Paul commands the Church to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly when we meet together, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. It seems clear here that style is not the important issue as much as the depth of content.

There's no scientific definition. A hymn... is a song of praise to God. I think there were three real goals with our hymns that made them seem more in line with traditional classical hymn writing than with the modern worship movement and differentiate us slightly...

I think it's of huge importance to us as worship leaders...to ask ourselves these two questions: What were the words we put into our congregation's mouths, minds, and memories? And how well did our congregation sing? Our role is simply to be an accompaniment to them as they sing.

Blue grass was the outgrowth of Irish music. As a matter of fact a lot the tunes, a lot of the melodies and the jigs... have different names but are actually the same tunes.

My background is Protestant so I benefited from the great Bible teaching that was provided there... I did love the more culturally classical things, like Irish music, which I think is some of the most congregational-style music when you think of... 'St. Patrick's Breastplate' (and) 'Danny Boy.' These are traditional Irish melodies. I think being brought up there (Ireland) gave me a sense of melody that is very attuned to congregational singing.

All ages serve and worship the same God, gather under the same gospel and add to the collective song that praises the faithfulness of God as each generation shares in his promises to us.

The message of some churches today seems to be, "Only sing if it appeals to your sense of style, or your demographic." Yet when we look at heaven, we see that every tribe and every nation will sing together.