I just completed an Interim Pastorate in a church that sang all their congregation hymns from a hymnbook.\u00a0 I knew all of them and sang along freely.\u00a0 Then I returned to my home church where the congregation sang five songs, none of which I knew, or had ever heard before.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even sing along with the music since the words were only available on the screen. Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019m all for new songs.\u00a0 I vividly remember my younger years when we would return from Youth Camp, having learned a few new songs but were not allowed to sing them in the church worship services because they were not the old beloved hymns. I don\u2019t really care if the songs are old or new.\u00a0 If they honor God, I\u2019ll try to learn them and sing them. \u00a0I want to be able to say with the Psalmist, \u201cHe has put a new song in my mouth\u201d \u00a0(Psalm 40:3),\u00a0 \u00a0It just seems to me, if the congregation consists of multiple age groups, a blend of old and new music would be more appropriate, than one extreme or the other, eliminating the possibility for some to sing.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be like the person of whom Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, \u201cAlas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!\u201d<\/p>\n
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I just completed an Interim Pastorate in a church that sang all their congregation hymns from a hymnbook.\u00a0 I knew all of them and sang along freely.\u00a0 Then I returned to my home church where the congregation sang five songs, none of which I knew, or had ever heard before.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even sing along…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3876\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}