And how do we rank?

[A] deeper understanding of these texts in their cultural contexts can facilitate our asking new questions about our own practices. From the observations above about what the hymns tell us about early Christian worship, we can pose and initial set of basic questions about the extent to which contemporary hymnody or liturgical song or worship music reflects the features of the earliest Christian hymns. These questions might be seen as taking inventory of the state of our worship without necessarily passing any judgment on the findings. For example, how does today’s worship through song demonstrate a connection to inherited tradition? In what ways does it engage with current cultures? How does it resist competing ideologies that embody values contrary to the way of Jesus? Does it acknowledge and celebrate the reality of the new era inaugurated by Jesus? To what extent are the cross, resurrection, and exaltation features of contemporary worship songs? The spirit of these questions is not evaluative or judgmental. Rather, these are descriptive questions that ask us to think about the ways in which our worship currently reflects these dynamics.—Matthew Gordley, New Testament Christological Hymns, p. 233

<idle musing>
And how does most contemporary music rate on this scale? Pretty much a zero, isn't it? Sad.
</idle musing>