What Are Hymns and Why Do We Need them?

In times of chaos and uncertainty, there always seems to be a return to hymns, so it is not surprising that so many artists, both gospel and secular, have recently released recording projects of hymns.

A hymn is not just an “old song” we used to sing.  In fact, there are many new hymns being written and whole hymn movements of new writers rising up, not only in the U.S. but in the U.K. and Scandinavia.   Then what is a hymn, and why do we need them?

First of all, a hymn is meant to be sung corporately.  When we gather with other Believers, we sing together praise to God or remind each other just who this God is that we serve. In general, we could think of hymns as those songs of praise and worship we send up to God identifying for all to hear His attributes and thanking Him for His amazing intervention in our world and in our lives.  We sing of the incarnation: God who was before anything existed, the Cause and Source of all things, God of grandeur, power and infinite glory chose to become one of us and to walk with us – Immanuel!  Hymns are God-centered and call our attention upward.  They are lofty in message and lift us above the earthy.  They remind us of our original glory that preceded any “original sin” and remind us of God’s intention to see that glory restored in us.  The exchange in hymns, then, is vertical – connecting us to God and seeking to hear His voice speaking to our hearts in return.

Hymns are firmly rooted in God’s Word and, since they are intended to be sung corporately by the fellowship of believers, pull us above our petty differences by reminding us of God’s dream for us – that we would be one.  

Because hymns are intended to reflect the qualities of God, they must have poetry that is beautiful, reverent, simple, accurate, and pure.  The theme of a hymn should be focused and at the same time universal and not sectarian in its truth, drawing together and then upward all the divergent believers to oneness in Him.

There is no more distilled form of writing than the song lyric, and there is no more condensed form of lyric writing that hymn writing.  The thought must be scripturally sound, purely true and without embellishment.  This requires that every word count – every verb, every noun, every conjunction, every adverb or adjective accurate – the perfect choice to convey true meaning so that there is no misunderstanding.  Every skill of the poet’s art must be called into play in hymn writing so that the clarity and beauty, creativity and purity reflect the Maker Himself in its expression. The music, too, must be harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically singable so that congregations can sing it together.

It is equally imperative that the singer or recording artist not take liberties with the words of a hymn. It is not acceptable to embellish or be careless by changing an “at” to “in” or “Father” to fathers or an “and” to a “but”.  Such changes can totally change the meaning and the theology and violate the integrity of the scripture from which the hymn was taken.

Yes, many of the great hymns have been sung literally for centuries, but we do not sing hymns because they are old; we sing them because they are so true that they have survived all the fads of language, rhythm feels, and musical trends.  If new hymns live, it will be for the same reason.

No wonder, then, that when times are confusing or the world is in upheaval, we find ourselves needing songs that nail to the wall the deep cardinal truths of our faith and the always available and ever dependable qualities of God.  When we cannot sing them as a congregation, we sing them to ourselves to help us remember that the Body of Christ is always at the table and the great cloud of witnesses are always present to encourage, love and support.  When we sing hymns alone, we refocus on the ways this great God has delivered us before; this focus turns our anxieties to praise and our questions to certainties.  

I love the promise found in Revelation (12:11) that we would overcome the obstacles of any age “by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony.”  This explains the power we find in hymns—those songs that extol and express praise for the qualities of God and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.  Let’s sing our hearts out in great hymn confirmations of truths that transcend the shifting winds of public opinion and trends of the times. 

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

See You at the House

If you were to ask me about the passing of Gary McSpadden, I could give you some printable facts.  He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and spent his last days at the Tulsa Cancer Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Before the actual specific kind of cancer could be pinpointed, a series of strokes prevented the treatment for the cancer from ever beginning.  He died on April 15, 2020. 

I could tell you he was born on January 26, 1943, to Helen and Boyd McSpadden and grew up as a “preacher’s kid” in Lubbock, Texas, himself eventually becoming a pastor. He married Carol Cornett from Dallas, Texas, at the Quartet Convention on October 14, 1962, with the ceremony performed by Hovie Lister.   I could tell you that he and Carol had two children, Shawn and Michelle, whom Gary adored, and that he currently pastored with Carol the Faith and Wisdom Church in Branson, Missouri. But the Gary Bill and I knew, the husband Carol walked beside for 57 years, the dad their children loved, well, that Gary eludes the items in an obituary.

Growing up literally in church, as we pastors’ kids know, brings some great advantages, like being exposed to the Gospel from our first breath.  The great hymns and gospel songs were our lullabies; our first memories were the moments when the breathing community around us was corporately moved by the breath of the Holy Spirit.  But there were a few disadvantages.  The expectations we felt made big demands on us, sometimes before we had the maturity to live up to them.

Gary with the Statesman

Gary grew up in a singing family, so singing was like breathing to him and his sister Cheryl.  They were also beautiful children that got attention by just walking into the room.  Ready or not, at 18 years old, Gary got a call from one of the best known groups ever to sing gospel music, the Statesmen Quartet, to fill in for the iconic lead singer Jake Hess.  That early exposure got the attention of another group, the Oak Ridge Quartet, with whom Gary then made three label albums.

Fast on the heels of that mind-boggling success came the call that Jake Hess was forming a new group that would be called the Imperials.  This was the first group in gospel music that got my attention.  The harmonies, the rhythm feels, the songs they chose were fresh and new.  The sound was professional and polished.

Gary with the new Imperials

The Imperials on stage

Gary with the Imperials

Gary with the Oak Ridge Boys

About this time, Bill had drafted me to sing with him and his brother Danny when their sister went to college.  I wasn’t a professional singer by any means—just a kid who had grown up in church singing a bit, as most PKs do, but much more comfortable writing and speaking.  But Bill insisted he could “make it work”, so for ten years, we sang as the Gaither Trio.  When Danny left the Trio, it was Gary who came to sing with us.  He was like the brother I never had.  He was kind, protective, and always gracious about my insecurity as a singer.

Trio live

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Bill Gaither Trio

Trio singing for Rex Humbard Easter special in Israel

Press conference about Israel preformances in Israel that Polly Grimes (on right) promoted.

Rehearsing with Amy in Gary's lap

Rehearsing fro concert and musical “He Started the Whole World Singing” in Jerusalem.

Crowd shot Trio at Praise Gathering

Beautiful Carol became like a sister to me, too, and the four of us traveled every week-end for another ten years.  Bill’s dad had retired by then, and he and Carol handled our product on the road.  How George loved Carol!  Our children and the McSpadden kids were together often and formed easy relationships that last to this day.

Our families around the picnic table at the gazebo

It was the gentle spirit and the kindness of Gary and Carol that so often kept me going when we had three kids in their pre-teen years of our own.  When the Trio gradually moved from auditoriums to arena-sized venues, we added four back-up singers and some brass to our stage.  Bill had always loved the male quartet sound; one night during intermission Bill and Gary and the two men from the vocal group, Steve Green and Lee Young, gathered around a backstage piano and started singing Stuart Hamblen’s great song “My First Day in Heaven”.  Bill said, “Let’s try this on the second half!”

The first Vocal Band with Lee Young and Steve Green

VB with Larnelle and John Moore

VB with Larnelle and Michael English

Gaither Vocal Band induction in to the Hall of Fame

The people loved it, and the four of them had a ball singing it.  The song and the 4-part harmony feature stayed, gradually adding another song or two.  What came to be known as the Gaither Vocal Band was born, with Gary as the original lead.

Years and experiences have bound Gary and Carol and their family to our family in a beautiful long-term relationship.  When I asked their son Shawn to describe his dad in one quality, he said, “Consistent.  Consistent in faith, consistent in love, consistent in guidance.  My whole life he was a consistent father.” 

I couldn’t agree more.  For Bill and me, Gary was a consistent friend.  Just a few weeks ago Bill and Gary were planning the upcoming Vocal Band Reunion that was to have taken place at the Maybe Center in Tulsa; they were discussing what songs might feature Gary on that night. 

“Let’s go in early and just you and I and Gloria and Carol go get some Mexican food before rehearsal,” Bill had suggested.

“Great plan!  We’d love to!” was one of the last things Gary ever said to Bill until we talked by phone to him at the Cancer Center at the end. But there isn’t an end to the conversation, is there?  It’s just, as Bob Benson used to say, “See you at the House!”

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below:

The "New" Kitchen

We built our house when we were still teaching school nearly fifty-three years ago.  Over the years it has morphed to suit our growing family and the changes in our lives.   The garage became half warehouse, half office before we turned it into a family room.  The original family room is now our bedroom to which we added (after we got our kids through college) a bathroom with two large closets.  Our great “farm kitchen” was the most invasive remodeling of the house’s history; we actually tore open the back side of the house and built on a two-story addition: a kitchen below and a “playroom” above. 

It all started the day a builder friend of ours stopped by with a giant wooden pulley wheel he had rescued from the demolition of the old tomato-canning factory.  This factory was eventually to become the nationally known family-owned Red Gold tomato products company that now takes up a huge part of a square mile in our county. 

“Got any use for this?” Grady Porter said when I followed him out to his pick-up truck parked in our driveway.  It was beautiful to my eyes – a primitive antique that had been used to lower the apparatus that mashed the juice from the tomatoes in the giant vat.

Bill had already mentioned to me that our kitchen/dining area had become a bottle neck in our house, but I had insisted that it was adequate.  The giant wooden wheel now jarred my imagination.  About this same time our town had begun replacing with concrete (sadly, not restoring) the Star-of-David ceramic brick sidewalks, because over the years tree roots had made many places uneven for walking.  These gorgeous, glazed bricks were stacked around town in piles and offered to anyone who would haul them away.  We could hardly believe this, because these brick sidewalks had been in place over a hundred years and had such a rich history.

Then, too, was the “ridding out” of the old millstones when the mill was torn down.  From that demolition our builder friend Grady had rescued several millstones and the giant weathered wooden mill sign.  (This now hangs in Studio A of our recording studio)

All this rescuing of our town’s history resulted in our deciding this might be a good time to build the kitchen of which we’d always dreamed.

“If we’re going to do this, I told Bill over coffee one morning, let’s think of everything we’ll wish we had done if we look back on it.”  That began our list of what we wanted to include to make this truly the “heart” of our home.  Bill wanted a fireplace in the kitchen for cold Indiana winter mornings.  You know how he loves to build fires!  I wanted a window seat for reading and a real built-in daybed for sick or tired children (who never want to be far away in upstairs bedrooms when mom’s in the kitchen) and for unexpected guests who worked late at the studio and needed a place to literally fall into bed.

Our other kitchen lacked a pantry, and we both wanted a big kitchen table and a workspace large enough to serve as both a food preparation space and serving board for buffets when we had a house full of people.

The giant pulley wheel, we thought, would hold copper utensils over the serving island; the bricks would be the industrial flooring.  The millstones would be the walkway into the kitchen under a grape arbor we would build and plant so that in August our kids would have the memory of “eating their way to the door” from the vines heavy with purple harvest.

Two other elements surprised us as we planned.  Coming home one Saturday night from a concert, we saw the sky orange from a huge fire.  It turned out to be the old school (then  a junior high building) where Bill went to high school.  We drove to Bill’s Aunt Lilie’s house which was a block from the school to check on her (she was then in her eighties).  She was up and had coffee on in case anyone came by at 3:00 a.m!  Together we watched as most of the inside of the brick structure was destroyed by the fire.  The rest of the building was eventually declared a hazard and the bricks were torn down, too. Because this building had played an important role in Bill’s life, we were able to salvage enough of the bricks to build our kitchen fireplace.

The thick white ash beams from a very old barn on a farm near the place where Bill grew up was also disassembled, and these we used for the ceiling beams of our new kitchen.  We were careful to save the hand made wooden pegs and blacksmith forged iron spike nails used in the barn’s original construction. Many of the best pieces of barn wood siding we used on the lower walls of our kitchen to complete the feeling of warmth and history.

By this kitchen fire we have raised our children, supervised homework, solved problems, tucked in cousins, rocked our grand-babies, dried out soggy snowsuits, celebrated special occasions, and spent hundreds of regular days.  It truly has been the “heart” of our home.

The window seat has served as a “changing table” for seven grandbabies and the daybed is still “fought over” when those grandchildren come home for a sleep-over.  I’ve worn out two stovetops and a couple of ovens.  We’ve served hundreds of meals to friends from all over the country and around the world.

And when Bill gets home from this weekend of concerts, I will put on a huge pot of soup, make a green salad, and warm some bread.  Bill will bring in his little brown suitcase and build a fire.  I’ll light the candles under the “curly stairs” and on the mantle; I’ll set the table and play some soft music. We will exhale the stresses of the road, and inhale peace.  Home again!

To share this post with others on Facebook, click below: