Should We "Modernize" Hymns? PART 1 (of 2)

Should We "Modernize" Hymns? PART 1 (of 2)
Alden Powers, Music Director @Roosevelt Community Church

One thing that we love to do at Roosevelt Community Church is sing hymns. Not only do we like to sing the timeless music of our faith, but we also like to sing modern arrangements of these hymns. Some of our arrangements are very similar to the original while others are radically different. What we are doing at RCC is not unique to our church body. This has been a popular movement in modern worship music for a few years now.

Changing a hymn can be exciting, inspiring, and even controversial. There are many factors to consider when changing a hymn that one needs to think of before we take the plunge. Here are a couple of things we can do to modernize the great old hymns and bring them into the 21st Century.

1. Why should we change hymns in the first place?

The single most important reason to change a hymn is to make the deep, powerful truths that we are singing about more relevant to our modern culture. If you simply read the words of the great hymns of our faith, they are loaded with rich, beautiful lyrics that express the wonders of the Gospel. Devoid of music, the lyrics of great hymns can stand alone as great poetry.

Sadly, many of these great hymns are attached to music that has become stale and outdated to many modern listeners. Sometimes the older style of music invokes memories of one’s unpleasant churchgoing past. Other times the music is simply not relevant to the modern culture. In a church where many of the members might listen to heavy rock music, why should they then sing hymns the traditional way?

I do concede that there are reasons not to change a hymn and we should have a love and respect for the rich tradition of church music. However, for the sake of presenting the rich gospel truths found in the lyrics of the great hymns, we need to modernize many of them.

2. Changing the style.

The easiest way to modernize a hymn is to perform it in a modern style without changing the melody or words. This works if the hymn is very popular and many members of the congregation could not imagine singing the hymn to a different tune. This also works if the original melody associated with the hymn is a really great melody and can be easily transferred to other musical styles. We’ve had a lot of success singing a hymn with a reggae beat, or with an up-tempo rock feel. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to make a hymn sound modern.

I will say however, that whatever style we do the hymn in should be a style that we are familiar with. It serves no one to do a bluegrass version of “Amazing Grace” if you don’t know how to play bluegrass!

3. Changing the melody.

Sometimes it can really serve our congregation to change the melody of a hymn. Older hymns might have melodies that by today’s standard sound boring and dated. To some the idea of changing the melody may sound like heresy, but I would remind you that many of our favorite hymns underwent numerous melodic variations and were set to many different tunes until one emerged as the definitive melody. I do not recommend doing this to well-known hymns that our congregation is familiar with. Doing this can alienate some people.

There are, however, a treasure trove of lesser-known hymns that are not widely known because they have been attached to bad melodies. When we come across a hymn such as this, I believe it is our duty to free it from the prison of the lousy melody it is enslaved to and redeem it with a fresh, modern melody.

One of the most popular ways to change the melody is to use a different hymn tune. Old hymns were often written in established rhythmical meters so that they could be sung to different tunes. Try singing “All to Jesus I Surender” to the tune of “Come Thou Fount”. It works!

Sometimes all a hymn needs is some more interesting rhythms. Old hymn tunes were written with a straight rhythm that can sound boring and predictable to modern ears. Modern melodies are much more rhythmically complex, often employing syncopation, a technique by which there is an emphasis on the up-beats. Sprinkling in some of this magical syncopation into an old hymn melody can really do wonders.

If you would like to hear examples of some great modern hymns, I recommend:
*Park Slope Church: Kingsborough Hymns Vol 1- Beautiful Arrangements of hymns by several great hymn writers. The arrangements are hauntingly beautiful in mostly a folky, acoustic style.


*Indelible Grace Music- An entire music company devoted to producing recordings of modern hymns. Their website is a goldmine of great music!

*Red Mountain Church: Help My Unbelief and This Breaks My Heart of Stone- Great modern arrangements of William Gadsby and Isaac Watts hymns.

*Sojourn: Over the Grave- Isaac Watts hymns “turned up to 11”! Radically new arrangements of some of Watts’ greatest hymns.