Hymn Studies

"Counterpoint" are handouts, intended to be about two pages in length, and usable as portions of a church bulletin. The usual format contains two handouts, one proposing a question for study and thought, and another (for distribution a week later) describing my thought process. It is more important to give serious thought to these issues than to reach instant unanimity.

"Themes" are worship plans developed around these goals and constraints, which include a mixture of scriptural, traditional, prudent, experiential, and arbitrary considerations:

Designed for congregational worship:

Using songs from commonly used hymnals.

Lasting about one hour (typically 5-7 scripture readings, 2-3 prayers, 10-12 songs).

With minimal comments other than a brief introduction.

Concluding with a brief, integrated invitation reading and song.

Designed to teach and edify both new and mature Christians:

Arranged around important scriptural themes.

Emphasizing scriptural ways of using scripture in worship.

Including both familiar and unfamiliar songs and scriptures.

Demonstrating various connections, both obvious and subtle.

"Developments" are similar in scope, but use material from church history instead of Bible readings. They contain a historical as well as a scriptural focus. They may include more unfamiliar hymns.

"Motifs" are miniature versions of the above, built around three or four songs, with brief introduction or invitation, and lasting 15 to 20 minutes. At least one of the songs should be familiar, and at least one unfamiliar. Obviously, two to five men can easily share the leadership duties. See Psalms in Our Time for examples based on psalms.

I learn something every time I sit down to prepare one of these; I try to provide something for others to learn also. If you aren't learning from others' work, then probably you should be preparing plans!

The longer plans require some logistical preparation. They allow up to about twenty men to lead the congregation in singing, reading, or prayer. There are places for both new and experienced leaders. Assignments can be combined; but, to minimize interruptions, I would avoid dividing successive songs between leaders. It takes me several weeks to get to the point where we can schedule a planned service. (Your mileage may vary.) This is one way of organizing a planned service that we have found effective and non-obtrusive, with a planning checklist.

If songs (or important verses) in a plan are missing from your hymnal, you can either supply songs on the handout, or distribute a "retired" hymnal that contains the song. (Most of them should be in every hymnal; they are in at least one common hymnal.)

I also prefer to print out the Bible readings beforehand.

With the number of active participants these plans can involve, probably at least one of them will be absent at any particular assembly. Keeping the service moving smoothly requires some preparation. This checklist gives a way of organizing that has has worked well for us.

Schedule Handouts

A browser is no substitute for a desktop publishing program; but Netscape Navigator does have sufficient flexibility to print these files in formats suitable for handouts: see the Simple Guide to Handout Layout

Where your current song book is missing some songs from a planned singing, you may be tempted to simply omit the song from the schedule. This temptation should be resisted:

• All these songs have valuable messages and should be known better.
• There are sometimes no other common songs that make the same application, or that make it as well.
• Often, some people will already know the song from another book.

The congregation may have a set of "retired" hymnals containing the song, which may be used for the occasion; or it might be more convenient to add copies of the song to the handouts.

Again, you may be tempted to include only the words on the handout. Now, I know that it is possible to worship God without printed musical notation (as Alexander Campbell advocated); therefore the use of printed music cannot be made a condition of fellowship. Well: and people once had no printed Bibles; but using only hand-copied podium Bibles would now be considered "extremely eccentric" by the most charitable-minded. Inexpensive programs for editing musical notation are widely available, as are common hymn tunes in electronic formats. Initially, I used line-by-line paste-up to combine music photocopied from one book and words retyped from another; Now I use Noteworthy Composer, which is inexpensive, flexible, and easy to use. There are several major internet hymn tune projects, including thousands of transcriptions of hymn tunes in "NWC" (Noteworthy Composer) format. I have begun to include Noteworthy files in a form nearly ready to use for these handouts.

In my experience, using songs without music severely limits congregational participation. Others have expressed appreciation for handouts that include the music. However, when the hymnal contains a song but omits an important verse, I've included just the words of the missing verse. Make sure that the song leader mentions the added verse just before beginning the song.

Copyright

This material has a copyright notice. Basically, it allows anyone to copy and use the material, but forbids distribution of poisoned copies that either misrepresent my work, or interfere with other people's use of it.

I have included the text of the Bible readings for each schedule. It is very easy to prepare them, and most congregations have members with an internet or electronic Bible and a willingness to help. Prepared readings have many advantages:

• You can plan a sequence ("catena") of related passages without requiring the reader to flip through the Bible between verses.
• If a scheduled reader is absent (as is often the case), it is easy to give the text to a substitute.
• Within a sequence, you can choose transition points precisely, even within a verse, to make the thought flow more smoothly.
• In an extended reading, you can omit verses or parts of verses to emphasize the relevant point of the reading.
• You can choose the translation to be used.

Catenation, selection, and retranslation of quoted texts are, of course, normal practice both in intra-Biblical quotations and in scripture allusions in hymns.

Greek is a language in its own right, not an cryptogram of English. Inevitably, different ways of translating Greek into English clarify--and obscure--different aspects of the original. A particular Bible translation may obscure either the thought, or the catchphrase transition to the next verse or song. I usually review several translations, choosing one that most clearly represents the theme, thought, or the transition.

Printing the Readings

The complete readings for a service may be viewed (or printed) from the table of contents; individual readings may be viewed from the schedules. A browser is not a desktop-publishing tool, but HTML 3.2 is flexible enough to create usable handouts, and almost universally portable.

Each reading was originally set to print in two columns with Netscape Navigator versions 3 through 5. The "columns" feature was not picked up by the standards committee. So when I converted this material to CSS (which offered me a number of advantages), I lost that ability.

HTML, while the most widely readable electronic format for formatted text, is not designed for this sort of thing. You can import readings into a desktop publishing program before formatting and printing. (But if you give an electronic copy to someone else, you must give them HTML files also; see the copyright notice.)