Did you pick that song just for me?

After our worship service was over on Sunday morning, and the strains of that marvelous hymn, “Victory in Jesus”, faded into the brown walls of our auditorium, a fellow came up to me as I was talking with a couple of the praise band members.  This fellow (I’ll call him “Bill”) is a highly respected member of our church.  And for good reason – Bill is a smart guy, a spiritual guy, a Spiritual guy, a teacher, a leader in our church and in business, and an influencer in our church.  But he said something in jest that, upon reflection, strikes me as being noteworthy.

Bill said, “Did you pick that last song for me?”

He was grinning from ear to ear, and slapped me on the back as he said it.  It was in truth the continuation of a conversation we’d had some weeks earlier, in which he wished aloud that our church would sing more of the old hymns.  Bill’s part of this original conversation consisted of neither some nostalgic pining for the good ol’ days, nor a bitter grudge expressed against newer hymns or songs or choruses.  His was not a selfish attitude, nor an angry expression toward anything contemporary.  It was simply a statement of his heart.  He loves hymns and wished that we would sing them.

I chuckled along with him, grinned back, and said, “Did you like that one?”  And as he walked away toward the back door, I called out, ”If you liked it, then I picked it just for you.”

Actually, I did pick that song just for Bill.  I had him in mind when I looked through our file folder full of music.  Out of the hundreds of songs I could have chosen for the closing song of the service, I chose “Victory In Jesus.”  And I chose it just for him.

I chose it so that he would be able to minister to the Lord.  I chose it so he could minister to his brothers and sisters in Christ who surrounded him that morning.  And I chose it so that we as a congregation could minister to him.

OK, perhaps I’ve overstated the facts.  Maybe I didn’t have precisely Bill in mind – but I did have his demographic in mind.  Is that a bad thing?  I hope not.  As a 36-year old associate minister who grew up in the church as a preacher’s kid, I love the hymns.  I guess in a way, that makes me a sort of dinosaur – some sort of anachronism.  I’m Gen-X, but I’ve got parents who grew up with a modern worldview.  So I like Tom Petty but I also like Tom and Dicky Smothers.  I love a great narrative but I also appreciate solid Christian apologetics.  I love “Power in the Blood”, but I also love “Happy Day” by Tim Hughes and various songs by Leeland.

Of course, I don’t love ALL the hymns.  But then, I don’t love all the songs that they put out on the local Christian radio station either.  There are crummy “new” songs just as surely as there are crummy hymns (“Trading My Sorrows” and “In The Garden” come to mind, respectively).  My former preacher said in a sermon on worship one time, “The great old hymns are great – not because they’re old, but because they’re great.”  As I was reflecting on the sermon later, I thought that it’s also true that “the great new songs are great – not because they’re new, but because they’re great.”

So Bill, I’m glad that you enjoyed singing “Victory in Jesus” on Sunday.  But I hope that you enjoyed singing all the other songs we sang as well, new as well as old.  Because when you worship through singing, it doesn’t really matter how old or new the song is.  There’s far more important things than the age of a song to think about while we’re worshipping.  ‘Course, I know you already knew that.    But remember, I picked THAT song just for you.