Hymns vs Choruses

I am trying to decide if I am a hymn person or a chorus person. By chorus I guess I mean "modern song" but I admit even the word "chorus" is representative of the past these days.

Not that I suppose I have to be one or the other, but it is a dilemma for every church and to help solve these sticky situations you must first decide where you stand on the issue yourself.

Here are the issues as I see them:  

• Generally speaking, we all agree that hymns offer the best theology and choruses (ie modern songs) offer the best music. Many have tried to combine the two with varying degrees of success, but there are really only a handful of popular modern songs whose lyrics survive close scrutiny.
• Both hymns and choruses can go on too long. Some of those old hymns go on for pages & pages. Today we simply sing the same few lines over & over. Both scenarios can be hard to take.
• Some modern songs have good theology while some hymns do not.
• Some modern songs are "Jesus my boyfriend" songs.
• Some old hymns are durges.
• To attract people to church we will mostly try to find good modern songs. We have stopped believing new christians will be attracted by the old hymns.
• Many people on our music teams don't even know the classic hymns & therefore are not comfortable playing them. This is especially true in music teams which are guitar based or where a church cannot find a piano player.
• Some old and new songs hit the mark beautifully. Take Fanny Crosby's To God be the Glory as an example. Good tune and great theology. "So loved He the world that he gave us his Son" is straight out of John 3:16. Then comes "Who yielded His life an atonement for sin". Doesn't get any better than that, but today we can't use big words like "atonement" because not enough people know what it means. And then there is the origianl problem; it sounds like a hymn. Today's mega music churches won't sing To God be the Glory unless they can find a way of reworking it into a modern sounding "worship" song.
• Keith Getty's In Christ Alone is a modern song I quite like. "In Christ alone, Who took on flesh, Fullness of God in helpless babe!" This one deals with everything from the incarnation, to love, sin, resurrection, the blood of Christ and the second coming. And the tune is a winner. The oldies like this one too, however I suspect even this song is not trendy enough for some of the mega churches.

So what is my conclusion? I'd have to say I'm about 60% hymn - 40% chorus. I was brought up on hymns and so many of them are special to me. And I like many of the old tunes so they do it for me OK. Many of them need to be dropped from the church rotation, but there are so many to choose from I don't miss the dodgy ones when they're gone.

However, it is exciting to find a new song that fits the bill. It feels like we're being "progressive" and "modern" when we introduce them, even though hip hop is probably what is genuinely "contemporary" these days.

When it's all said & done, music is a subjective thing, don't you think? Could I possibly ever sing a hip hop version of To God be the Glory? I doubt it, but that may be the chasm I have to jump one day.