For many believers–and even communities of faith–congregational song has played an important role in shaping the content of faith and in facilitating the remembering of that faith. It has been a recurring testimony that in times of sorrow, crisis, or need, assurance and comfort have come more from remembered fragments of hymn texts than from remembered words of Scripture.

In attempting to explain this phenomenon, Robert Mitchell suggests that the “devices of rhyme and meter and melody serve to lodge Christian truth deeply within a person’s life.”

Songs of faith offer word pictures, metaphors, and similes–as well as declarative statements–to assist in the learning and remembering process. As Paul Schilling noted, the “cumulative power of repetition is an important factor in this process.”

from The Dialogue of Worship