EC05: An Open Blog-Post to Emergent Musicians

May 18, 2005

One of the things I’ve found is that many people like hymns, especially when you change the music a bit, or just play with the tune a bit. Or, even when you just leave it alone, people from across generations find some solace in hymns. But‚ at every Whitworth chapel service, Baccalaureate or Commencement, at many chapel services at Princeton Theological Seminary and in numerous other churches recently, we primarily sing two hymns: “Be Thou My Vision‚” and “Come Thou Fount.” Both are wonderful hymns, and I actually really enjoy playing and leading these songs on guitar.

But…in order to get to those 2(!) hymns, you have to flip through the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other hymns.

So, if you are leading worship at Emergent, let’s sing some other hymns - we can do these hymns, but let’s not JUST do these.

Is that fair? I think so - tradition (especially the musical tradition of the church) is so incredibly rich - let’s not ignore that fact or miss out on some truly wonderful church music simply because we really like just a couple hymns.

Tags: Hymns, Music

Category Posted in Emergent, Ministry

2 Responses to “EC05: An Open Blog-Post to Emergent Musicians”

michael lee said:

May 18th, 2005 at 12:47 pm

Here Here!!

I know many of you are just discovering [or rediscovering] hymns after a long desert of 3 chord contemporary worship, so I’d like to offer some guidance. If you’re looking for hymns with deep truths and hauntingly beautiful melodies, take a minute to play through the following:

#124
#47
#298
#401

-ml
dave paisley said:

May 18th, 2005 at 3:16 pm

Personally, I like #657, #717 and #618.

But then a lot depends on which Hymnal you use ;)

http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/