WorshipHelps

A collection of resources and commentary for those who plan and lead weekly Christian worship

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Welcome! This website is intended for thoughtful but harried worship planners. We invite you to explore the resources available here for planning and leading worship.

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Contributers

    Tom Trinidad
    Thomas Nelson
    Taylor Burton-Edwards
    Ron Rienstra
    Peter Armstrong
    Kevin Anderson
    Kent Hendricks
    Kendra Hotz
    John Williams
    John Thornburg
    Guy Higashi
    Greg Scheer
    Eric Herron
    Debra Avery
    Clay Schmit
    Chip Andrus
    Brian Paulson
    Brad Andrews
    Bob Keeley
    Andrew Donaldson

Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven

July 28, 2006

I've written elsewhere about Kevin Twit and the Indelible Grace project, whose hope is to "help the church recover the tradition of putting old hymns to new music for each generation."  Of course, Kevin and his friends aren't the only ones doing this -- a student of mine from Fuller Seminary, Luke Hyder, has been doing it for years, too.

PraisemysoulThe other day I came upon one of his compositions while I was searching for an upbeat setting of Psalm 103 as a way to conclude a Eucharist service.  Psalm 103 is commonly used in this liturgical position, but the more common settings -- by Andre Crouch, or Brother Roger of Taize, or Graham Ord -- weren't quite right.  This one was.  He agreed to let me post it here, as a gift to the readers of this blog.  Click here for the PDF.

Posted at 4:57 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

Greg Scheer said...
Hey Ron, Thanks for reminding me of this song. I think it's one of the better examples of the its genre. I have mixed feelings about the movement of updating classic hymn texts with new music, even though I've done it myself on occasion (http://gregscheer.com/praise/may_the_mind.html). I'm all for it in principle, but in practice the modernized hymns are often less singable and less memorable than the ones they replace. Also, the texts are often kept intact with all the "thees" and "thous" which creates a strange tension between old text and new music. Sometimes this anachronistic approach works, sometimes it's awkward, but it always leaves me wondering whether these songwriters' talents would be better utilized by simply composing a completely new song. Speaking of completely new songs, here's one of mine that's based on Psalm 103: http://gregscheer.com/praise/my_soul_will_glorify.html
July 30, 2006 at 21:45 PM

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