This article has been inspired to a certain extent by Nick Page's book, And now let's move into a time of nonsense, which I've reviewed in this EN (page 29).
The book has been written as a plea for modern song-writers to give us songs which use the highly-crafted techniques of historic hymnody while also appealing to a contemporary culture.
Over the past three years, a number of us who try to write songs have got together from various churches because we take this call seriously. We meet about four times a year to encourage each other, to pray and to critique our songs. We're all writing for our own congregations, with the same aims.