kickin' it old school

Our church is a large, non-denominational church that my husband and I are still getting to know and love. One of the things that I have always loved about church and church services is the worship service: being able to stand before my savior and sing as if he and I were the only two in the room. This is a side-note, but one of the things I clearly remember about the day I got saved (I was nine, at church camp) is understanding what I was hearing about Jesus' sacrifice for me for the first time, and closing my eyes and singing my heart out in thanks when it came time for the song service. I still love that to this day, and that's why (several years ago now) I was once one of the song leaders in a worship band at my old church. But that's another story.

The church Al and I are attending now is fairly large, and still fairly new to us. They have a unique setup (at least, of the churches I've attended) in that they have several worship bands that alternate leading the singing each week. Their song repertoire is so huge that I'm just beginning to recognize some of the songs, and still don't know the majority of them--even after attending since last spring. It's a bit of a bummer to me since I really, really enjoy being able to enter into worship through song, but I'm doing my best to learn them. One of the things that they don't do very often is sing the old-school hymns; when they do, they tend to sing them at a faster pace and even add choruses or verses that weren't there before. That was the case Saturday night.

On Saturday, it was Youth Night, so the youth group were the greeters, bulletin-passer-outers, and worship leaders. There was a small choir of them singing along with a band, and we sang a hymn in which the first two verses were just a bit faster, but the same as the original, and then the song changed completely: a chorus was added and two or three new verses were substituted in place of the original ones. It hit me that most of those kids (junior high and high school age) probably didn't even realize it was an old hymn or that it had been changed at all. I attended a church in which we sung hymns exclusively until I was thirteen, but these kids have grown up in an era where full bands (as opposed to an organ or piano) and the songs they hear on Christian radio are the norm in church. And--revelation!--this is the type of church that my kids will grow up in, the type of worship songs that my kids will know as the norm.

It was a bittersweet thought to me. I love the type of worship in my church, but there's something about those old hymns that is very special to me. Maybe it's because my mom and grandmother loved them. I know they weren't always old--in fact, many of them were put to tunes that were the secular songs and music of their day, just like some of ours--but I don't want them to become obsolete. I want my kids to know the old hymns, and the old tunes. So now I've got to be on the lookout for a kid-friendly cd or song collection that contains the hymn classics. That, or sing them myself, which I'm sure I would love but would get old (and potentially embarrasing) for my children. I've got a few gospel cds, but something made just for kids would be perfect. So if anyone out there knows of anything like this, I'm up for suggestions!