Hymns as punctuation

As an organist I play a lot of hymns. It sometimes seems to me that hymns are just punctuation points in the service and are only there because they are expected.

In fact, services start and end with a hymn so I feel these are important. One of my current gripes is that, after the Introit hymn, when our appetites have been whetted for worship, the service grinds to a halt and there are notices and other verbiage neither of which appear in the printed order of service.

Sometimes only the choir sing the communion hymn and people are obviously distracted in the Offertory hymn putting their collection in the bag (if that still happens post-COVID). Given that the Gradual hymn vanished temporarily one wonders what the point of hymns is.