What Have We Been Singing?

Hello Church,

What do the songs we sing reveal to us?  Recently, I assigned our worship pastor the task of taking an inventory of all the songs we have sung during our Sunday worship services over the past five years.  Thanks, Pastor Tim.  Here’s a reason I gave this assignment.  You see, the Bible tells us that the songs of our faith have at least two purposes.  The first purpose of these songs is to worship and glorify our triune God.  The second purpose is to teach us Biblical truth and doctrine.  All the major themes of Scripture should be taught to us in what we sing.  Consider the themes of God as Creator, as holy, as merciful and all his wonderful attributes.  Think of the overarching Biblical theme of our redemption that was purchased by Christ through his death.  I wanted to discover which themes we sing about most, which themes we might be neglecting and whether or not they line up with the Bible’s emphasis.  Aren’t you curious to know what the findings were?

1. There were 159 different songs and hymns sung over that period, excluding Christmas hymns and songs.

2. Some of the songs were sung over 20 times and some only once -- meaning that there were some songs we tried out, and for particular reasons, we retired them from our catalogue.

3. We introduced around 10 new songs every year, and by ‘new’ I don’t mean songs that have been recently published, but new in that we had never sung them as a congregation.

4. These are the composers we have been recently singing the most. Understand that some are trending upwards, and some are trending downwards -- meaning that there are some composers we are recently singing less and others more.

a. Chris Tomlin -18 (down)

b. Keith Getty – 13 (up)

c. Matt Redman – 10 (down)

d. Sovereign Grace – 9 (up)

e. Hillsong – 6 (down)

f. Matt Boswell – 5 (up)

g. Paul Baloche – 4 (down)

h. Tim Hughes – 3 (down)

i. Various hymn writers – 47 (where we sing 2 or 1 of their songs) (up)

5. In the past five years, we have been introducing more hymns, both ancient and modern.  This is due to my influence in that I want our church to sing more songs from the rich 2000-year library of hymns that are steeped in doctrine and poetically beautiful, and not only songs that have been written in the past ten years. 

6. Here are the TOP TEN songs we’ve sung over the past five years:

a. All I Have Is Christ (Sovereign Grace)

b. In Christ Alone (Keith Getty)

c. All Creatures of Our God and King (St. Francis of Assisi)

d. Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery (Matt Boswell)

e. O Fount of Love (Matt Boswell)

f. Come Thou Fount (John Wyeth)

g. This Is Amazing Grace (Phil Wickham)

h. Behold Our God (Sovereign Grace)

i. This Is Our God (Hillsong)

j. How Great Thou Art (Stuart K. Hine)

 7. Finally, these are some of the major themes in the songs we sing: God as creator; God’s sovereign grace; God’s faithfulness; God as protector.  However, the vast majority of our songs have Christ, his person, his work, and our devotion to him, as the central theme.  This follows the focus of the Bible.  It was Jesus who said that all of the Old Testament points toward himself and when we look at the hymns in the Bible, like the one we’ve been looking at recently in Philippians 2:6-11, as well as the songs of heaven found in Revelation, the subject of those songs are none other than Jesus Christ. 

I hope these findings were as insightful for you as they were for me.  Let’s continue to grow in our love for worship, but more than that, let’s grow in our love for Christ -- the object of our worship. 

Soli Deo Gloria
Pastor Peter