Is It Hymn or Him?

by Omar Niebles

I grew up in a Spanish speaking church.   We sang hymns, in Spanish of course, every single Sunday morning, but one day we were introduced to coritos.  These were songs, but it’s not like we were making a transition into contemporary music.  They were just choruses that you’d sing over and over again.  It was a Baptist church so by no means get the picture of an AG church singing out a chorus, guitars blazing, drums building and rockin, and people with hands up in the air.  No, we sang them pretty much the same way we’d sing a hymn.  A guy led the song from the front and someone accompanied him on the piano.  No arms rising.  No hands clapping.  No drums rockin.  That would have been a BIG no-no.

In my late teen years, I left the church I grew up in and checked out other churches.  These churches were different.  These churches had people clapping and guitars ringing and drums rockin.  Wow.   I experienced culture shock for sure.  I loved it.  I would see people raising their hands and they just seemed completely into the music and I thought to myself that I didn’t worship God in that way.  I was raised to think that it was wrong to worship in this way.  It was too much and over the top and God was not pleased.

A few years down the line, I found myself caught in the middle of a struggle.  People, who loved hymns, thought they were being cheated from worshiping God.  They did not feel that worship was about drums, fast music and hand clapping.  They refused to even be with the rest of the church community as the rest of the community was worshiping.  The people who were about being contemporary didn’t really care much about what the others thought.  This was the “new way forward.”  This way was what was going to grip the young people.  Contemporary worship was how “we” were going to worship God.

Something’s off here, isn’t it?  Was one group more right than the other?  When did worshiping God become a power struggle?  Should we scrap hymns because some of the language is no longer relevant?  Is contemporary music shallow?

Let’s ask this question…does God really care about the songs we sing on Sunday morning?  I mean I guess God would care if our songs talked about the awesomeness of Satan or our submission to evil.  Yeah, God would have beef with that.  But is God more pleased one way or the other on which genre of music we choose for our church communities?

God could care less about the songs you and I sing on a Sunday morning if our worship smells like you know what during the rest of the week.    Check out Colossians 3.  Notice the context of verse 16.  The verses circled around verse 15 deals with how we are to LIVE.  How we worship God with our lives, through our routines, through our children, through our spouses, through our authorities matters tremendously to God.  So much so that Paul decided it was good to have 24 verses on that and one verse to what we sing.

Check out Isaiah, Jeremiah, and what Jesus says about those who worship God.  The so-called religious come to God with His name on their lips, yet their hearts are far away.

Let’s be a people whose hearts are close to Him.  Let’s no longer make worship about hymn or no hymn, but about Him.  Let’s worship Him with our lives.  Let’s be people who put to death the junk of this world and clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Then, hymn or no hymn, corito or no corito, drums or no drums, let’s sing in complete gratitude of Him.