Jim Fitzgerald was Minister of Music in Cambria after retiring as vice president of the University of the Pacific. Jim had a grand piano in the large front entry of his waterfront home, and he loved to collect hymnals. People Jim had over a hundred different hymnbooks, all in English. In his spare time he would play through them, looking for unusual, beautiful tunes. 

He said, “About a third of them all are similar,” meaning the same well known hymns—Amazing Grace; How Great Thou Art; Holy, Holy, Holy; Great is Thy Faithfulness; Be Thou My Vision; Blessed Assurance—were found in all of them.  Another third tended to be somewhat similar with lots of overlap, but the final third of most contained dozens of hymns he had never heard. Added up, that’s thousands of songs in hymnals that were unfamiliar even to a seasoned minister of music. What happened? 

The praise songs of one era become the hymns of the next, except for all of those rejected by the common core of the church. The popular music of one revival becomes the old, sacred standard of the next generation. 

 “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses….” I can almost see  her—a 1920’s lady wearing a dress the size of VW bug as she twirls a dainty umbrella. Or she’s on a flowery swing beneath a blossoming cherry tree. A gentleman with her wears a straw hat and a striped blazer. When he sings, his handlebar moustache twitches. He looks like he left the other three guys at the barbershop. “In the Garden” has become a kind of classic, but it was introduced to American Christianity with the informality of a tent revival attraction. 

I grew up between the Presbyterian Church and the Swedish Covenant Church (which gave the world How Great Thou Art, Morning Has Broken, Children of the Heavenly Father, and others), which means I grew up entirely on hymns sung from the hymnals. In fact, I never saw onscreen lyrics in college or seminary. Working with youth we started projecting lyrics from transparencies and an overhead projector (remember those?).  Later, we mounted negatives of song lyrics on slides for the slide projector (remember those? Ours had a ‘carousel’). This projected words of white light onto whatever walls we had available.  Today we have high definition screens, but the endeavor is the same. 

People sing better with their heads up and their hands empty. They worship better. Those of us who can actually read music probably weigh in at about five percent of the congregation (slightly better for the choir, I’m sure). For decades, as I’ve watched congregations sing from up front, I’ve noticed the same thing: people with hymnals in their hands sing with their chins in their chests. Many disappear into the pages, heads down, mournfully mumbling their way through most hymns. When heads are up and eyes are forward, people are drawn into the shared experience of worship.

Those of you who have sung in choirs know how choral directors feel about you watching the music in your folders as you sing. You are nagged and brow-beaten again and again, “Heads up! Watch ME, not your music!” because no one wants to watch a choir sing when all their faces are down in their sheet music. Is it any different for a congregation?

As preachers have given up the safety and security of their chariot-like pulpits, so congregants across the country and around the world have gone to screens. Let’s be clear here: all the songs found in your hymnals—and all the songs in all the hymnals—are equally available to be put onscreen. Most people neither need nor use the music itself.

The choir leads as we learn how to sing new songs by heart. For those who find something like comfort in holding a hymnal—just having something in your hands as you stand to sing—yes, yours is the larger challenge. You’ll have to learn to sing with your face up. As for your hands, you can always lift them in praise or clasp them together in reverence. Either way is better than wanting a simple hand pacifier. 

Screens, while still a newish worship technology, remain on the rise. They help draw each worshiper out of the isolation of personal, individual space into a shared attention in shared space. With our without a hymnal in our hands, our aim is to offer our entire attention to God and to praise him with what a bit more heart every week, month, and year. †