Good on you Craig.

At a homeless shelter in NYC, we only sang Hymns. It is what the homeless men actually knew. And here in Sydney, at all the weddings, its all Hymns. I think Hymns are neglected in Evangelism. Westermeyer:

A group who sings together becomes one and remembers it's story … Congregational song is creedal, because the words of familiar songs help shape a congregations theology and music summons them in a time of need.

Nice.

Good on you Craig, old hymns never die, they just get re-harmonised.

Interesting that Driscoll-friendly/ massive growth/ gen x/y church The Village in Dallas is big into old hymns and re-harmonising.

Thanks guys.

Yeah, Mars Hill are into hymns big time. Probably another factor that caused me to take another look at them.

David, I'm glad you mentioned The Village, I'm a big fan of their music (although Mars Hill's bands do nothing for me - each to his own I guess).

I'm a fan of hymns, although as you pointed out, Craig, they do pose challenges for church musicians. Hymns that are modernised well are a wonderful blessing, as they connect younger generations with theologically rich and poetic words sung by our spiritual forefathers for decades, even centuries.

Thanks Craig for bring old treasures back into light, and accessible to fellow guitarists! The Passion music team (Louie Giglio/Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman among others) has been doing this for a while, bringing some great hymns to the University generation through their Passion Conferences around the world. It is spine-tingling to hear a couple of thousand people singing their hearts out to the King of Kings with the words of, for example "How Great Thou Art". Whoa!

I have nothing but sympathy for guitarists and bass guitarists who try to play hymns. Being one who plays both I have experienced 'hymnal pain', though being a clarinet player I can always alleviate 'hymnal pain'. Though for those who only play instruments that don't correlate with the music of hymns, the temptation I think would be to ditch them. What a tragedy that would be!
So Craig - brilliant work!
Our church has been blessed recently with the arrival of a couple who are very sound in the Faith and the bloke is a trained musician. He has put together a website.

Donovan (the bloke who put this site together) emailed me on this morning saying:

I've been working on a really practical website of hymn arrangements for local churches: http://www.HymnsAreCool.com
These were really useful at my last church, and so I've wanted to try to help other churches to be able to sing and play more hymns successfully

.

I thank God for guys and girls who have the talent, gifts, ability and desire to serve the body of Christ. It is my prayer that the next generation will see hymns as being the treasures that they are!

This is what else the website has to say:

There is a rich heritage of songs written by Christians, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, that have gone before us. Singing hymns corporately is a great reminder of this fact: that God has been working and saving people for many hundreds and thousands of years! But unfortunately hymns are not used in many churches anymore, for a variety of reasons. They are often seen as the songs that are not cool!!!
The reality is that many (but not all!) hymns are very cool! Many have great tunes, but even more importantly, express great things about and to our great God and Saviour! It's very much possible to sing passionate praise to God while singing hymns!

But why is this often not the reality?

Unfortunately, most hymn book arrangements are not suitable for todays church band! They are doomed to fail! The tunes are often written too high for the majority of the congregation to sing! They often leave poor, genuine, servant hearted guitarists, in a very difficult position with no guitar chords! Or if there are guitar chords, they often don't seem to have been chosen with guitarists in mind. Drummers are another poor modern church band member who can be very lost with what drum beat to play. Another common problem is choosing a correct speed. It can be tempting to think, 'ok, let's make sure people like this, let's play it upbeat' but unfortunately the hymn is played too fast to sing,

(continued...)

That's great work Josh - please pass on my compliments to your friend.

and probably not fitting the mood of the lyrics.

Another problem is that yes, there are some antiquated words, and phrases, in otherwise great lyrics! This can leave church members, at times, wondering what they're singing about!

Perhaps a more subtle and more serious issue, might be chronological snobbery! We are often tempted to think that new is always better, but by this we are missing out on a great heritage of songs, and may even need to repent of arrogance!

The aim of this website and these arrangements is to try to solve these issues. There are many other very good arrangements of hymns out there, but many have gone down the track of being very creative, and very jazzy, trying to be really cool with the music ... unfortunately, these are not accessible for the majority of church bands to play!

So the goal of this website is to be very practical, to help any church band be able to access the great heritage of hymn words and music to glorify God!


It is my hope and prayer that using these arrangements will help you and your local church to see that God has been at work saving people for His glory for many years!

No worries Craig - his name is Donovan Simmons.

Craig, thanks for the post and all the work pulling together your guitar chords for hymns site. I find it quite exciting to see how so many great old hymns are being re-invigoraterd, re-interpreted and re-used today.

A few months back I discovered the web site of a US-Based band PageCXVI who have been doing just this, recording the results and making their versions available online. Their version of 'Joy' sampling "It is well with my soul' is awesome.

@Jim I note one of the hymns they re-work is In Christ Alone - a modern 'hymn'!