A layman’s case for hymns

I own three guitars and a trumpet. I can’t play any of them.

Well, I can play the trumpet a little. I was above average in high school. My aim now is to not sound awful. I do sound better than a baby elephant with sinus congestion. I think.

And according to my phone app that keeps track of such things, I now have 307 vinyl records representing genres like rock, jazz, blues, R&B, funk, country, and classical.

I’ll randomly listen to artists like country legend Buck Owens, jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, and progressive rock icons Pink Floyd in the same sitting.

The point is, I love all kinds of music, including hymns, especially those deeply rooted in theology, sung by large choirs accompanied by organs. I’d prefer to hear them in some large 500-year-old cathedral in Europe, but a local church will do.

I’m no hymnologist, I am not a trained worship leader, and my singing ability would best be described as “meandering” as I search for proper pitch. I’m just a layman who believes church music must be set on a footing of sound doctrine and filled with deep biblical substance that steadfastly anchors the soul to the Rock of Ages.

I’m not talking about worship styles. I’m talking about lyrics that transcend spiritual platitudes and engage the mind as much as emotions.

For instance, I recently heard a pastor teaching about the profound reality of Jesus being a friend to his disciples. The 1910 hymn, “Jesus! What a Friend for Sinners!” penned by American evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, immediately popped into my head.

“Jesus! What a Friend for sinners! Jesus! Lover of my soul; Friends may fail me, foes assail me, He, my Savior, makes me whole.”

The hymn’s five original stanzas flow through key doctrinal characteristics of the person and work of Jesus as friend, strength, help, guide, keeper, and savior.

The fourth stanza alone carries theological weight: “Jesus! what a guide and keeper! While the tempest still is high, storms about me, night o’ertakes me, He, my pilot, hears my cry.” It’s the doctrine of providence — the claim that God actively steers the believer through circumstances, not merely sympathizes from a distance.

Chapman also wrote “One Day” in 1910. “Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me; buried, He carried my sins far away; rising, He justified freely, forever: one day He’s coming — O glorious day!” That’s the gospel storyline compressed into a single refrain — incarnation, atonement, burial, resurrection, and the second coming — that’s five doctrines in five phrases. And if you’re one of those rare churches that still have Baptist Hymnals, the 1991 version, these two are hymns 185 and 193 respectively.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause to acknowledge worship ministers Scott Andrews, Kevin Hamilton, and Rusty Eason, who all served First Baptist Church, Millington, during my formative years there. I recall hymns like these 40-plus years later because those men faithfully chose music that reinforced the doctrinal pillars of our faith.

I believe people regularly immersed in Scripture wrote great hymns when life collided with them and God inspired the words to respond.

Another standard at FBC Millington, sung by my youth minister Phil Russell, who had a booming voice, was “It is Well With My Soul” (No. 410 in your 1991 hymnal).

Horatio Gates Spafford, a Chicago businessman, wrote the hymn after his young son died of scarlet fever (1870), after he lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire (1871) and after his four daughters died when the ship they were traveling to Europe collided with another vessel and rapidly sank (1873). Spafford’s wife survived, and sent him a telegram that said only, “Saved alone.”

Spafford immediately sailed for Europe to join his wife. On the way, the captain told him they were approaching the location where his daughters died.

In that moment, according to family tradition, he began writing: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

The stanza captures the hymn’s real claim — that peace and suffering can embrace each other because God’s sovereignty steadies the believer regardless of circumstance.

Taken together, the three hymns buttress the believer’s faith from three angles: Christ’s active care amid life’s storms, the gospel compressed to its essentials, and the soul’s peace anchored in God’s sovereignty even through suffering.

Hymns are like psalms and prayers that bind us together in corporate worship.

Your soul needs hymns to anchor it to Christ through every season of life, whether in peace like a river or when sorrow crashes across it like billowing seas.

Hymns are important and necessary to your growth as a disciple of Christ, even when you tonally meander looking for the right pitch. B&R