I’ve wondered a lot about what types of music Christians should listen to. I’m convinced “Classical” music healthily feeds the soul; I believe that we’re free to enjoy and treasure what is good and beautiful, even if a Balaam sings it; but recently I’ve been hung up on the worship music question. What’s the difference between hymns, modern hymns, and praise and worship music? How would a person change after a year of exclusively singing each one? Does the question even matter?
I’ve been a member of churches across the musical spectrum, and, unsurprisingly, the familiar has been the preferred in every season. Currently, classic and modern hymns constitute the vast majority of what my wife and I sing with other believers, and we like it that way. But because God has a sense of humor, there are always a couple worship songs on the radio that I genuinely love. Most recently, Passion’s Scripture-saturated “The Lord Will Provide” has never failed to center me on truth and lift my spirits.
It’s because of songs like this one that I’ve always hesitated to throw out the praise-and-worship baby with the largely-at-least-borderline-heretical-source-church bath water. Yes, some praise-and-worship songs have bad theology, but so do some hymns. Yes, some praise-and-worship songs are shallow, but so are some hymns. In the big picture, I do not think either is the essential difference between the two genres.
After much mulling, and some spreadsheet data analysis (I can never help myself), I’ve decided that the real difference between a hymn (classic or modern) and a praise-and-worship song is twofold: the number of unique words per minute on one hand, and the artistry of the lyrics on the other.
Praise-and-worship songs are longer than modern hymns and definitely longer than classic ones. The length, of course, comes from the repetition of lyrics. The use of many, many words, most of them recycled, means that, compared to classic and modern hymns, praise-and-worship songs have a much lower number of unique words per minute. There are no surprises here.
Many Christians in the hymn camp treat this repetition as a real deficiency of the praise and worship genre. I’m not so sure, though I do think there is a danger. When considering my experience (especially “behind the scenes” experience) with praise-and-worship music, it’s pretty evident, and sometimes even candidly stated, that the repetition in songs is meant to produce an emotional effect. The music is “the wings on which our affections toward God fly.” The repetition helps us to “circle a truth until we feel properly about it.” I’m not here to cast judgment, necessarily, but it’s good to call a spade a spade: praise and worship has a direct interest in emotional experience that classic and modern hymns simply don’t.
There is, of course, a danger when the worship becomes about having an ecstatic experience, absent of thought and ultimately able to affect the senses but not the heart.1 Plenty of those who engage with praise and worship, though, are not interested in an ecstatic emotional high, but in an emotional encounter with Christ and, in my experience, do not mistake the two.
And certainly, these songs do not have to be performed in an ecstatic way. There may be more repetition in them than in most hymns (let’s not pretend some hymns don’t have quite a bit of repetition), but genuine believers can sing the third bridge and the seventh chorus sincerely. More power to them, I say. Everyone should be careful that they are authentically worshiping God as He really is (in spirit and in truth2), but we ought to be slow to throw stones at brothers and sisters next door for their musical preference.
So much for the repetition question. Interestingly, repetition does not account entirely for the low number of unique words per minute in a praise-and-worship song. Even when taking out all of the repetitions, praise-and-worship songs still have a lower unique-word-to-total-word ratio. In other words, praise-and-worship song writers tend to have a smaller lyrical vocabulary than hymn writers. This is a tip-off to the other difference between praise-and-worship songs and hymns.
If you were to read the lyrics of a hymn and then a praise-and-worship song, it would be immediately obvious that there was something different at work in each. Consider, for example, the second verse of my favorite hymn:
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.Even if you changed the language to be less archaic, compare that to the first verse of “Reckless Love”:
Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me
You have been so, so good to me
Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me
You have been so, so kind to me
The difference, in essence, between these two excerpts is that the first is much more poetic and the second is much more conversational. This is probably the biggest difference between praise and worship and hymnody in my mind. The praise and worship genre is modern, popular, and conversational. The hymn genre is devoted to a poetic lyrical quality.
The difference in effect here is probably greater than we realize. As an old grammar catechism says, “Poetry is the art of expressing thoughts in cadence, repetition, rhyme, imagery, and figurative language, so that the truths which are communicated might be indelibly engraven on the heart of the hearer.” When we sing rich truths in poetic form, those truths are implanted in our hearts. These poems are not set on conjuring up emotion, except as a byproduct; they richly express the inexpressible because they are not limited by the bounds of prosaic conversation. In a song, poetry can do what prose never could.
There is value in repeatedly reminding yourself,
Jireh, You are enough
Forever enough, always enough
More than enough.
But it is different to get at the same truth by saying,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand hast provided;
Great is thy faithfulness,
Lord unto me.
Because of this difference, I suspect that after a year, someone engaging with only hymns would have access to deeper, richer truths than someone listening to only praise and worship. Lord willing, the songs would be a way to meditate on those truths and for those truths to become really precious to them.
On the other hand, someone engaging with only praise and worship for a year may well experience the fruit of having sung to God conversationally, from the heart, for all that time. A song may come to mind and mouth much more readily in an everyday moment because it is so “everyday” in language. There is true value there.
And each has its pitfalls. Those who favor hymns should be careful to maintain an authentic relationship with God. Many a hymn-singer has drawn near with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. Those who favor praise and worship should be careful to maintain a rich theology. Many a modern worshiper has supplanted rich truth about God and found themselves believing in a God created in their own image. Nobody is immune to the push and pull of the world, sin, and self. Regardless of our bent, let us consistently orient ourselves to the true north of worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
Everyone will have their own preference, of course (I personally find myself preferring hymns and modern hymns for corporate worship and a mix of hymns and praise-and-worship songs for personal adoration), but it is good to remember that the mature Christian is easily edified. Perhaps, in your mind, the truth of God’s sufficiency is more beautifully and precisely conveyed in “Great is Thy Faithfulness” than in “Jireh,” but truth is in both. Perhaps “Come Thou Fount” is a little less emotionally stirring for you than “Reckless Love,” but either can genuinely increase a Christian’s affections toward God. We all come from different backgrounds and prioritize different things. Let us insist on accuracy but allow each other to worship the true and living God from the heart. We may be those who “sing a new song” to the Lord every day, or we may join the endless angelic praise of the Creator epitomized in the repetition of the single word, “Holy.” However God has wired us, let us worship Him intentionally, perhaps learn to see the value in true and spiritual worship of any kind, and not fail to love each other in the process.
Videre Recte 
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