Monthly column on hymns and songs

'But we sang that last week!' Do you know who chooses your church's hymns? Is more than one person involved? Prayerfully? Is it you? Are they chosen on the spot, or the day, week, or month before?

Most musicians, especially the non-expert, appreciate the early choosers. The church where the hymns were announced 12 months ahead, is an extreme case! However you answer my questions, the selectors affect us all.

Six reasons

So it may help to list the six reasons for choosing the same hymn three times in the same month.

1: you have a sermon series in the book of Ezra, or Hebrews. Here is a hymn that sums up the whole book and touches on several chapters. It makes a 'theme hymn' for Sunday evenings, with a strong enough text to make repetition enriching rather than wearisome.

2: you (plural) have discovered a great new tune - or maybe new to your church. At first, it doesn't sound very easy, but it grows on you. It is worth making the effort to learn it until you sing it without worrying every time where the music is going.

3: local factors. A church member writes a hymn; you want to give it a generous airing. There may be an area event where you are the choir or have to introduce an item. Or all of these.

4: it is flavour of the month after some special holiday, mission or celebration. Everybody wants to sing it, and you dare not leave it out. The danger is that what you sing incessantly for six months will fade as easily as it arrived, and by then you may not want to sing it again, ever.

5: someone is using last week's hymn sheet by mistake. Twice.

6: the minister doesn't keep any record of what is sung, so he selects it week after week without realising what he is doing. If you have a rota of organists, they may not either. If it is the same musician each week, he or she may just notice, shrug, or go on strike.

Simple records

Number 6 is the worst. It is easily avoided by keeping a master copy of the church's hymnbook (music edition), and noting in the margin whenever a hymn is sung. Notes on tunes can be added too. This is so obvious that I am almost ashamed to say it, but you still find worship leaders who have never thought of it, or who imagine they might be quenching the Spirit if they did. The real Spirit-quenchers in this field are more likely to be those who puzzle or bore a congregation by having unexplained repeats week after week - usually the pastor's current favourites.

Under-used

Keeping such simple records, filled in each Sunday, also means that sometimes you can glance through the whole book and discover the under-used hymns. Some may deserve neglect, but others can simply fall through the net without anyone realising.

I do not know offhand any hymns written solely around Ezra or Hebrews. But if I wanted one I would know where to look. These days, no hymnbook is worth investing in unless it has a decent Scripture index. Not too short - although listing strict paraphrases only is better than nothing. Not too long, because to be confronted with 50 hymns on Hebrews 1.1, listed only by number, can be so daunting as to defeat the object. But just right - like the hymns.

This month I planned to print the results of your January voting. But the postcards are still arriving as I write, so watch this space next time!

Christopher Idle

© Evangelicals Now - March 2000
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