Memorable lyrics, Singable melody

A reader, Steve, made a good point yesterday in a comment:

"Getting some memorable lyrics with a singable melody into a person's head so that he or she sings it throughout the week is a very powerful thing. Personally, I have difficulty doing this with most, but not all, hymns. The key, as you know, is to find the right songs."

I agree with this. The trouble is, it isn't a great idea to substitute good songs with memorable songs that are weak or don't really say anything about God. Is it possible to have good and strong, but simple and memorable songs?

I think that this is a strength of using the western rite. The western rite makes use of short, memorable songs with texts carefully chosen from Scripture that tell the story of Salvation and take us through the church year every week. This isn't to say that you have to use the settings in the hymnal - there are literally thousands of settings available for every sort of instrumentation - but it would probably be wise to keep using the same settings that you do choose for the very reason of being memorable and something familiar for the people. Personally, I very much like the first new setting that is in Christian Worship Supplement. The second setting in it is nice as well as it is easy to pick up - it uses already familiar hymn tunes (that you get to pick) for the church songs. But there are many, many others available as well.

I've noticed that most churches I've visited that try contemporary worship, even those keeping a liturgical framework, tend to eliminate these songs. I think that's too bad... as they are a very strong part of our Lutheran worship - and there are opportunities for variety (some would call this being contemporary) by changing the setting or instrumentation.

As to other songs, I think Luther's call to poets and musicians of his day to get together and write new music is still valid today. Consider this 2005 song written and composed by WELS members available here (note: LCMS blog).