our behalf. And I want to choose hymns that are sacramental; hymns that point us back to our Baptism and to the Lord’s Supper as the continuing means by which Christ gives us His gifts. To sum up, I want to pick hymns that teach us about Christ and the Gospel.

But not every good hymn is interchangeable every day of the Church year. We always want to sing hymns that zero in on the theme of the day and that are appropriate for the season of the Church year. So I’m always looking for hymns that are connected with either the theme of the day, or at least one of the other readings. All of the propers (the parts of the liturgy that change from week to week, such as hymns) should point us to the theme of the day, which is determined by the readings (usually the Gospel). Sometimes it is easy to pick hymns for a particular theme. Other times it is more difficult. But the goal is always to pick hymns that are related to the overall theme of the day.

Of course, there are other criteria that are important when evaluating a hymn. We don’t want hymns that are generically religious, or even generically Christian, but rather hymns that sing of the glorious riches of the Gospel in accord with our specifically Lutheran confession. We always want churchly music married to strong confession. Some hymns have magnificent tunes, but the words are weak. We are unlikely to sing those hymns. Likewise, sometimes the words are very strong, but the music is not particularly churchly. We are unlikely to sing those either. The Church’s music should not sound like something we might hear on Top 40 radio. The music should be timeless and able to transcend cultural boundaries. And as I said before, the words should be inherently Christian, impossible for non-Christians to sincerely sing to their false god, and they should always point us to Christ and His saving Gospel.

The Song of the Church is not the same thing as a sing-along. We don’t come together to sing our favorites. We come together to be fed. We come together to have God’s Word put into our mouths (what a sacramental way of thinking about it!). And of course, we don’t leave the Church’s Song behind when we walk out the door on Sunday morning. We take it home with us. Remember, the hymnal is meant to be a prayer book at home, too. And if we really never get to your favorite hymn when we sing together in the Divine Service, you can always sing it in your devotions at home all week long. Hopefully you can use the same criteria I listed above in evaluating hymns for personal devotion. And hopefully you’ll be able to look for those things in the hymns we sing together each week as we address “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father” (Eph. 5:19-20).

Pastor Krenz