Sing to the Lord a new song! Technology opens doors in the church and in the world. One tweet on Twitter can connect pastors in ways unimaginable when my Dad was in seminary (sorry, Pops). Blog communities bring new and exciting — though imperfect — ways to discuss Christ and culture. What self-respecting youth group these days doesn’t have a Facebook group? That said, I’m also aware of the growing digital divide in our congregations. Now, when we think of our diversity, we must also remember the diversity of those with email and those without, those with a high-speed internet connection and those without a computer. Ahh, the challenges of ministry in 2009.
The Presbyterian Hymnal Committee, a group formed last year, is in the initial stages of developing the next Presbyterian hymnal. The next hymnal will include songs composed since 1990 (the publication date of the blue hymnal) and will seek to honor our rich heritage. Perhaps it will bring back some from the red book, but it’ll also put into print some of the new places that God is leading us. For all your next hymnal questions check out http://presbyterianhymnal.org , and remember the committee is just beginning its work.
Especially in these early stages, though, I want to take to the committee some ways that new technology might best be used to sing a new song unto the Lord. Copyright law is tricky enough with printed materials, let alone when concerned with electronic formats, but I want to think broadly at this stage.
(On a parenthetical note, let’s not forget the amazing “technology” of the bound paper printed book. What a remarkable, durable, cheap, easy-to-use, technology it is — and will be for years to come. The next hymnal will certainly be in book format, but why stop there?)
The committee can make no promises — we have budget considerations like everybody else — but we will consider, in good faith, how God may be calling the church to use technology in its congregational song and worship planning. That’s where you come in.
Comment away. What tech ideas — hymnal/singing/worship related — would be handy in your congregation? How do you use the hymnal for worship planning and how could that be bettered with new technology? Do you use existing online worship resources? What, technologically speaking, should the hymnal committee consider?
Pop a comment on this post, or email me at adamjcopeland at gmail dot com. Peace.
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What about some sort of cross-referencing tool between tried & true hymns and some counterparts- like new hymns by Getty or praise songs? That might be really handy for those congregations wandering into blended-contemporary worship…
Perhaps including CCLI info for hymns, to save a little time? Even an e-hymnal available with links to CCLI renderings of hymns in the book?
Thanks, Laura. Good idea….like an Amazon, “if you like this, you might also like these hymns/songs”
To Laura, or anyone, where do you go online to search or get songs for worship?
Hi, I am Communications Director and Contemporary Worship Music Team Leader at First San Antonio. We love to sing hymns and contemporary songs by Redman, Tomlin, the folks at Hillsong and even RUF hymns set to new music. We write our own songs a bit, but haven’t introduced anything new in awhile. Our congregation uses the old red hymnbook in traditional services. Many of us don’t like the lyric issues with the blue hymnal. Often I go to the cyberhymnal website to get hymn lyrics, or pull things from old psalters. I would love to have access to the entire new hymnal electronically so we can have the option of dropping just words or words and at least a lead line for our bulletins, and some way to load lyrics into Media Shout for the contemporary worship service. I’d love to have chord sheets for all the hymns so our band can easily use them for contemporary worship. I’d love to see hymns that are more about mission than about unity and social issues. I’d like to expand the Scriptural references for hymns and I’d love to have a lectionary of sorts incorporated into the hymnal for devotional use. Hmmm. I can probably come up with more stuff. Give me time. Thanks!
I wonder if even the word “hymnal” is dated and problematic. I know this isn’t particularly about tech, but our language is a stumbling block. All worship today is “contemporary” and while I love lots of new music and songs from the church around the world, “praise” music leaves a huge emotional range missing. Sometimes I really need a good lament!!
I hope there will be some version of our new worship music resource
available with instrumental arrangements in it, or at least source info on where we can find it. As we move toward more varied instrumental arrangements in worship (a good organist, who can find? to paraphrase proverbs), we need easy access to transpositions, arrangements, chording, etc.
We have 4 possible groups emerging in our congregation right now: a band, a brass group, an acoustic group and a dance choir. Awesome! But how is world do I resource that range? GIA / Taize has songbooks and accompaniment books. might something like that be possible?
Thanks for your work!
Thank you both for the comments. Those are just those sorts of things we need to consider. That’s really helpful. As you’re surely aware, the range of congregational song in the PC(USA) right now is enormously wide. None of us can be like Paul–all things to all people–but we can try to resource as broadly as our resources allow. Many thanks, and blessings on your exciting music ministries.
Hey Judson, can you help me out with what you mean by “lyric issues with the blue hymnal?”
In the event Judson doesn’t respond, let me offer up my own sense of the “lyric issues with the blue hymnal.” The lyrics and the structuring of pretty much anything in Blue that’s contemporaneous to it’s compilation (1970s-1980s) are intolerably squishy. The lyrics themselves seem oddly devoid of passion or poetic intensity. Much of the music of that era tends to be melodically aimless and unsatisfying, seemingly composed by committee to make it as challenging for a congregation as possible.
A few questions: How will the new hymnal be optimized for praise and worship team use? You know, gee-tars? How will the songs in the new hymnal interface with presentation software? Will web-based forms new hymnal come with ways to search by music style/form/scriptural reference/theological emphasis?
This article describes what another denomination (Baptist) is doing in this area… and as a musician, it sounds very interesting and applicable to me. We will likely purchase this, but would love to have a similar tool with Reformed hymnody.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20090205/FEAT0509/90205030/-1/frontpagetabmodule-1V
Awesome, Robert. Thanks for the link. You’re right, definitely really interesting and applicable. They must have employed some copyright miracle makers. When you use it more, let me know what you think of its selections and usability. And good luck w/ your conference leadership:)
This may be another story on the Baptists’ new editable efforts. I’m with Robert on wanting a Reformed version. What are the RCE or RCNA folks doing in this area? Calvin Worship Symposium had lots of cool stuff!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101623145
The traditional blue hymnal has many wonderful hymns that are pitched too high for average worshippers. One result is people do not participate comfortably in the songs. Some try awkwardly to drop down an octave, others just drop out, others sing but so softly it is not a rewarding experience. I suggest a project to investigate transposing the old hymns into new keys, to ensure that the highest note commonly required to be sung is C, or maybe D on occasion. I believe transposing many of the old familiar hymns would help enliven congregational participation in singing.
Adam — you mentioned in your post that “Copyright law is tricky enough” with both printed and digital formats. It’s more than tricky. There are many today of the opinion that the copyright system in our country is broken, and rather than protecting the artists it was intended to help, it enables publishing companies (even Christian ones) to rob artists of their rights in the name of profit, and facilitates draconian interpretations that prohibit or make impossible many uses of printed and recorded music that were once (as recently as the 1950s) commonly accepted as legitimate.
So…
I, for one, would like to see the new hymnal give preference to songs that are either decidedly in the public domain, or else published under licenses that promote fairness and justice in copyright — like Creative Commons licenses, for example.
We promote fair trade coffee in our church foyers on Sunday mornings. We should do no less in our church hymnals.
I desperately need a Presbyterian hymnal that I can easily import songs and music into the program we use to project inforation onto our screen during worship.
If there is currently anything out their aligned to the existing Hymnal, someone please e-mail me information on it.
Sincerely,
Patric Patterson
Technology Committee
Concord Presbyterian Church
Statesville, NC
Good question, Patric. The quick answer is: no, there’s no perfect resource out there for importing Presbyterian Hymnal texts — at least not to my knowledge. That has to do more with permissions from publishers than the publishing company not realizing it’d be a good thing.
Two things to check out: 1) The worship planner at http://thepresbyterianleader.com I haven’t played around with it yet, but it seems to be good.
2) http://hymnary.org You can search this for hymns and grab public domain texts in the pcusa version.
Again, this is a permissions/legal thing. The new lutheran hymnal was supposed to have this awesome webiste with it, but they couldn’t get enough permissions from copyright holders so it’s only about half as good as they had hoped. Until copyright law catches up with technology, I’m afraid this is an issue we’re stuck with.
Let us know if you find anythign else.
Patric – there is a CD-ROM version of the current Presbyterian Hymnal. I don’t know if it is currently available, but I got it about 5 yrs. ago and have it installed on my computer. It is published by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. It has a searchable database, you can listen to the tunes, and you can import the hymn texts into other programs. You can even copy and paste (there’s a button for it) the arrangement as printed in the hymnal. I mainly use it to search that hymnal – the search features are far more useful than the indexes in the printed hymnal.
Folks, I have the software for the hymnal and the Worship Planner. I cannot open the hymn portion of the software since I installed it on my new laptop(Vista 64 bit). Any suggestions?
I am a music director/accompanist at a small PC and I also believe the current hymns are pitched way too high for the normal congregation. Even my choir complains….I’m not talented enough to transpose without use of a keyboard which I don’t really like. I would also like to see much of the small accompaniment addition to the current hymnal incorporated into the songs….there’s alot of good praise choruses in there. Another suggestion would be for your committee to look at the African American Hymnal….one of my choirmembers let me borrow hers…..amazing songs in that hymnal….not just spirituals, but many newer songs that are suitable for small choirs with rich accompaniments. Having a very small choir, I like to use hymns for anthems quite a bit because if I don’t have enough for parts, people can always find the melody and make a joyful noise…. I grew up Methodist and when I started this job with the PC I found that many in the congregation/choir were looking for upbeat gospel and more modern songs like “Shine on Me”, “Lord I Lift Your Name On High”, “Pass It On”. And whatever you do….please don’t make the hymnal gender neutral…..the Methodists did that and ruined many songs. With God as our Father, brothers all our we…..the songs were written with specific original words for a reason…..everyone knows that Brothers means everyone male and female…..and if they don’t then the church isn’t doing it’s job in teaching. Thanks for reading my book here…bright, upbeat and joyful hymns, but don’t forget the old standards and leave them out those are expected and appreciated.
Thanks, G. Porter. Those are helpful suggestions and I’ll pass them on to the committee. Without saying too much, I will say the African American Heritage Hymnal is one of the ones we’re looking at closely–along with about 20+ others published since 1990. “Sing the Faith” also has some of the same type of arrangements.
Regarding gendered language for God and people, we actually just came out with a statement recently. It can be read here: http://www.presbyterianhymnal.org/StatementOnLanguage.asp (If it doesn’t go directly to the file, click into the main website and you’ll see a “A Statement on Language” sidebar on the right. We’d welcome your comments on that as well.
Oh, and yes, the newish Lutheran hymnal came with a simple accompaniment version that’s been well-received, so that seems like a great idea. Thanks for your comments, and keep in touch.
Patric– We too use projection screens for our hymns. We found a great site to order digital copies of the hymns from the Presbyterian Hymnbook with the music. It is http://www.digitalhymnsandsongs.com The hymns are $1.00 a piece, provided you have the necessary license. You can also fax them other music that you wish to project so long as you can supply them with the correct license. They will send you the hymns in about 8 different formats!
We are presently using two different hymnals now.
Why do we need another one?
We are presently using two hymnals.
Why do we need another one?
Will you be accepting newly composed unpublished hymns for consideration?
Good question, Sue. Yes, PCOCS accepted new hymns and songs via an online submission process for several months. The submission deadline passed June 1, 2010. We received thousands of submissions, and additionally, we are reviewing scores of hymnals and song books printed after 1990.
@Donald, there’s a FAQ section on the website that addresses why we are creating a new one. Check it out here: http://www.presbyterianhymnalproject.com/FAQ.asp