WORSHIP

The Rev Roddy Hamilton offers a new approach to hymn selection.

IF you were to make up a list of your favourite hymns, what would you include?

It might be an interesting exercise simply to see the traditions that have drawn you together. Maybe your choice illustrates your life’s highs and lows, or major events you have encountered, or maybe, if we were honest, the list would be skewed to a particular style or words that speak to your own interpretation of belief.

I imagine my own would be closer to the latter, possibly with almost everything written in the last 100 years. I know someone who doesn’t give a hymn a second look if it is not at least a century old.

‘Add to Playlist’ is a Radio 4 programme that begins with one song and, among the four or five presenters and guests, explores how that song is constructed, hearing about background, history as well as musicality. All quite fascinating.

But the exciting part is when one of the guests is invited to pick the next track. This has to be linked in some way to the previous one. It might be a phrase, a couple of notes, or a bit of cultural history. It is a great moment because it often sends you tumbling in an unexpected direction. One episode moved us from Babushka by Kate Bush to Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, and the next guest found a link from Grieg to the theme from Mission: Impossible. Fabulous!

To find the links, you’ll need to listen to the podcast, but it throws you around a whole bundle of different genres with a common meeting place.

“What was fascinating was the way we shot from Fairest Lord Jesus to Come Holy Spirit and Plainsong then links to the tune Repton with a stop-over in the Sub-Sahara!

What if, for an experiment with the breadth of our religious musical tradition, we designed some worship round that playlist premise?

We gave it a try calling it ‘Add To Hymnlist’ where we began with one piece, and found a link to other religions hymns or music. What was fascinating was the way we shot from Fairest Lord Jesus to Come Holy Spirit and Plainsong then links to the tune Repton with a stop-over in the Sub-Sahara!

The point being that while worship leaders choose a variety of hymns and styles, some of us tend to gravitate towards similar styles and avoid others. To be honest I find it quite difficult to choose hymns whose tunes or lyrics I don’t like (How Great Thou Art, In Christ Alone) and I know people raise their eyes heavenward at some of the ones I do choose. In both scenarios we limit our language of God and experience of worship by a diet of similar styles. More of the same limits how we speak of God, understand who God is and describe the context of the relationships we have with one another.

The invitation of an ‘Add to Hymn-list’ idea broadens that, taking us out of our comfort zones, but releasing the breadth of our tradition. The diversity created is an experience of meeting places with our brothers and sisters, and offers an encounter and connection with each other and with God.

Finding a way to explore these connections and relationships with each other invites a broader language and experience of faith and speaks more widely and more diversely about our beliefs, our story, our traditions and how we encounter our relationship with the world and the world’s creator. 

The Rev Roddy Hamilton is minister at Bearsden: New Kilpatrick.