This is what he is commending. It need not become an issue, judiciously balancing the two, singing three hymns in a service and one contemporary song. Then in the young people's meetings, and when students get together, or at camps the proportion can be different and more of the contemporary songs sung. But I do remember a deacon from an Irish Presbyterian church who as a young man had spent a week or two in Switzerland with the European Missionary Fellowship Holiday Conference. He met there a gang of young people from Wales and what struck him was their enthusiasm for hymns, and that through the week they did not sing any of the choruses which had become his staple since attending for three years a Manchester Anglican church.
Today there is a battle for hymns.
There is a campaign everywhere to ditch them. Students, for example, have not sung hymns in a single Christian Union meeting in the British Isles for several decades. Once CWM had entered their circles, non-contemporary hymns went out. At Britain's massive Easter Christian Conferences held in a number of Holiday Camps one can go through an entire week of meetings and not sing a hymn. There is a conscious attempt to break with the past.