Singing the Faith

Stephen Johnson has some fine thoughts on hymn singing over at Liturgy Solutions' blog.
It's true, too often hymns in church have been "we sing what we like to sing," and complain about having to sing what someone else likes to sing; yet we often miss the point of hymnody.
Teachers like to talk about themes--units that all tie together. I went to a sectional at a teacher's conference that talked about integrated units. The teachers would teach Greece or Egypt as a unit and they came up with lessons in math, history, reading, science, and writing to go along with the theme and thereby tie it all together to make the lesson learned more complete.
How much more should our worship be "integrated"? It seems to me this was a basic principle we were taught in college in our worship class. Preaching and hymns should reinforce each other, not conflict; as was once made overtly clear to me (but apparently not to the pastor or the music director). The short story there was the pastor was preaching on faith alone; the song (it wasn't a hymn) talked of works righteousness.
Let's do what is good right and salutary for the building up of the faith.