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You can find 21 Isaac Watts hymns in here

I'm doing Watts April 7, 2024

I am one of the song leaders for the singing at Blossom Hill Mennonite Church, Lancaster, Pa., on Sunday, April 7.  That's just two weeks away.  Stan Godshall, Steve Ness, and Mike Burkholder also will lead hymns.  For my set of hymns I am choosing hymns by Isaac Watts.  Why?  I admire his craftsmanship over all other authors of hymns. And, this year is the 350th anniversary of his birth.  That's something--collecting royalties for 350 years (well, not the royalties part)!  

I normally would grab Voices Together for singing, but the editors missed the boat on Watt.  Tice included only seven (an eighth not set for congregational singing) of the masterpieces.  So, we'll find all we want in Hymnal, a worship book, where you can find all of twenty-one of those gems.

early acappella

One of my tasks on my job description is promoting congregational singing, including acappella. There is some interest in the popular media and film in an early Southern American style of singing called sacred harp, sometimes called shaped note singers. At the time of the Civil War most communities had groups singing these hymns.

The very first Mennonite hymnal produced in America came out of the Souderton area in 1803. Here's a clip of a tv-documentary. http://pitchfork.tv/week/awake-my-soul-the-story-of-the-sacred-harp/chapter-1.

I learned from this that the "sacred harp" refers to the human voice--each of us was born with an instrument--harp. And it is sacred.

brown hymnal?

Walk through these door ten years ago, you were in "GC" territory. That's General Conference on the denominational time line.

My first boss ever was Vern Preheim, a GC-er who rose to headship of the denomination by the time of the merger. He was my boss at Mennonite Central Committee for three years.

So I thought I knew something about GC. One important thing Vern never clued me in on. The 1969 hymnal is the brown hymnal. At my home church it is the red hymnal.

How about we merge brown and red and come up with rust. Who wants to sing out of the rusty hymnal? See that nice blue sign in photo? We all agree that the new hymnal is blue.