Friday, September 21, 2007

Teaching Hymns


Our church has a blended service that’s light on hymns and heavy on rockin’ praise and worship. We love it! But I don’t want my kids to miss out on the richness of hymns either. I know a lot of people in similar circumstances complain because their kids are not learning hymns in church. Well, I have a novel alternative—I teach the kids hymns myself. Billy and I believe that we are to be the primary spiritual instructors for our children, and church should merely reinforce that. We love our praise and worship time at church, and we love our time of learning hymns at home!


You don’t have to be a great musician to sing hymns together. We just sing a capella. Little ones honestly do not care what you sound like, but the wonderful words are getting into their hearts and souls, and their little ears easily pick up the simple measured tune and rhythm. I’ve found that small children really love hymns, whether they have been previously exposed to them or not. If you don’t know hymns yourself, I’d encourage you to get a CD of classic hymns to play in your home. They are soothing, peaceful, and rich with the doctrines of Christianity.

3 comments:

Donetta said...

I love old hymns also. i used to stay up at night and sing them reading them out of some antique hymnals I have.

Anonymous said...

I, too LOVE the rockin' music. But feel the hymns are very important.
Praise/Worship is music you sing to God. (relational) Hymns are songs that we sing about Him. Interesting, isn't it!?

Anonymous said...

We too love hymns. I used to be all about the "rockin' music" however we really have switched to the hymns. Don't get me wrong. The kids and I groove to some pumping cd's or my piano playing and at church we do some newer songs however I have found that for me when we did the "praise/worship" or "rockin" my focus tended to be taken off of what it was supposed to be and it would be "man, didn't so and so rock on the drums?" My 1 and 2 yr old love grabbing the hymnals in the evening and sitting down on the couch with us and we sing.