Sean asked: "It seems as though you spread the hymn out over the course of the month, is this formulaic or do you look at the context of the hymn stanzas? ... Do you sing ALL the verses in the hymn or just the verses in your hymnal..."?
Answer to both questions: it depends.
I'm interested in using the Hymn of the Month in different places in the service, so singing all the stanzas is not always appropriate. For example, my priest has requested that I almost always close our contemporary service with a high-energy praise song--send them out with a bang.... To honor his request, but also to illustrate to the congregation a correspondence of themes through the centuries, I closed with only the final stanza of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"--changing "That word above all earthly pow'rs" to "God's word above all earthly pow'rs" so we weren't hitting it without context--and then on the last note of the last line--"His kingdom is forevER"--launching immediately into the intro of a praise song called "King of Kings."
Another reason to not sing all the stanzas all the time is that the congregation could get weary of it. Some Sundays I present our Hymn of the Month merely as an instrumental during communion, offertory, prelude, or postlude. I hope the musical variations will bring different aspects of the text to light, as words drift in and out of the congregation's minds, both staving off boredom and illustrating text.
Finally, we don't necessarily sing the version in the Episcopal hymnal. In fact, we don't even have hymnals (which I much regret, but the church has other things to deal with right now). So while I'm picking the version or translation, I'm also studying all the original stanzas and beginning to assign them to different parts in the service during the coming month. Then we just pubish the desired stanzas each week, print format for the traditional service, Power Point for the contemporary service.
I have no idea if people in the congregation are actually holding on to the bulletin insert from the beginning of the month, the insert that prints the hymn in its entirety, but if they are, then they have a bird's eye view of the hymn to work with at home.
2 comments:
You mentioned that you don't know if the congregation hangs on to the bulletin inserts... do you know if the congregation appreciates this form of worship? I would think that they do, but have you asked?
For instance, last spring I, along with an MDiv student in my congregation, presented 7 "global" hymns for each Sunday after Easter. During the season, no one commented on it. However, all summer long people have been asking when we are doing that again. I would guess it's similar in your church, especially in an Episcopal church, they must truly appreciate all this music and worship education.
As per your experience, I find most people don't comment, except when they DISlike something! However, I've had enough encouraging comments and I believe in this strongly enough to keep going. People READ the inserts; whether they save them for personal devotions is another story.
Seven "global" hymns. What a great idea! You must be pretty devoted to nurturing good hymnody in the congregation.
Clarification: I actually serve an Anglican church, not an Episcopal one, but so far the Episcopal hymnal is the main resource.
Yes, "O God Our Help in Ages Past" is a classic hymn for the choir--and a great one for anyone to know PRIOR to some calamity. Isn't your choir blessed to have this chance to focus on it! Possibly you already know that Watts based it on the first few verses of Psalm 90, and that in earlier editions it's hard to find in the index because it's listed as "OUR God, Our Help...."
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