New hymnary supplement

HOW do you select 200 hymns out of the thousands that have been written, all over the world, in the past 20 years?

That is the question Phill Mellstrom and Iain McLarty, with a committee of around 15, have been wrestling with for the last four years. (“That’s quite fast for a hymn book,” notes Iain.)

The fruits of their labours will be presented at this month’s General Assembly, with the launch of God Welcomes All, a supplement to the Church of Scotland’s CH4 hymnbook.

The book was conceived at the General Assembly of 2019, when the then Faith Nurture Forum was encouraged to explore a supplement to CH4, to have a contemporary focus.

The task fell to Phill and Iain, who are Church of Scotland worship development workers but also both professional musicians, with experience between them in a huge range of musical styles in both spiritual and secular contexts.

It was, Iain says, ‘a mammoth task’. “I think we now realise with previous hymnbooks how much voluntary time people put into it. It’s a really significant piece of work.”

The first step was to define ‘contemporary’. “I have had so many times when I have been in a congregation and someone introduces this ‘contemporary’ song, and it was written before I was born,” says Iain. “‘Contemporary’ is a loaded term when it comes to worship and music in churches, but instead of associating it with one style or genre we took it as anything written in the last 20 years.”

As a result, the book is designed to have something for every church, whether they use a choir and organ or praise band. It includes songs familiar to Scottish audiences from the likes of John Bell, Fischy Music and the Rend Collective, but Iain has also tapped into his experience with the World Council of Churches to bring in hymns from all over the world.

Having considered around 10,000 songs altogether, Phill and Iain presented about 800 of them to the committee, which was made up of ministers and church musicians from varying worship backgrounds, with a diversity of theology, geography and gender. Over the course of many Zoom sessions and three residential gatherings, the songs were whittled down to a final 219.

The residential meetings were essential to understanding whether a hymn would work in a congregational setting. “There are songs that come alive when you sing them in person, and others where you realise they’re not going to work,” says Phill. They set a high bar: “There were a few times when we were talking about a song, and no-one had anything negative to say about it, but noone was fighting for it. And we asked the question ‘who’s excited by this song?’ and if no-one put their hand up, that tells its own story. It’s not the right song for this collection, however well written it is.”

‘God Welcomes All’ is designed to be a book that reflects its times, with themes including the climate crisis and creation, and dementia and ageing. It also, Phill says, is a product of the time of change that the Church of Scotland is going through. “The committee are all involved in churches going through this significant change. There is that sense of the book speaking into this space.

“It’s been a real team effort to move this forward, with so much going on in church life.”

“I think this is going to be really unique,” adds Iain. “There are a lot of songs which aren’t in other hymn books and a lot for congregations to explore. I think it’s really going to be a gift to the Church.”

‘God Welcomes All’ is available in hardback from early summer. Digital resources including videos, backing tracks and samples will follow later this year with support from the Hymnary Trustees.