Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Music

Why and How Our Church Plans to Use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns

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Christ the King Church (the church we are in the process of planting in Stillwater, Minnesota) is planning to sing selections mostly from the hymnal Treasury of Psalms and Hymns. Here’s why and how.

Why Our Church Plans to Use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns

A good hymnal collects high-quality songs that span centuries and continents and cultures. It is a rich devotional resource for churches and families and individuals, and it fosters beautiful harmonious singing that stirs our hearts. Hymnals also make it easier to trace the argument of a hymn from line to line and stanza to stanza (which is harder to do with slides).

We plan to use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns for at least seven reasons:

  1. It helps us obey Ephesians 5:18b–19: “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (cf. Col 3:16). The three terms translated “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” appear in psalm titles in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, so God clearly wants Christians to sing the psalms. Our church plans to sing all 150 psalms. Selections 1–481 in the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns are various settings for the 150 psalms—usually at least three selections for each psalm. Selections 482–1135 are other hymns, including most classic hymns that Reformed churches sing.
  2. It has more songs than most hymnals (1,135!).
  3. It includes songs that Christians have been singing for hundreds of years as well as ones that are more recent.
  4. It sets the music to a very singable pitch, especially for men.
  5. It is more affordable than most hymnals.
  6. It includes excellent indexes and online resources, including free recordings available for each song.
  7. It arranges hymns 482–854 under the five headings that our church plans to follow as the gospel-shaped structure for our worship service: (1) Call to Worship, (2) Confession, (3) Consecration, (4) Communion, and (5) Commission (cf. Jeffrey Meyers, The Lord’s Service). That does not mean that we may sing those selections only if we are in that particular part of the worship service, but that organization is helpful for us.

How Our Church Plans to Use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns

We plan to use the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns for most of what we sing together, and if you meet with us, we encourage you to prepare for the upcoming Sunday worship service by listening to and practicing what we plan to sing together:

  1. We encourage you to practice singing the selections that we plan to sing together during the upcoming worship service. When our church begins in early 2025, God willing, we aim to upload a draft online of the Worship Service Guide for the upcoming Sunday worship service by 5:00pm each Monday so that families may start practicing those psalms and hymns together on Monday evenings.
  2. We encourage you to own copies of the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns so that you can use it to sing at home. Once you own a copy of the hymnal, you may have access to an online folder that includes a PDF of the hymnal as well as free recordings for each selection. (You may request access using the contact form here.)
  3. We encourage you to listen to selections from the Treasury of Psalms and Hymns on Youtube. If you listen to the selections once or twice a day the week prior to singing them together with the church, your joy while singing them may increase.
  4. We encourage you to see and listen to our upcoming selections in the Sing Your Part app. It works as a web app on a computer and as an iOS app on an iPhone and iPad, and it recently became available on the Google Play Store for Android. If you select “Christ the King Church (Stillwater, MN)” in the app, then you can see and hear what we plan to sing in our upcoming worship service. In the app you can adjust a song’s tempo, and you can adjust the volume of each of the four parts (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) so that you can hear your part better. When our church begins in early 2025, God willing, we plan to purchase a family subscription for members. A subscription gives you access to all of the resources in the app—not just the songs that we plan to sing in the upcoming worship service. Between now and then, the good folks who operate the Sing Your Part app are giving us complimentary access to the app.

Note to leaders of other churches: If you would like to consider setting your church up with the Sing Your Part app, you may schedule a 30-minute call with Isaiah Holt, CEO of Crescendo Software.

C. S. Lewis on His Church’s Hymns: “fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music”

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“Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?” The way C. S. Lewis answers that question could be far more compelling, but what strikes me is how he describes the hymns of his day and how he responded.

Assignment: Apply the bold words below to your own context. (This is from C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970], 51–52, bold added.)

That’s a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house. If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament [footnote quotes John 6:53–54], and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts

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BernsteinLeonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic are excellent. Bernstein recorded these for CBS from 1958 to 1972.

My three daughters and I just finished watching all 25 programs in this Special Collector’s Edition 9-DVD Set. Each program is a little under an hour, and we watched one together each Saturday morning. [Read more…] about Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts

Interview with Sharon Gerber on Her New Celloasis Album

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My family loves Sharon Gerber’s cello music.

cellocase cellolake

Kaffeemusik1Our girls listen to her Eine Kleine Kaffeemusik each night, and according to iTunes, we’ve played that album over 15,000 times! It’s beautifully soothing. (See also albums 2 and 3.)

In the first half of this 7.5-minute video for Sharon’s church, she explains why she experienced a tragic divorce, how that caused her to doubt everything she believed about God, and how God showed grace to Sharon through members in her new church. Then she introduces her latest cello album, Into the Night, and shares the background to the song “Jehova-Rohi,” which the second half of the video features.

Sharon kindly let me interview her earlier this month:

1. How did this video come about? [Read more…] about Interview with Sharon Gerber on Her New Celloasis Album

Fifteen Favorite Christmas Songs

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Here are fifteen of my favorite Christmas songs:

  1. “The 12 Days of Christmas” (live; studio) | Straight No Chaser | Holiday Spirits | video
  2. “Angels’ Carol” | John Rutter, the Cambridge Singers | Christmas with the Cambridge Singers | video
  3. “The Christmas Can-Can” | Straight No Chaser | Christmas Cheers | video
  4. “Christmas Fantasy for Orchestra” | Dan and Heidi Goeller | The Word Became Flesh
  5. “Everlasting Life” | The Rushingbrook Children’s Choir | The Most Wonderful Birthday of All
  6. “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” | Dan Forrest | Prepare Him Room
  7. “Joy to the World” | Empire Brass | Joy to the World
  8. “Linus & Lucy” | Vince Guaraldi Trio | A Charlie Brown Christmas
  9. “A Little Christmas Music: Medley a la Mozart” | The King’s Singers, Kiri Te Kanawa | A Little Christmas Music
  10. “Lo! How a Rose” | SMS Men’s Chorus | King of Glory
  11. “Magnificat” | Keith and Kristyn Getty | An Irish Christmas
  12. “Mary, Did You Know?” | Kathleen Battle, accompanied by Christopher Parkening | Angel’s Glory | lyrics
  13. “Sleep, Jesus, Sleep” | Shannon Harris | Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man
  14. “Somewhere in My Memory” | John Williams, the Boston Pops Orchestra | Joy to the World
  15. “Suo Gan,” the instrumental part from 1:11 to 2:19 | Irish Tenors | Home for Christmas

What are some of your favorite songs?

Update in December 2016: I recently discovered another one. Our girls love The Nutcracker. We’ve probably played it hundreds of times for them. So this song by Straight No Chaser makes me laugh.

Hymns: Modern and Ancient

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This hymnal should be available by early next week:

Fred R. Coleman, ed. Hymns: Modern and Ancient. Milwaukee: Heart, 2011.

“These 134 songs from both present day and past hymn writers have been arranged in four-part harmony for local church, congregational singing. This songbook is intended to be a supplement to traditional hymnals.”

Each song also includes guitar chords.

You can view the list of the 134 songs here. It includes some of my favorites:

  • Before the Throne of God Above
  • How Deep the Father’s Love
  • I Will Glory in My Redeemer
  • In Christ Alone
  • The Gospel Song
  • O Church, Arise
  • The Power of the Cross
  • O Great God

Fred writes in the acknowledgments that his wife, Ruth Coleman, “did the majority of the harmonization of the tunes and all of the Finale typesetting. The concept and the song content were my only contributions; she did all the work and made it a reality.”

Our understanding of God and the gospel affects the quality of our worship through singing, and the quality of what we regularly sing affects our understanding of God and the gospel. These rich hymns engage our affections for the Triune God, and I thank God for them.

Keith Getty on Why Our Musical Understanding Must Go Beyond Contemporary Music

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Keith Getty, “Leading Corporate Worship Music,” a workshop at The Gospel Coalition’s national conference on April 13, 2011, 56:30–59:03:

If our musical understanding is built out of only contemporary music, we are to a large degree foolish people for three main reasons:

  1. We have such a rich history to tap into. The history of hymnody is dominated by some of the greatest composers in history. It is dominated by some of the greatest poets in history. It is dominated by some of the most brilliant theologians crafting liturgy over hundreds of years. It is dominated by some of the most dramatic conversions and historical moments that shaped countries and nations and cultures. For us to turn out backs to that and say that we here in Illinois today in our room know better and don’t need to learn from them is silly. So there is a richness for us to learn from.
  2. (Tim Keller mentions it in his article on worship in Worship by the Book .) I think there is a sense in which we should have something in our worship services which reminds us that we are part of something that has gone on for centuries. I think it is important for the outsider to see that we’re not a cult. I think it’s important for others to see that we learn from the past.
  3. I think it’s just good to do some of it sometimes. It’s just good stuff. It’s good to use. . . . There is no way to satisfy everybody’s musical tastes. But we do have a job to feed our congregations. So we start from there and not from musical tastes and know that we’re part of a rich history.

Related: Don Carson’s introductory essay in the above book is available for free as a PDF:

D. A. Carson, “Worship under the Word.” Page 11–63 in Worship by the Book. Edited by D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.