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Baptist Church Bringing the Canon of Holy Hymnal Into Question By Singing a New Song



Kendallville, IN

A local church has a group of young people experimenting with "new things", and it has caused somewhat of a stir within the church at first.  They are looking to embrace, or create new songs that are not found within the church's sacred Hymnal texts.

"It started as we were reading through some Psalms in one of our weekly Bible studies.  We were reading where it is written to 'sing a new song'.  It got us thinking if it were possible, just maybe there were some hymns we had never sung out of the hymnal in church before.  You know, a new song.  I was really hoping to find a couple pages stuck together or something, and so we all looked.  It was quite exciting at first, but as it turns out all of the songs had been very well covered, and there was therefore no new songs to sing.  It was then that we found ourselves in the proverbial spot of between a rock and a hard place.  It felt like we could either obey Scripture, or the Hymnal, but not both.  We don't feel that way now, but there was a time when we lacked clarity on the issue.  We felt the need obey Scripture from the sense to at least identify in the pursuit of the Psalmist who found himself looking for new songs to sing.  We thought that maybe the hymns are those new songs, which were at that time unsung.  On the other hand, were there actually other new songs yet to be sung, outside of the Hymnal.  That is the question, really.  We didn't want to bring the canonization of the Hymnal into question, but we really felt strongly that there were still other new songs to sing."

Arthur Dougen of All Saints Baptist, explains how a small group of conscientious renegades within the church began their journey into the unknown--outside the hymnal--to find a new song.  Arthur and eight others, are all young men in the church ranging from 43-50 years old.  Their recent vigor has some of the older members feeling uneasy, though they are working through it together. So far the conclusion has been that the canon of the Holy Hymnal will remain the guide for church service, but as long as any new song does not contradict said Holy Hymnal, they can be sung outside of the corporate gatherings on Sunday morning and that no disciplinary actions from the church will be needed.

"We really felt this was a great compromise", said Winston Guthrie, one of the "new-songists", as they are called.  "So far all we have come up with is basically mixing a couple existing hymns together, but it honestly isn't going that great so far.  None of us are really that musically gifted, but we try, and God sees our heart.  I'm sure in another year we will have at least a couple new ones in the books.  I mean, wait.  You know I didn't mean the hymnal books, I was speaking figuratively.  We do not mean to add in any way the the texts of the Holy Hymnal itself."

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