When and Why We Stopped Singing about Heaven, and How to Start Again

That’s singing in general. But why sing about heaven in particular? Here, again, Paul helps us. In 1 Thessalonians, he teaches about the second coming and the final state of believers, concluding with the exhortation to “encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). Singing about heaven has always served as a great encouragement to believers who do not (and should not) feel at home in this fallen world. Singing about heaven “right-sizes” a church’s expectations about what believers can anticipate in this life.

If we get this wrong, discipleship becomes much more difficult. Churches that neglect heaven don’t serve their members well because they make promises they cannot keep. Without singing and celebrating the world to come, they imply both that this world is all there is and that a believer’s current experience reflects the fullness of the kingdom. These unfortunate implications create unrealistic—and doctrinally false—expectations in a worshiping congregation.

Services that fail to speak and sing about heaven communicate an over-realized eschatology which tragically downplay the realities of this still-fallen world. By evoking and longing for heaven, believers recognize something quite obvious to God’s own perspective: The current fallen state of the world cannot be redeemed by additional human ingenuity or effort . The certainty and sweetness of heaven, as a part of the believer’s regular longing to be with the Lord, allows faithful Christians to mourn the sin and brokenness of our current situation. Zack Eswine writes, “In a fallen world, sadness is an act of sanity, our tears the testimony of the sane.” Worshipers need to recognize these realities, not only in the arid abstractions found in our doctrinal statements, but through the heartfelt affections found in our communal songs.

Let me speak bluntly: churches that don’t sing about heaven cripple their members with an impoverished emotional life. When a church’s songs are exclusively filled with fervency, joy, commitment, and victory, they omit essential aspects of a Christian’s emotional life—doubt, disappointment, and frustration due to ongoing sin. When evangelical worship services imply that believers should experience complete victory now, they prepare people for inevitable disappointment. When churches avoid singing about bouts of sickness, disability, and death, they imply that our current experience reflects the fullness of God’s goodness. Songs about heaven and the world to come allow us to celebrate Christ’s current victory while waiting and longing for the final victory to come (Heb. 2:8).

As a final consequence, when churches imply the kingdom is fully here, the stage is set for the promotion of celebrity pastors. After all, if this particular gathering is a full experience of God’s eschatological presence here and now, then the man up front and in charge of this kingdom stands a good chance of being viewed as a kind of savior and king.

So let’s sing about heaven. Let’s sing about heaven’s Lord. When we do, we shield ourselves from unrealistic expectations about our under-shepherds and point our own hearts to the Chief Shepherd. I can’t possibly put it better than Anne Cousin in her 1857 hymn, “The Sands of Time are Sinking”:

The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace;
not at the crown he gifteth, but on his pierced hand:
the Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel’s land.