On a January morning in 2022, the basement of Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican church in a quiet Nashville neighborhood, smelled like food for the first time in months. Someone was preparing a meal in the kitchen. The church had been virtually empty since a funeral for the church’s pastor, who passed away in a car accident in August 2021. In-person services hadn’t resumed yet; everyone was tiring of virtual gatherings.
But now, songwriters were assembling in the basement, greeting friends they hadn’t seen much since before the 2020 pandemic. This intimate gathering was the first writing meetup of Anchor Hymns, a collective formed by singer-songwriter and producer Andrew Osenga, formerly of the Christian band Caedmon’s Call.
Anchor Hymns brought together a community of musicians that was still reeling from the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic. Some were mourning the deaths of friends and loved ones. Others were coming to terms with lost friendships.
“We started talking about how a lot of our contemporary worship songs feel like pop songs, and you don’t sing pop songs at a funeral,” Osenga said. “So our prompt that afternoon was to write songs that could be sung at funerals.”
It sounds like a bleak beginning for a creative endeavor. But the tension of hope in the midst of pain has been a source of inspiration for Anchor Hymns. The group’s newest album, The Garden (Live) (releasing March 28), was recorded live at the Covenant School in Nashville at one of the first events at the school since the mass shooting that took place there in March 2023.
The group’s tagline, “songs that will outlast us,” nods to its mission to offer the church newly composed songs and newly arranged hymns that feel both historically rooted and forward-looking. Over the past three years, Anchor Hymns has released music featuring artists such as Sandra McCracken, Sarah Kroger, Paul Baloche, Melanie Penn, Mitch Wong, Citizens, Dee Wilson, Matt Maher, and Leslie Jordan.
CT spoke with Andrew Osenga, Sandra McCracken, and Sarah Kroger about what it looks like to write music for disorienting times and how hymns can help the family of God bear one another’s burdens. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
CT: Andrew, you led the formation of Anchor Hymns in 2022. What was the animating idea behind the project?
Andrew Osenga: When I look at older hymns, I see a wide variety of songs on different subjects and in a lot of different musical styles. When I think about a lot of the songs that we sing today, I think we tend to sing about three or four subjects. We have a very narrow vocabulary in the church.
We’ve been able to look at what churches have been singing for centuries and ask, “What else could we be singing about?” What about songs about grief or different kinds of joy? Songs about sacrificial love, loving your enemy, death, giving, or missions?
Sandra McCracken: Early on, in a meeting before we even had a name for the project, we talked about how a lot of people we knew were leaving the church. We were drawn to the idea of having songs that would not just outlast us but that would reach out and welcome people who may not want to be there now but might find themselves wanting to be there again. That was the hope.
This group of musicians is pretty ecumenical. We come from different backgrounds, and we’re not all going to vote the same way or agree on one set of theological statements, but there are things we can sing together, and we’re trying to find those.
Sarah Kroger: As one of the few Catholics in the group, I felt connected to this idea of new hymns because Catholics have a rich history of hymns in our own church. There are a lot of hymns that are specifically Catholic and others that fall into the Protestant category, and there’s not a lot of cross-pollinating. There are a few hymns that have crossed the barrier— “Be Thou My Vision,” “Come Thou Fount”—but I didn’t know “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” until I was an adult. And that is sad to me because it’s such a stunning song.
So for me, this project was an opportunity to cross-pollinate a little bit, to use these beautiful texts as inspiration and make something new that includes all of our voices and perspectives.
CT: Sarah, what do you think the Catholic tradition of hymnody and liturgy offers that could enrich some of the worship practices of American evangelical or nondenominational churches?
SK: As I’ve become friends and collaborators with people in Protestant spaces, it’s been awesome to have conversations about what unites us. I also recognize that Catholics have valuable traditions. For example, every Catholic church has a crucifix. Christ’s death is right in front of you. We have whole seasons centered on death. Right now, we’re in Lent, where we’re reminded that “you are ashes and to ashes you shall return.” We’re not afraid of thinking about suffering.
There’s also a rich history and tradition of silence in Catholicism. We’re not afraid of silence in our liturgies either. Which is not to say that all Protestants are—but I do think in the American church there’s a lot of filling every moment with something.
CT: The past few years have brought what appears to be a surge in interest in hymns and hymnals. It seems there is a cycle in American evangelical culture of periodic returns to hymnody or more historically rooted worship practices. Why do you think hymnody—new or old—might be capturing the interest of some American Christians right now?
SK: I think the reason why I have been drawn to hymns more recently is because they connect me to this rich history of believers. I think about all the people who have sung these songs for centuries, some melodies literally since the beginning of the church.
To think about all of the people who have had joyful moments with these songs, wrestled with faith through these songs, and lifted these songs up in their own journeys—it is grounding and edifying for me to recognize that I’m a part of something bigger. And to add my voice to that history is really special.
The Return of the Hymnal
SM: I think the disorientation of our time causes us to reach for things that are either nostalgic or connected to the past. And I think people want the sung theology of hymns; they are like sung gospel.
Hymns have a way of bringing us back to truth beyond just our own emotions. I think hymns do that more than some of the contemporary worship music that is more singularly emotive. Hymns tend to tell a wider story as you move through different verses that each have their own inflection.
AO: I don’t mean this in a cynical way, but I think that in a world where so many things feel like products, where we get our new songs from the radio or from a marketing email, there’s something about a song that we know existed before a marketing machine or a record company. There’s an inherent trust. We trust its motive in a different way.
I also think there’s a way that God speaks through melody and memory together, even beyond a lyric. These melodies have been passed down through generations. My grandfather had a very different theology than I do, but we believed in the same Jesus and are loved by the same Jesus. And I have these memories of him singing. There’s power in that.
CT: The new Anchor Hymns album, The Garden (Live), was recorded at the Covenant School, where a shooting took place the year before. How did that impact the recording and the content of the album?
AO: Sandra’s husband was working at the school at the time and was hosting a conference for worship leaders, pastors, and theologians. We were invited to participate and [we] asked if we could record. The conference wasn’t a Covenant event, but we were trying to be really conscientious and bring songs about God’s hope and faithfulness. You couldn’t shake the fact that we were in the space where it happened.
SM: Everyone was certainly still reeling from the event. On the recording, you’ll hear “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and we had planned to sing it but didn’t have time to rehearse. Now when I hear that recording, I can hear strength, and I can hear God’s faithfulness in a moment in a room with bullet holes in the glass that a lot of people didn’t want to talk about and maybe still don’t want to talk about. And that’s okay.
What does it mean to sing in these holy, sacred moments when there is disorientation? When I hear that recording, I can hear all these layers, the way the voices are reverberating in that room with that community. It’s a confession, and a communal one. I’m so grateful for it.
SK: Thinking about that moment, singing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” in that beautiful church, and about what everyone was carrying, I remember that there are times when I’m participating in the hymn, physically singing it. And then there are times when the weight of what I’m carrying is just too much and I need other people to sing it for me. That’s what hymns offer us: this experience of community. Sometimes you’re participating, and sometimes you’re being carried. That’s the beauty of hymns.
AO: I think everyone has their own idea of what a hymn is. For most laypeople, a hymn is an old-fashioned church song, and their idea of a hymn is different from the next person’s idea of a hymn because their “old-fashioned church” is different from the next person’s.
So I think some of what we really mean when we talk about singing hymns is standing together and hearing each other sing about God. It’s not like being at a concert; it’s hearing from our neighbors. It’s hearing from my dad, and my kid, and my third-grade teacher over there, and my neighbor, and the guy I don’t like, and the girl I used to have a crush on, and the person I don’t know.
Write a New Hymn unto the Lord
Sometimes they need to hear me, and sometimes I need to hear them. Sometimes I’m fully believing it, and sometimes I’m coming in asking them, “Please help me believe it.” Sometimes as I hear my friends sing it, I realize I needed to know that they believe it, because that helps me know that I believe it.
That’s what we’re talking about: carrying each other. It’s not necessarily even that we’re wanting an old-fashioned song. I think it’s that we’re wanting the experience of just being together and hearing one another, walking side by side. In our culture, there’s so much noise. We don’t hear each other anymore.
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