The Advantage of Using Hymnals

Worshipping with a hymnal has many advantages over projecting praise songs over a screen.  And those advantages are not just matters of musical “style,” as in preferring traditional songs to contemporary ones.  You can find hymnals that include contemporary and praise songs.  Rather, the advantages are highly practical.

So argues Dominic Pino at National Review, no less, in his article The Hymnal Advantage.  Read it all, but here is a sample:

The hymnal front-loads the difficulty in selecting songs for worship. By selecting a hymnal put together by experts you trust, you don’t have to vet every song before singing it in a church service. Someone already studied the songs and gave them a thumbs-up. They also organized the songs so it’s easy to find one that fits a particular service. By the time the hymnal reaches you, it has been looked over by countless people who are supposed to have the best interests of your church in mind. There’s real security in that. Without a hymnal, that sense of security is lost.