Shelburne: The challenge of songs we don’t know

Back during the second Covid spike, in a single week ten percent of my small congregation tested positive. Our only wise alternative was to cancel our studies and worship services until our flock recovered.

That first Sunday we streamed our abbreviated private service. We worshiped virtually (which, in the modern sense of the word means we did it digitally, but in the truer, older meaning of “virtual” it means we almost did it).

Instead of tuning in to our online service, however, I elected that morning to do what I usually do when I’m traveling a long way from home. It blesses me to visit around and see how other folks are doing it. So that Sunday I tuned into the televised worship of one of the larger churches in our city and listened to the sermon of my favorite pastor.

As it always does, that hour blessed me. But I couldn’t keep from noticing that most of their hymns that morning were new, unfamiliar songs. As the camera panned the worshipers, it appeared that less than five percent of their senior citizens were singing. It troubled me to see so many of them just listening passively instead of participating in the praise. Of course, they couldn’t sing songs they didn’t know.

But right when I was mulling over that observation, their excellent music minister shifted gears and led “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” And this time when the camera focused on the worshipers, I was dismayed to see that almost none of the twenty or thirty-year-old generation were singing. Why? Because they grew up in an era when kids are not taught Christmas carols in first and second grade (the way I was). Unless today’s students are later active in choir, this precious part of our Christian culture is lost for them.

Of course, it’s not just the carols that our modern kids are missing. My second and third-grade teachers began every morning with a Bible verse and a one-line prayer. Every Monday morning they asked us to raise our hands if we had gone to Bible study or church the day before. Any public school teacher who did that today would get fired.

In what used to be a Christian nation, the land we now live in has in so many ways become at best non-Christian, and far too often anti-Christian. What can we do to fix that?