Where’s The Hymnals?



Last week, Teresa’s sister came to visit us for a week. I enjoy Beth because we are very similar in some ways. Beth loves old buildings and stain glass so we took her to look around our church. Common Ground Community Church meets in an older building. The sanctuary was built in the early 1900’s and the back building was added in the 1950’s. The sanctuary has stain glass windows so Beth wanted to take pictures. We walked in and Beth started taking photo after photo of the windows and the sanctuary’s cathedral ceiling. Everything else in this room has been updated; the pews were removed and padded chairs are what we us and we use multi-media so there is no need for hymnals. After taking her photos, Beth looked at the rows of chairs and asked, “Where’s all the hymnal books?” I pointed to the multi-media screen and back at the computer beside the sound board and told her we put the words to the songs on the screen each Sunday. Her reaction was surprising to me; she said, “You have to have hymnals? It’s not church unless you use hymnals.”

The reason I was surprised by Beth’s reaction is that Beth does not go to church. She became Catholic 13 years ago to marry her ex-husband but hasn’t gone to a Catholic church since their wedding. Beth’s background is not one of church attending so her thinking you should have hymnals surprised me. This event has played over and over in my head since then because it makes me remember the first time I was involve dealing with multi-media in a church’s worship service.

I remember way back in the spring 1998 when Fellowship Baptist Church first went the way of using multi-media. The then pastor had always been big on technology so I was not surprised he wanted to go this route. We had just had a fire in the church’s offices so we had the insurance money to invest in this newer tech. We didn’t have enough money for a multi-media projector (way too much money for one back then) so we bought two 36 inch TVs. One of our members built two platforms to put these two huge things on; it took 4 men to haul each TV on the platform. We ran cables from the front to the back of the sanctuary where a new computer sat. I had a crash course on presentation software (not the easy MS PowerPoint but the harder to use Coral version).

The pastor was happy and so were the associate pastor that we had this new tech until the Director of Music found out about it. He hated it because it took away from him (his words; not mind) and that hymnals are the only way to sing songs to God. The man was a graduate of Bob Jones University (a legalistic College). The man refused to even acknowledge the existence of the TVs so either I or Randy (Assoc Pastor) had to make up music slides. The pastor struggled with the Director of Music over this until one day the Director of Music resigned (the resignation was over something else; not due to the multi-media so I think). I think the pastor knew I was learning how to read music (I had a course in college on how to lead music but our church’s piano player offered to teach me to read the music) so he asked me to lead the choir the first Sunday evening and then he told me I was the new Director of Music. My stint as Director of Music was many things and the highest was learning the ins and outs of how to use multi-media in worshiping our God.
Hymnals are tools like the multi-media slides and projectors are tools. Both can be used to enhance the worship experience.