What would it mean to write hymns that speak specifically to the concerns, challenges, and temptations of your church? Not the global church or the church in general, mind you, but your own local church? What themes would be most important to those people? What truths might they have trouble believing and what doctrines might they have trouble applying to their lives? What temptations do they face that may not be addressed even in the wealth of Christian hymns that have stood the test of time and speak their precious truths?

These were the kinds of question that came to my mind as I listened to Hymns in Hard Places, the new collection of hymns by 20schemes Music. These were the kinds of question that came to my mind as I stood and worshipped with two local churches in Edinburgh, Scotland, and sang these songs under the leadership of the people they were written by and in fellowship with the people they were written for—churches situated in Scotland’s schemes (i.e. working-class housing estates or projects).
The album begins with a faithful rendition of Psalm 77, then turns to “Come Weary Souls,” a song that encourages those who have sinned to trust in the promise of God’s forgiveness: “There is no more guilt, / There is no more shame / Come like a child, believe and abide / Find rest in the Saviours name.” The next song, “Flee from Sin / Run to Jesus” brings comfort to those who find themselves struggling with old patterns of sin and addiction. “There’s a refuge from every lustful thought / From old habits enticing me away / When I fear my addictions won’t be overcome / There is hope through Christ’s resurrection day.”
The album continues with “We Long for that Day.” In a church context in which many members have experienced abuse and other forms of injustice, this song brings hope grounded in Christ’s return and the coming of final judgment. “God will judge this world so full of evil / and bring each work of darkness into light / on that day His enemies will tremble / When the King returns in glorious might / Finally oppression will be over / Secret acts of cruelty made known / Nowhere left to hide from the abuser / Every deed laid bare before the throne.” “Take Heart” returns to the theme of enduring suffering and sorrowing, “Praise His Name” promises eternal spiritual riches for those living in temporal poverty, while “Trust and Obey” rewrites the famous hymn for those who so often fail to trust and who so continuously struggle to obey: “Come you failures and see / Hopeless rebels set free / Where the Lamb, full submission, displayed / There He paid for our sin / Now His Spirit within / Is our joy as we trust and obey.”
And so it goes through several more hymns. It finishes with a bonus track which, though not meant to be sung congregationally, helpfully grapples with the reality that once we come to Christ, life often gets more difficult. “Why did life get harder, the minute I believed? / Why do I need armour, when You’ve won the victory? / Why does condemnation still weigh heavy on my heart? / I know that I’m forgiven so why is this path I’m on so dark?”
As twenty-first century English-speaking Christians, we are extremely well-resourced when it comes to hymns and have, quite literally, tens of thousands we can draw upon on any given Sunday. Yet it occurs to me that the great majority are written with the global church in mind rather than a very particular local church. They are written to be sung by millions rather than tens or hundreds and often speak to broad truths rather than specific ones. Speaking personally, I find something moving about the very notion of songs written for and sung by people who admit their particular struggles and who need particular encouragement.
It could be that your church finds something to sing in this collection of hymns, or it could be that it inspires your church to write songs that give a voice to their own concerns and difficulties. Either way, I expect you’ll benefit from Hymns in Hard Places. You can give it a listen on whatever music service you prefer.

Like it or not, we live in a world dominated by social media. While many older forms of media continue to exist and to exert their influence, all have in some way had to bow before the ascendancy of new media. It is pervasive, it is ubiquitous, it is addictive, and it is changing everything.

Yet because social media rose with lightning speed and so quickly became nearly omnipresent, we may already have lost sight of the influence it has over us. David Foster Wallace once famously told of two young fish who were swimmingly merrily along when they met an older one. That older fish nodded at them and asked, “How’s the water?” As they swam away, one turned to the other to ask “What’s water?” And in much the same way, social media has become so integral and essential a part of our lives that we may have stopped noticing it. Yet it is so dominant, so powerful, so manipulative, that we need to notice it and to ask how it is changing us, how it is forming us, how it may even be owning us.
Chris Martin’s new book Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media is meant to help us see that the proverbial water we swim in these days is toxic and that it has been made toxic by social media. The goal of the book “is to help you recognize that social media is changing the way you think, feel, and live. Like water to a fish, social media has come to pervade the lives of everyone.” Indeed, it has become very nearly inescapable and unavoidable. Thus his call is not to delete all of our accounts and to try to exist without them. Rather, “I simply want you to recognize that social media is changing how you think and feel about life and largely in negative ways.” Having come to such a recognition, you may wish to delete your accounts or you may wish to simply reorient your relationship with them. Either way, understanding the way social media works will lead to some kind of application in your life.
The book is divided into three parts. The first sets the context by tracing the history of social media (or “the social internet”—Martin’s preferred term), by explaining how it works, and by showing how it came to take so prominent a place in our lives. The second part offers five ways that the social internet shapes us: it causes us to believe that attention assigns value, it causes us to trade our privacy for expression, it causes us to pursue affirmation instead of truth, it causes us to demonize people we dislike, and it causes us to destroy people we demonize. The third part offers a way forward that includes disciplines that exist outside of our phones and computers: studying history, admiring creation, valuing silence, pursuing humility, establishing accountability, and building friendships. It’s a powerful combination that pulls back the curtain on the companies, apps, and algorithms that play so integral a role in our lives. It nicely balances information with calls to action so that we can apply what we’ve learned to live better lives.
I’ll close with the words of the brief endorsement I wrote after reading an early manuscript of this work: Chris Martin has established himself as one of the foremost Christian thinkers when it comes to digital technologies in general, and the social internet in particular. In this book, he demonstrates why it is so important for Christians to think well about these world-changing, heart-shaping, soul-forming technologies. I highly recommend Terms of Service to anyone who wants to better understand how we can take back what they’ve so eagerly taken from us.

Buy from Amazon

Have you ever seen someone get married and you are absolutely certain that it’s not out of love for the other person? Maybe the woman wants access to her husband’s wealth or lifestyle and marriage is the way she can get it. Or maybe the man wants access to his wife’s fame or reputation and marriage is the way to get it. (Or, as often seems to be the case, access to her much younger body.) Either way, there is something grotesque about a marriage that is transactional, a marriage that is founded on getting instead of giving. It cheapens marriage when a spouse doesn’t really want the other person, but simply what the person can do for him or her.

You do not need to be a scholar of the New Testament to know that the Apostle Paul repeated a number of metaphors and illustrations in his explanations of the Christian life and faith. Among his favorites was the picture of a race. Paul understood the Christian to be a kind of athlete and the Christian life to be a kind of competition. It is not the kind of competition in which runners compete against one another to be the sole victor, but the kind in which individuals run together, helping and assisting one another, knowing that all those who cross the finish line are declared winners. These runners do not battle one another, but rather battle the world, the flesh, and the devil, all of which attempt to slow them, hinder them, or cause them to drop out altogether.
Key to this illustration are the goal and the prize. In Philippians 3 Paul explains how he continues to run this race despite serious obstacles. Knowing that he has not yet reached the goal—which is either death or the return of Jesus Christ—and that he can never relax his pace until he has crossed that finish line, he says “I press on toward the goal for the prize.” In a running race that prize is a trophy or medal—or in Paul’s day a wreath or crown. But Paul has something better in mind, something far more precious and motivating. It is something he has written about just a few verses earlier. In verse 8 he says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” In Paul’s mind, the great prize is Jesus Christ!
There are many benefits that will be Paul’s when he reaches his goal and is with Christ. Of course he wants to be relieved of all the burdens of his mind, and the sorrows of his soul, and the pains of his body, and the sins of his heart. All of these factors burden and grieve him and being relieved of them is a wonderful benefit that will come with the end of life on this earth and the beginning of the life to come. Yet if Paul could be relieved of all that, but not have Christ, he would be inconsolable. The prize he longs for is not the benefits of Christ or the gifts of Christ; it’s Christ himself.
And this is where I find myself often needing to pause and think. Is my deepest longing for Christ? Can I honestly say that I long for him? Or do I actually long for the benefits that come with him? I want to have a body that is completely whole again, I want to see my loved ones again, I want to have a soul that will never sin again. Of course I do! But if I could have all this without Christ, would I take it? And as I ponder the glory of wholeness and sinlessness and wonderful reunions, do I ponder the even greater glory of meeting Christ, of knowing Christ, and of being with Christ?
I know I would cheapen my relationship with Aileen if I appreciated the benefits of marriage and the good things she does for me more than I appreciated her. And in the same way, I know I cheapen my relationship with Christ if I long for all the good and glorious benefits that come with being united to him even if I could do without him. And so I ask myself: What is it that I really long for? And I ask you: What is it you really long for? Both of us would do well to look to Paul as a mentor, Paul whose deepest and most ultimately longing was for Christ himself.