Sing Unto the Lord

So… Nitechurch live is on and rocking. On the 21st of July Nitechurch will be hitting up Avoca Beach Picture Theatre to do a live music recording. We’d love you to come even if you don’t go to Nitechurch. Turn up, sing loud and love it.

Tim Smith from MHC interviews Bob K at Resurgence. Pretty good stuff on physical expression. Some pastors from our church went to Sovereign Grace in Gaithersburg recently and spent some time with Bob. They were encouraged by his graciousness.

The song that we tried to put up on ccecnitechurch.com for last Sunday is finally up here and here. It’s a mad folk version of a song my friend Josh Watt wrote. I’d tell you who played it last week but they don’t have a name yet (see last post).

The words are:

The glory of the Lamb, seated on his throne

A million voices cry praise to him alone

“Lion, Son of God, Glorious Son of Man

King above all Kings. The Lion and the Lamb”

Fall before the throne of the Lamb

the one who reigns at the Lord’s right hand

And with his blood he purchased men for God

Glory to the Lamb!

I love singing songs about Jesus in my church.

So… If you are a regular reader you’d know that I’m part of ccecnitechurch. For a while now we have functioned with three separate bands instead of one big music team. Until now all three bands have kind of tried to play similar stuff but we found that the sound we were getting was very churchy and not necessarily easy to connect with for the outsider. So we tried to be a bit more genre specific with our bands and so thats where we are. The problem that I’m now facing is that as the bands are creating their own identity, people speak about the bands. Because each of the bands doesn’t have a name they get named by the congregation after the leader of the band eg.. ‘Bob’s band’ or ‘Gerald’s band’. I don’t know if I like the idea of having band names, but I really don’t like our bands only being identified by their leader. They are a unit and so should have their own identity. Is it bad to name the bands and am I caving to secular culture, or is it not a big problem and doesn’t have to become an idol?

I guess the preacher has a name and we aren’t necessarily idolising him by using his name to speak of the sermon. Is it unhelpful to do the same with bands?

What do you think?

Do you have any good ideas for names?

There isn’t a band in the world who I love more than Thrice. They are eclectic, original, and they rock hard. Dustin Krensue from Thrice is a Christian guy but the band sell to a secular audience. Thrice’s last project: The Alchemy Index has been based around the four elements: Fire, Water, Air and Earth. I’m going to do a review of the whole series for ccecnitechurch.com but I thought I’d share an awesome line from one of their Earth songs called Come All You Weary.

Come all you weary, with your heavy loads.

Lay down your burdens; find rest for your souls.

My yoke is easy and my burden is kind;

I’ll take yours upon me, and you can take mine.

Whenever you look at people taking photos of books they always do it on a sweet white background. I did it on my bathroom sink.

I collect hymnals.

It’s a funny thing to do. They are always the books in secondhand bookshops that have the most dust on them. They are always the last books to go. I guess people don’t really sing many hymns any more and when they do they usually have their own hymnal already.

Up until recently I had 11 hymnals but on a recent holiday up north I managed to pick up number twelve – ‘Hymnary and Psalter of the church of Scotland (1900)’. It is the jewel in the crown of my collection. It is split in half like a identity kit so you can choose whatever tune to go with whatever psalm. As well as that it has a whole bunch of classic hymns for all occasions in the back.

What I look for in a hymnal is a good index of tune writers and lyric writers, a good index of first lines, scripture references for all hymns + index, a mad introduction or preface.

My new Hymnary and Psalter has all these things.

But the other thing that I am interested in about hymnals is the way that they reflect the theology of the people that sing them. It is important that my new hymnal has none of Charles Wesley’s hymns in it. The Church of Scotland are passionate Calvinists and Wesley was an Arminian (funnily enough Wesley’s hymns have echoes of Calvinism in there. It’s like he couldn’t help writing that God was sovereign over all things in his songs but couldn’t quite grasp it in his everyday theology).

They are however, big on Isaac Watts. Watts was a puritan and a Calvinist. I find that stuff fascinating. You get a period in the middle of last century where all German composers and lyricists disappear out of English Hymnals. I wonder why?

Aside from the dogma and racism that dictated lots of these choices, a hymnal for our forefathers represented your theology and identity. In a Hymnal you can capture where a particular church is up to in their doctrine and how they see it impacting their lives.

Are we like that?

How do the songs we sing represent us as a church? What do we choose to sing lots about and what do we choose to ignore? How would a power point database collector (future equivalent of hymnal collector) of the twenty second century see our churches now. Would they say that we were passionate about General Revelation? We love to see God in creation. Would they say that our churches loved ourselves? Will they say that we continually made bold promises and oaths to God, making vows and commitments in our songs? Or will they say that we were a generation of churches who were passionately, whole-heartedly committed to proclaiming Jesus. Our great Saviour. Our King. I pray that thats what they will see when they look at our church’s power point database. May we never follow after trends and popular songs to the detriment of singing Jesus. Don’t sing Wesley just cos everyone else is (proverbially speaking).