Jocelyn is after some. Anyone know any?
Congregational songs on godly living are really hard to find because they are really hard to write. Grown ups hate being told what to do (kids are used to it!) and preachy-ness generally makes for a bad song anyway. I've tried many times, but most have been way too awful to send to Philip for a tune. But here are a few suggestions:
Be Thou My Vision
May the Mind
Take My Life
1 Cor 13 (Rob Smith)
(but they are the three obvious ones)
These ones are a bit more tangential...
We belong to the day
Let Your Kingdom Come
Grace Unmeasured
We Are His People
Hopefully our new song will be finished soon. It's our best attempt so far at a song on godly living. At some stage we were thinking of re-releasing Nothing Else Matters as an adult song. You could try that.
Anyone else have ideas?
'living for your glory' by Tim Hughes works well at scpc, though it's lyrically pretty similar to 'take my life'. it's a great 'responding to God's word' (after the sermon) song.
ReplyDeleteLive for the Kingdom?
ReplyDeleteYes, they are both good.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is lacking, though, is really earthy examples of what it means to live for God's glory. Because if we don't spell it out, it's too easy to think that 'giving God my all' etc etc is about getting some spiritual feeling or something, rather than talking to that person at church who is boring me, or washing the dishes or not losing my temper or moving away from this computer and going and playing with the kids...
I guess what I'm after is lyrics that give me a shake and make me realise I must go and do something.
ReplyDeleteThere's a very powerful line in 'grace unmeasured' that does that. I'm singing away about how wonderful God's grace is blah blah, then the line comes - 'Grace... clothes me with power to do what is right.' And I'm awake. Ah. This grace really does mean that I have to change. And it gives me power to change. No excuses.
amen simone - there's such a lack of this sort of song
ReplyDeleteHi Simone! This is my first time commenting but I've been luring for a while! Found you through Nicole's blog (and was quite excited because I love your songs, both kids and adults!)
ReplyDeleteSongs about godly living: I love Michael Morrow's new song "This Life I Live", and "Give Me A Heart" from his CD is good too. "New Song in My Heart" might work, but maybe not concrete enough? "Till Your Time" from Reason music is also a favourite of mine. Rob Smith has a new song that we sang at the Emu Focus Group in Sydney a month ago which I'm guessing you will know! I probably shouldn't say more befre the CD comes out but it might work at a later date!
I love that line in "Grace Unmeasured" too!
Thank you for your ministry Simone!!
*lurking (!!)
ReplyDeleteHi Hannah. Thanks so much for commenting. It's lovely to have readers, but participants are much more fun.
ReplyDeleteMM is a star. I love his stuff. Rob had a winner or two in the last set as well. Looking forward to them.
I'll look up 'till your time'. I don't know it.
Will you be at Twist this year? (Last year?)
Just read Robert Cotrill's Wordwise Hymns post for today where he mentions 'Take Time To Be Holy'.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Rejoice! tune may not be to contemporary tastes, he notes that the words will fit Slane with some minor tweaking.
Okay Gary. I'm going to disagree with you on that hymn. It does sound a little better with Slane (though, I do think that tune is so wedded to Be Thou My Vision that it's very difficult to sing anything else to it - notice that even the choir had to break into into Be Thou!) but I think that the lyrics are probably to few people's taste as well.
ReplyDeleteI think the content of the hymn is great. It's the kind of ideas that we need to hear... but I'm not sure that the long list of imperatives works so well these days. And I'm not sure those particular imperatives speak to us.
Even without the thees and thous, it still sounds archaic. Maybe because with our pace of life the idea of 'taking time to be holy' seems silly. Maybe because we tend to think about prayer etc. more relationally than in terms of 'being holy' - which sounds like a w...
And maybe I've just had bad experiences with this song that I should move past. Do you sing this at church?
Yep, I was at TWIST last year. You have a good memory!
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely planning to be at the conference, but I'd love to come to Away as well this year if I can justify it! I just moved churches (and houses) this year and so I'm not as involved with music ministry now as I was at my previous church. Which makes it harder to say that spending money on a weekend conference is a good idea! (And then, I think I've pretty much done the content from the band and songleading strands and I have no involvement with sound, and have never tried song writing!)
All of which is to say - I'm not sure, but I'd really like to!
Twist away is really good. Better than a one day program. Come songwrite with us!
ReplyDeleteFight the good fight.
ReplyDeleteHe who would valiant be.
God be in my Head.
Come down O love divine.
Here's GBIMH done by Kings College Cambridge.
ReplyDeleteThe Servant Song?
ReplyDelete