I just wanted to share this inspiring blurb from the pre-face of The Mennonite Hymnal

Moreover, this stream of music is as something alive, discarding the unusable, adaptive to new circumstances, creative in meeting needs as they may exist. Church music has not been contained in rigid, unyielding forms or patterns, but in different ways has supplied musical expression for the church in its developing life and worship. Hymnology, too, as a significant part of the musical heritage of the church, has not been locked in the closed canon of an ancient and unchanging tradition, but has been alive and growing, dynamically ministering to a living and growing Christendom