by Steve Badger
The large, laughing woman hugged me as she said, "Paul! It's so good to see you. You look just like your father! Come on in, dinner's almost ready." I had no chance to answer as I stepped into the house to a chorus of grinning greetings and hugs from my uncle and three nephews.
My "Thanks, Aunt Felicity," was followed by "Hi" to each of the others. I had not seen any of my relatives on my father's side of the family in years. When I was a toddler they had moved far away to another state, and we had not kept in close touch. A card at Christmas was about it. I had eagerly anticipated this brief visit to their home.
Aunt Felicity and Uncle Christopher had three boys aged 12, 7, and 3. I had seen only pictures of the boys, so introductions were required. Just after I had given each of them a small gift, Aunt Felicity called, "Come and get it." I approached the bowl-laden table with a zeal created by hunger. We held hands and bowed while Uncle Christopher intoned, "For what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful." The clan chorused "Amen" in unison, and the boys quickly started eating.
I noticed that someone—Aunt Felicity?—had already put food on every plate. But the servings were ridiculously small. Lest you think me guilty of hyperbole, let me describe the servings. The piece of meat was the size of a fifty-cent piece—honest. Each of the children had a potato on his plate, but the potato was no bigger than a grape. Three or four black-eyed peas, a piece of raw carrot the size of a pencil fragment, and a big glass of root beer completed the meal. And everyone had been apportioned the same rations—including me.
Less than thirty seconds after their "Amen," each of them had cleaned his plate and was ready for dessert. Only then did I notice that the dishes and bowls on the table did not hold the rest of the meat and vegetables. Rather they were full of the richest desserts imaginable: coconut cream pie, German chocolate cake, blueberry cheese cake, pecan pie, banana pudding, fudge brownies, ice cream, and strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. Now plates were filled as everyone took a generous serving of each of these delights.
"Help yourself, Paul," Uncle Christopher said—and demonstrated how to do it. I noticed that this dietary imbalance was not due to supply: the stove was full of the meat, potatoes, and black-eyed peas which we had barely tasted as an appetizer. But since I was a guest, I held my tongue and said nothing. I thought perhaps they were eating this way in my honor.
When the meal was over, I stood and searched for a compliment, and I didn’t have to lie. "That was all very delicious!" I told my aunt.
"Thank you, Paul," she said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."
Uncle Christopher and the boys headed for living room. "Lots of times," the oldest boy told me, "we don't even fool with meat and vegetables. We just eat the good stuff!" The other boys grinned and chorused approval as they remembered those wonderful meals.
I returned to help Aunt Felicity clean the kitchen. During the course of our conversation she commented to me that her boys did not enjoy good health, and all of them needed dental work. I worked up my courage to gently ask, "Do you suppose they would be healthier if they had a more balanced diet? And perhaps all those sweets promote tooth decay."
Her smile was condescending, "Why Paul, my boys get a well-balanced diet. Didn't you see the meat and vegetables they had for supper?"
"Yes. But perhaps the servings could have been larger, Aunt Felicity."
"Oh, nonsense. It’s the quality, not the quantity,” she dismissed my suggestion. “Besides, the boys eat more when I give them what they want."
Argument seemed futile, so I waited a few minutes and then took another approach. "How are the boys doing in school?" I asked.
"Not too good," my aunt replied. "None of the boys are really dumb, but they aren't what you call real smart either. We never have been able to figure it out."
I silently debated with myself whether I should tell her that young children with too little protein in their diet often fail to develop their full intellectual potential—no matter how much food they eat. But I was certain that she would ignore that as she had ignored my other comment, so again I kept silent.
Here was a family that “ate their fill” every meal but was malnourished. They suffered because those who should have known better, who should have insisted that they eat properly, did not demand a well-balanced meal. And my attempt to help them see the source of their problems was to no avail.
Does this story seem a little farfetched? Just in case someone didn't recognize the intended analogy, I'll spell it out. To what can I liken the church's approach to congregational worship today? And how can I describe our use of music in corporate worship? More specifically, how do we use hymns and choruses?
Many worship leaders feed their congregations a diet of choruses. (Perhaps many worship leaders do not use them as a part of the worship because they do not know how. But they can learn how!) If a hymn is used at all, it isn't really part of the worship but is just “stuck on” like a useless appendage. A typical twenty minute period of worship in music includes a single hymn, and often one or more of the verses are omitted. Alas, many leaders are feeding worshippers only the desserts (choruses). If any meat and potatoes (hymns) are included, it's just a tiny serving to appease those who would complain if they were completely discarded.
Many—perhaps most—of the choruses are good and appropriate to worship. But the hymns are important, too, because they feed our minds with vital doctrines in a way that few if any choruses do.
Generally, the choruses feed our emotions; the hymns feed our minds. And both are needed to provide the body with a “well-balanced diet.”
You might suppose, “We don’t sing hymns more often because we don’t know them.” More correctly, “We don’t know the hymns because we don’t sing them often enough.”
Now, you also might think that this is merely a matter of personal preference, that it doesn’t really make any difference whether a congregation sings hymns or choruses almost exclusively. If so, you are like Uncle Christopher and Aunt Felicity: you think health is unrelated to diet.
Too many of our church members are spiritually malnourished. They go to church regularly, but they are not growing in the faith the way they should. Certainly many things contribute to this problem, but part of it could be the fact that hymns are used less and less in corporate worship—and when they are used, only part of the hymn is used. Why is it that we don't have time to sing all four or five verses of a hymn, but there's always time to sing a chorus over and over and over?
Here is my radical proposal: Let’s include two or three hymns in every worship service. Let’s sing all of the verses (unless a particular verse is problematic). Let’s dedicate at least half of the time we worship in song to hymns. Let’s change our diet of all dessert and little meat and potatoes to a balance that will both help mature the saints and allow us to worship God.
I love to sing choruses, and in no way am I arguing that we should quit using them. But the hymns feed our faith in a way that the most of the choruses do not. And using them in worship more might help reduce the population of stuffed but malnourished Christians.
Steve Badger, October 1994
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