Keith Getty

And together they wrote a song that in some ways catalyzed this movement and raised the standard of what a modern song of worship could be, namely a modern hymn.

And this hymn slash song of worship is none other than In Christ Alone, written by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.

And here's Keith back in 2008 on Haven Today, back then describing what he was seeking to do in his hymn writing.

I guess what we really wanted to do with writing modern hymns was two things.

It was an emotional experience which sang well.

And the second thing we tried to do in our songs was write in a sort of what I would call a transgenerational, folk-like, timeless kind of way, so that eight-year-olds and 88-year-olds, people in a rock band and people with a pipe organ, could use the songs in their format and sing them so that they brought people together under the great truths of the faith to actually sing together as one body.

That was a much younger Keith Getty back in 2008 when Charles Morris and I, back then I was in another role at Haven, but together we met Keith and his wife Kristen for the first time.

At that point, I was not on the air and the Gettys also were not widely known.

But tomorrow we'll be going to what I personally see as the hymn that the Lord used like a catalyst to launch what many now call the modern hymn writing movement.

I'm talking about In Christ Alone, written by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.

It's a hymn which, unlike many of the older hymns, the lyrics and music were actually written at the same time.

That's a nuance we don't often think about.

However, they did not want to include the hymn as it stood.

And so they petitioned Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, the composers of that hymn, and they wanted to alter the lyrics of that hymn in the second stanza.

The second stanza reads, Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

And the committee said, mm-mm, let's change it.

Instead, we are in Nashville, Tennessee, literally in the backstage area behind the goings-ons at Sing 2026.

Or as Keith Getty said to me a couple of days ago, Sing at age 10.

A full decade of Sing and what they have accomplished here is truly amazing.

All right.

And I think they both like that.

I think Christian particularly connected with the poetry.

So I got this invitation from Keith to come over to where they were in Coleraine in Northern Ireland and just meet up and say hi and we kind of sound each other

out.

about.

I first heard Keith Getty say this many years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago.

He talked about the different churches that he'd been to that experienced the loudest singing, different context, different theological convictions, but the thing that they shared is they all had a singing pastor.

I had the privilege of growing up in a pastor's home.

And so over the next little while, we're going to look at a whole range of issues which can contribute to nonsense in church life and try to provide some help for us to become more invisible so that people's focus is more sharply on the Lord.

Some years ago, I heard Alistair Begg and Keith Getty in conversation at a seminar, and Keith had been asked to talk about his ministry in writing hymns, and Alistair had been asked to reflect on the joys and sorrows of ministering in one church for a long time.

And Alistair said something that really took me aback.

He told us that the greatest problems that he had had in ministry had been to do with working with musicians.

And my first reaction was that this was just silly banter because he was sitting on the stage with Keith Getty and he was trying to be funny.

Surely out of all the issues he'd faced, this couldn't be the biggest one.

But then I also remembered that I had heard a highly esteemed local Baptist pastor say something very similar.