Hymn Singing at SGBC

Praising God is a natural part of a Christian’s life; we praise Him as we awake each day; we praise Him for mercies throughout the day; and we praise Him when the saints gather for corporate worship. Our praise can be internalized, and it can be external or vocal. Often, we are greatly moved to praise God and our exuberance turns to signing. This is most natural; the more excited we become, the more volume and passion that goes into our praise.

Eph 5:19 is a verse that helps inform the practice of song in our corporate worship, but the context is helpful. In vs 18, Paul exhorts his readers “and do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” Carnal excess, such as drunkenness, can result in carousing which is ungoverned excess. The spiritual way of expressing exuberance is found in the next verse where he continues by saying “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”

At Sovereign Grace Baptist Church (SGBC) we utilize the Blue Trinity Hymnal (the Baptist edition) as our corporate song book. It is filled with established hymns-of-the-faith that have been sung for generations; the back portion has newer psalter selections to facilitate more singing of the psalms. With over 750 hymns in the hymnal, it is a very extensive collection of hymns.

In early 2022, statistics were compiled to “analyze” the hymns that we sing as a church. The chart below looks at the different hymns that were sung each year, for the past 5 years. Note that 2020 & 2021 were “not normal” due to altered service schedules because of covid.

The church has sung an average of 169 different (or unique) hymns each year! That is a huge number of different hymns. And over the past few years we have had a good number of new people join us, many of whom were not familiar with hymn-singing (in contrast to contemporary Christian music selections). For years, hymns have been accompanied at a “quicker” tempo to try and prevent the hymn from “dragging” and feeling hard-to-sing. This is a useful action, but if the hymn itself is rather unfamiliar, that unfamiliarity is the primary roadblock, not the tempo of the hymn.

For people who grew up singing hymns, many became memorized in time. Through repetition, those individuals would grow up and then be able to sing many hymns by-heart. This is achieved through deliberate choices in the hymns that are sung. And singing 169 different hymn each year does not help with this – there is not enough repetition to aid memorization.

The challenge is to create a “core list” of hymns; these would be the hymns that we greatly desire the people to know. Because they are the “core list”, they will be sung more frequently. The intent is that repetition will aid in creating familiarity with those hymns, such that people will memorize the words in time. The core group includes a good number of hymns that all hymn-singing Christians would consider hymns-of-the-faith. The goal is to aim for 50-70 hymns that are regularly sung over the years.

But how do you down-select from 169 hymns to 50-70 hymns? The answer is: realizing that many excellent hymns will end up on the floor as they are cut out! Six people who have attended SGBC for a good number of years provided input; and everyone had regrets on the hymns they could not include (that is a good problem!).

The selection of hymns is intended to address all of the regular services of the church: 11am worship service, opening hymn for 10am bible study, and the 5pm service with communion. Further, one of the goals is for people to learn the hymns, eventually being able to sing without the hymnal! And as the hymns become more familiar, it is hoped that people who can read music will be encouraged to sing the parts and help round out the hymn musically. The better a hymn is known, the better each person sings.

Opening Hymn-Doxology
The Doxology, sung to The Old One Hundredth tune, will open the 11am service each week. The accompanist will play through as the signal for everyone to take their seats; then the song leader will direct the singing of the Doxology, typically acapella.

Liturgical Schedule.
Without delving into the practice of highly formal liturgical schedules in various denominations, there are seasonal times when seasonal hymns can be utilized. You can expect to sing “Come Ye Thankful People Come” every year at Thanksgiving, for example. The following seasons have hymn(s) assigned to them: Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, July 4^th, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Last Sunday of the year, and First Sunday of the year.

Core Hymns – 11AM worship service
There are twenty core hymns that will be sung 4 times each year during the 11am worship service. These are intended to be the SGBC hymns-of-the-faith. This group of hymns should remain mostly static over the years. If a change is made, it should only change one or two songs per year. It is through repetition that the hymns become well-known. And singing them 4 times each year is infrequent enough to avoid the feeling of “oh, that hymn again”.

Communion – Closing hymn
The closing hymn for communion will be the same hymn for roughly 6 months at a time. The goal is to quickly learn the hymn and sing it from memory. There are 3 hymns that will be used for this purpose; it will take 18 months to work through that short list before repeating the list. These hymns were chosen because the end the communion service on an upbeat tone, as way to rejoice in the salvation of the elect.

Communion – Opening Hymns
Each month there are four opening hymns for communion, whether it is at 5pm or the first Sunday of the month. For the opening, 16 hymns have been selected. They are broken into four groups, each containing 4 hymns. While a single list of 16 hymns could also be used, the smaller groups of four allow each group to be loosely linked with a month of the year. So ‘Group A’ hymns will be sung January, May, and September, etc.

With a total of 16 opening Communion hymns, each one will be sung 3 times per year. When a month has 5 Sundays, the extra hymn will be chosen from the Secondary Group of hymns. Every few years, there may be a few hymns rotated in-out as desired.

Sunday School/Bible Study Opening Hymns
The 10am service will have 3 opening hymns each month. A total of 12 hymns have been selected, with 1 more hymn for months with a 5^th Sunday. They are broken into four groups, each containing 3 hymns. The smaller grouping allows each group to be loosely linked with a month of the year. So ‘Group A’ hymns will be sung January, May, and September.

With a total of 12+1 opening hymns, each one will be sung 3 times per year. And as mentioned, when there is a 5^th Sunday, there is a designated hymn. Every few years, there may be a few hymns rotated in-out as desired.

Secondary Hymns
There are 28 hymns in the Secondary Hymn group. These are hymns that were highly ranked but didn’t quite make it into the Core Group and were not used for any of the other groups. When there is an open slot for a hymn, this is the place to look first. The 11am service will ‘regularly’ have open slots; however, there are not many open slots. As a result, we might only go through this list once in a year.

Closing Hymn.
After the preaching at the 11am service there is a closing hymn. This hymn is typically chosen by the pastor preaching the message. The preacher choses a hymn that is most appropriate for his sermon. This choice is not constrained by any list.

Closing Comments
When we exclude the Liturgical hymns and the Secondary hymns, there are 50 hymns that remain. These become the hymns of the church, specifically the 20 core hymns used during the primary worship service. Over  time, it is important to keep the music “fresh” and to avoid “ho hum” repetition.  Yet, the repetition cannot be neglected either. The Core hymns should rarely be changed, and if a change made, it should be small. However, there should be more freedom and liberty to change the opening hymns of Sunday School and Communion services. Possibly a Secondary hymn that needs to be sung more often can rotate into the Sunday School/Communion slot. This would be the more logical place to change and replace a hymn

Further, the thought is that the 11am worship will be the more attended service of the church; so those are the hymns that more of the people will sing. These hymns should be kept more constant. Change can occur more freely at the hymns of the other services.