From Oak Cliff to Richardson, the worship-style debate rages: contemporary praise music with lyrics on LED screens versus classic hymnals in the pew rack. Which approach actually forms deeper disciples, and which one is just chasing a crowd?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentTo every Dallas church leader reading this: I challenge you to try one full month of hymnal-only worship at all services and actually survey your congregation afterward — especially the under-30s. Not what you assume they'll say. What they actually say. I'd genuinely love to see that data because I think a lot of pastors are making assumptions about young people that young people themselves have never confirmed.
Born and raised at Lovers Lane UMC and I will die on this hill: there is something that happens when a whole congregation holds the same book and sings together from the same page. You feel the weight of it. Literally. The hymnal in your hands connects you to every person who held that same book before you. No LED screen gives you that. I'm not anti-technology, I just think we traded something irreplaceable for convenience and called it progress.
I actually asked my 16-year-old nephew about this last Sunday after we visited my old home church in Oak Cliff. You know what he said? He said the hymns felt more real because the words actually meant something hard and specific, not just vague feelings repeated four times. A 16-year-old said that. Maybe we're underestimating young people by assuming they need flashing screens and a fog machine to show up.
That is completely false and I really hope nobody actually looks it up and takes it seriously. The BGCT does no such thing. Please stop spreading misinformation about church governance in a forum where people might actually believe you.
lol at the idea that hymnals are somehow more holy. people were complaining about Isaac Watts ruining worship music back in the 1700s. every generation thinks the music they grew up with is the sacred standard. it isn't.
Moved here from Portland two years ago and started attending a church in Uptown and honestly? The screens don't bother me at all. What bothers me is when the band is so loud I can't hear the person next to me singing. That's not worship, that's a concert with religious lyrics. Doesn't matter if it's on a screen or in a book if nobody can actually participate.
Went to Watermark for about three years. Great church, love the people, the teaching is solid. But I'll be honest — I could not tell you a single chorus I sang there. Not one. I can still sing every verse of "It Is Well" from memory because I learned it from a hymnal at my grandmama's church in Garland when I was seven years old. Formation is formation. Depth matters.
Fun fact: the Baptist General Convention of Texas REQUIRES all member churches to use hymnals during at least two services per month. Look it up before you argue with me.
ok but can we talk about the churches in richardson that literally have both and somehow manage to do neither well. like halfhearted contemporary songs on a screen AND a dusty hymnal in the pew that nobody touches. pick a lane yall
Should Christians pray to saints — or is asking Mary and the dead for help straight-up idolatry?
56 comments
Did Christianity give birth to modern science — or did the church spend centuries trying to strangle it in the cradle?
56 comments
Does God choose who gets saved, or do you choose God — and is Calvinism secretly making God into a monster?
55 comments
Do humans have an immortal soul — or did the church steal that idea from Plato and dress it up as Scripture?
55 comments