1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA?
On the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary
© 2024 91ÁÔÆæ
Canada¡¯s strict COVID-19 protocols meant that many churches did not meet in person for two years. ¡°I know of older people who had not stepped outside their apartment door in more than a year due to chronic illness,¡± said Herbert H. Tsang, a computer and engineering professor who is also president of (CMMC) in Vancouver, British Columbia.
He used a 2021 Vital 91ÁÔÆæ Grant from 91ÁÔÆæ to help younger worship leaders and senior citizens research and sing hymns together to overcome pandemic isolation.
Researching the hymn ¡°¡± helped grant participant Yvonne Law encourage members at South Vancouver Pacific Grace Mennonite Brethren Church, a bilingual Cantonese-English congregation. The hymn was written in the German language nearly 400 years ago during bloodshed, famine, and plague.
¡°I shared the story that this hymn was written by , a pastor during the Thirty Years¡¯ War in Europe,¡± said Law, a volunteer worship leader and choir conductor at her church. ¡°So many people perished in this conflict that he was the last surviving pastor in his city. He wrote this hymn when he was able to for the city he lived in. The ¡®Now Thank We All Our God¡¯ story was important to teach us to give thanks not only when life is going well, but also in times of trouble and distress. God is greater than our difficulties and is with us constantly. In the past few years, there has been so much uncertainty and conflict in the world, just like when this hymn was written. Yet God is faithful and unchanging, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.¡±
Like Tsang and Law, project directors and participants of other hymn-related Vital 91ÁÔÆæ Grants have found that sharing hymn stories makes a difference. It deepens worshipers¡¯ awareness of God¡¯s character and strengthens their identity as members of Christ¡¯s body across centuries, languages, and cultures.
Your congregation can nourish relationships with God and with others by finding hymns and hymn stories and sharing them in worship.
According to , hymns have text-heavy verses or stanzas that line up syllabically, follow a , and are often written in four-part harmony. Because hymn texts follow a specific meter, it¡¯s often possible to sing a hymn text to a different tune of the same meter. Graber is an ethnomusicologist who , was intercultural worship editor for the 2020 Mennonite hymnal (VT), and has been awarded three Vital 91ÁÔÆæ Grants.
¡°Many people assume that hymnody itself is a white/European phenomenon,¡± Graber notes. ¡°That¡¯s where it started, but many cultures have embraced hymnody. There are African and other cultures that sang in harmony before European missionaries arrived. People everywhere are singing older hymns and writing new music for worship in many genres, including hymns such as ¡®¡¯ from Argentina and ¡® from Korea.¡± VT includes about fifty languages in its songs and resources.
often include an identical chorus or refrain after each verse, and Graber recommends looking for them in the ¡°endlessly creative history¡± on display in the and . VT text editor Adam Tice suggests looking for new music from and Mark A. Miller, who teaches sacred music at and and is minister of music at Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey. Miller¡¯s work includes ¡°,¡± ¡°,¡± and ¡°.¡±
Herbert H. Tsang built the during his grant so participants could find Chinese-language hymn videos from the Hong Kong Hymn Society. Many of these hymns come from the ecumenical Chinese-English hymnals and .
At SingTogether meetings, Tsang said, ¡°People would say, ¡®I know this hymn, but I can¡¯t find it.¡¯ So I¡¯d toss in a nugget like, ¡®One way to find hymns is to look at a hymnal index.¡¯¡±
For newer songs and hymns written or composed by Chinese musicians, Tsang suggests the groups and or . Lim edited . It includes many of his tunes as well as hymns for which he wrote the text and tune, such as ¡°¡± and ¡°
edited the 2022 hymnal so people can find hymns and responsive readings spanning ¡°the full scope of John and Charles Wesley¡¯s theological heritage.¡± Powers, a worship professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, led a .
¡°During the grant,¡± he said, ¡°we explored how hymns aren¡¯t just important in Wesleyan tradition. There are also hymns from British, camp meetings, gospel, and global contexts as well as students¡¯ reported contexts, like ¡®This hymn was written a few towns over from me¡¯ or ¡®We always sang this during revivals in New York City.¡¯¡±
Tsang, Powers, Graber, and others recommend looking for hymn stories in books and websites and while singing with Christians from other cultures.
wrote many books about hymn stories, such as and . If you are using a denominational hymnal, check whether it has an accompanying or , such as Emily Brink¡¯s , companion to the 1987 Psalter Hymnal.
The freely searchable website often includes hymn stories and author and composer profiles in its hymn listings. The membership-based offers free daily content. The United Methodist Church has been adding to its ongoing content for decades, including stories related to and hymns.
For audible content on hymn stories, check out the podcasts (from The Center for Congregational Song) and archived .
Vital 91ÁÔÆæ Grants helped Katie Graber and colleagues learn to sing with non-English and multiethnic Mennonite congregations (2018), highlight diverse voices while launching the VT hymnal (2020), and gather histories and stories to create a VT handbook (2023).
¡°Hearing stories from [see pp. 48¨C49] and others at White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church [in Busby, Montana,] deepened our understanding of how worship has interacted with histories of families, tribes, Christian mission, and settler colonialism. We witnessed the way that a particular community has lived into Western Christian music and other worship practices as well as working to ,¡± Graber said.
Experiencing how cultures use and move to music can also be part of the story, as Graber discovered at and , both Mennonite congregations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
¡°°Õ³ó±ð (clapping, dancing, laughing) reminded us that even emotional involvement in worship is culturally bound. It is important both to stretch people and to have comfortable experiences of communicating. If worship planners are not drawn into the stories of songs and styles of worship, they may reinforce existing barriers by simply choosing the familiar,¡± she said.
In Western Canada, SingTogether participants told Tsang that sharing hymn stories deepened their appreciation for hymns. ¡°°Õ³ó±ðy said that that the memory of sharing hymns and hymn stories brought hope that the pandemic would end,¡± Tsang said. ¡°Many grant participants also talked about using hymnals for personal devotions.¡±
One of Tsang¡¯s favorite hymn stories is about a Chinese Christmas hymn called ,¡± published in 1930. He said: ¡°°Õ³ó±ð hymn tune was a winning composition in a hymn contest, and it was composed by Chi-Fang Liang. In 1945 she married Dr. Peter Ma from Victoria, British Columbia, and she passed away in Vancouver, BC, on October 10, 1988. SingTogether participants enjoyed learning of that local connection.
¡°Also, the hymn text by Ching-chiu Yang was translated to English by , and the tune was harmonized by (1895¨C1975). The Wiants were a missionary couple from Ohio who went to China in 1923 with the goal of someday introducing hymns to Chinese Christians that would not sound foreign to them. Both Wiants taught music at Yenching University, and Bliss was the main driving force to put out [published in 1936; the most recent edition is from 2006],¡± Tsang recounts. Listen to ¡°Midnight Stars Make Bright the Morning Skies¡± in and .
Hymns of Universal Praise was a , according to Hong Kong hymnologist Andrew Naap-kei Leung. He wrote that many Chinese hymns were later translated into Burmese, Danish, Dutch, English, Indonesian, Swedish, Thai, and Vietnamese. There are now ecumenical hymnals in Korean and Spanish and in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, and there are lists of .
One participant in the Asbury Vital 91ÁÔÆæ Grant ¡°didn¡¯t grow up with or even know any hymns, said project leader Jonathan A. Powers. ¡°Now his absolute favorite hymn is ¡®.¡¯¡± The seminarian discovered that first heard the words ¡°Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made . . .¡± in a camp meeting sermon. Those words began the third-stanza climax to two verses and a chorus that Lehman wrote, along with a simple melody that his daughter .
Lehman knew from the camp meeting sermon that the third verse¡¯s text was found scratched on an asylum cell after an inmate died. Yet he always wondered where the inmate heard ¡°to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry.¡± Years later, he found a rabbi who explained that those words are in eleventh-century Germany for the , which Christians now celebrate as Pentecost.
During Asbury¡¯s grant year, Powers discovered another hymn story with a camp meeting connection. ¡° wrote the original version of ¡®¡¯ after hearing Asbury Seminary founder preach at a camp meeting. Chisholm wrote this that ended his ability to serve as a minister.
¡°Asbury is celebrating its l for eighteen months to cover the 2022¨C23 academic and 2023 calendar years, so we commissioned Nigerian American Grammy-nominated to write a ,¡± Powers said. Asbury¡¯s president shared the story in ninety seconds at the 2022 convocation. Next, Okpebholo, a and internationally known composer, led the choir in the new arrangement.
Tsang says it¡¯s important to match hymn-story sharing to congregational context. ¡°I tell music directors, ¡®Your job is to put words in people¡¯s mouths through music that is theologically sound and musically interesting. Nobody wants a long music lecture in worship.¡¯ Some churches use a bulletin insert to share two or three paragraphs about a song.¡±
Graber advises churches to ¡°anchor songs and worship resources in human relationships by sharing stories of individuals and communities and creating new stories through worshiping together. Hearing stories and context behind worship materials helps people expand their ideas about who they are worshiping with.¡±
¡°Another key to giving context about songs during worship,¡± Graber adds, ¡°is to connect the story or information to the act of worship you are performing or to the theme of worship that day. Flow in worship is maintained when leaders know what they are doing and why, and reference to specific words and music can be drawn into these acts,¡± she says, offering these examples from different cultures and eras:
¡°For some communities or certain situations,¡± Graber said, ¡°even two sentences might feel disruptive. In that case, consider projecting or printing the song context and connecting it to the act of worship or theme. You might also project the songwriter¡¯s name and photo. Some communities may appreciate phrases of thanks and praise for a song, such as, ¡®We give thanks to God for the words and music of ¡°¡± from our sister Sinach, who lives and worships in Nigeria.¡¯?
¡°Also consider offering stories, thanks, and prayers for contemporary writers, publishers, and recording companies in any location. And worship leaders should remember to tell stories or give context for songs and hymns that are from a worship leader¡¯s own tradition. If we only ever contextualize songs from other cultures, we are subtly ¡®othering¡¯ them, setting them apart and marking them as different from our ¡®normal¡¯ practices.¡±
To find hymns and hymn stories, look first to .org, , the United Methodist Church , and books of hymn stories by , , and .
Membership-based hymn societies in the , , (in Chinese), and often offer some free access to hymns and hymn stories. Other online sources list and hymnals with or .
OCP, a U.S. publisher of Catholic sacred music, has bilingual and in several languages. Check out its free webinar on .
Find from many countries archived on the World Council of Churches (WCC) website, including many songs by Church of Sweden pastor and composer , including his 2022 hymn ¡°.¡± Check out two WCC Advent resource guides, (bilingual English/Spanish songs) and .
Listen to on the Belgian website of Universal Production Music. Read Anneli Loepp Thiessen¡¯s forthcoming article ¡°Establishing Best Practices for Intercultural Contemporary 91ÁÔÆæ Music: A Case Study of ¡®Way Maker¡¯ by Sinach,¡± (The Hymn, 2023) or .
Use this helpful Voices Together hymnal flowchart to .
Watch this interview series featuring Hymn Society leaders such as . These leaders speak about their own stories and interest in congregational singing.
