The heart of worship

As churches are beginning to reopen after the Corona virus lockdown, one of the things which makes lots of us very sad is that we're not allowed to sing together as part of our communal worship.  It's a sensible precaution to help prevent potential infections within our congregations, but many might be wondering, 'How can we worship without music?'  For many Christians, 'a time of worship' means a period in a service which is given over to singing praises to God.

I love singing, and I find that the words of many of the songs and hymns we sing express my praises and prayers so much more eloquently than I ever could.  Words set to music tend to stick in our heads much more than words without music, so what we sing is important because that's the way our congregations learn theology.  It will be difficult to gather for our Church services over the coming weeks without expressing our worship through singing together.

BUT ask yourself, as Mike Pilavachi asked his congregation in Watford more than 20 years ago, "When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?"  We don't come to church primarily for our own satisfaction, for our own comfort, for our own enjoyment, for entertainment (although we might well find all those things in church).  Primarily, we come to join our Christian family in worshipping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; in the words of Common Worship (copyright © The Archbishop's Council, 2000) 'Morning Prayer on Sunday':

to offer our praise and thanksgiving,
to hear and receive God's holy word,
to pray for the needs of the world,
and to seek the forgiveness of our sins,
that by the power of the Holy Spirit
we may give ourselves to the service of God.

I spent some time with my church a few years ago, thinking about our own worship services.  We started out thinking about what worship is, and we learned the following:

• We can't worship God if we don't know him personally, because our worship is our response for all he's done for us - he's made himself known to us and rescued us from our own rebellion against him.
• Our response is made both in the rituals in which we participate (congregational worship), and in our behaviour (our obedience to the Lord's commands about how we should live our lives).  
• In Hebrew, the same word means both 'service' (behaviour) and 'worship' (ritual).  So worship is what we do with our whole lives in thanksgiving to God for his love and concern for us.
• In the New Testament, worship means to believe the good news about Jesus Christ; to respond by serving him with all that we are and all that we have; and to do all this in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the OT people of God in Malachi's day were robbing God by not bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse (Malachi 3:8-10), so we rob God if we worship only with our mouths, and not with our hearts and minds and lives; if we treat what happens in church as a performance; or if we think that somehow our rituals can earn his favour. 

Coming back to Mike Pilavachi's congregation in Watford in the late 1990s . . . At the time, the musicians there were on a creative high, writing songs which were sung in many other churches.  They had a great band, fantastic equipment, and church services sounded amazing.  But something was missing, and Pilavachi decided that for a season, they would gather without a band, sound system, worship songs . . . .

The 'worship leader' (ie the person who led the music) at Pilavachi's church was Matt Redman.  As he struggled with his own loss of role, he says,

That made me ask some questions.  What are my motives when I'm up there on the stage?  Am I doing this as a service, or am I trying to build my own little thing?  It was a great moment for me, as a musician and as a worshipper, to refocus . . . 

As part of his response to all this, Redman wrote the song, The heart of worship.  According to this article from Crosswalk, he remembers writing the song quickly in his bedroom, simply as his personal, subjective response to what he was learning about worship.  (Echoes of Vikki Cook writing the tune Before the throne for her own personal use - see previous post).  But when Redman shared the song with Mike Pilavachi, he suggested making a few adjustments to the lyrics so that any member of the church could relate to it.  Not long afterwards, it was recorded as the title track of Redman's album, The Heart of Worship, released in 1999.  It has since become very well known, sung in churches around the world.  Covers have been recorded by a number of other artists.   In the Crosswalk article, Redman says, "It nearly didn't go any further than my bedroom.  But I love that . . ."

You can watch a lyric video here.

As well as the article from Crosswalk linked above, I read the following in preparing this post: Heart of Worship: The Story Behind The Song; The Heart of Worship story behind the song and reflections on listening to 20 years of modern worship; The story behind the song 'Heart of Worship'

O thou who camest from above

I can't really understand how it is that I've been writing this blog for nearly four months and I haven't yet included a hymn by Charles Wesley!  John Julian writes that Charles Wesley "is said to have written no less than 6500 hymns".  According to Wikipedia, Singing the Faith (the current authorised hymn book of the Methodist Church in the UK) includes 89 hymns by Wesley, out of a total of 748.  Even Ancient and Modern: Hymns and Songs for Refreshing Worship (the most recent edition of the traditional Anglican hymn book) includes 24 of Wesley's hymns out of a total of 847 - the only two authors who have more in that book are Timothy Dudley-Smith at 41, and John Bell at 33.

Charles Wesley was the 18th of 19 children born to Rev Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth in Lincolnshire, and his wife Susanna.   Eight of his siblings had already died, and at his birth in December 1707, it looked as if baby Charles would quickly follow them to the grave.  But the Lord clearly had other ideas!

The Wesley children received a thorough education in the Christian faith from their mother, and Charles and his sister Mehetabel (Hetty) inherited their father's gift for poetry, as did (to a lesser extent) their brothers Samuel and John.

Charles graduated from his mother's home school to Westminster School in 1716, and went up to Oxford in 1726.  While he was a student, he decided (in the words of Faith Cook, Our Hymn Writers and their Hymns, [Darlington, Evangelical Press, 2005/2015], p 99) "to give up the light-hearted company he had been enjoying and devote himself to the pursuit of a life pleasing to God."  He spent approximately the next 10 years trying to please God by his own efforts, to earn his salvation.  He was ordained into the ministry of the Church of England in 1735, and travelled with his brother John as a missionary to Georgia, although he soon returned to England.  It was on Sunday 21 May 1738 (by the pre-1752 Julian calendar) that he says in his journal,

I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ . . . I saw that by faith I stood; by the continual support of faith kept from falling, though by myself I am ever sinking into sin (quoted by Faith Cook, op cit, pp 99-100).

Charles very quickly began to express the joy of his new-found spiritual freedom in verse, and continued to do so until the end of his life.

O thou who camest from above was published by Charles Wesley in 1762 in a book called Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures.  According to S T Kimbrough, John Wesley usually edited Charles' poetry before it was published, but this publication was an exception.  Kimbrough describes Short Hymns as "a collage of Biblical allusions", beginning with Genesis and working through to Revelation.

John Julian, Vol 1, p 852 points out that O thou who camest from above originally appeared in two verses of eight lines each (as shown here - scroll to p 66 of the PDF), rather than the four verses of four lines with which we're more familiar today.  However, looking the page scans on Hymnary.org (the earliest dated 1797), it seems that the four verse arrangement quickly became more usual.  It's one of a series of hymns inspired by texts from Leviticus.  The particular verse shown with this hymn is Leviticus 6:13: Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out (ESV).  In the hymn, Charles uses this image, but the fire becomes 'sacred love' burning 'on the mean altar of my heart', to the Lord's glory.  Rather than the burnt-offering which is the context for the Leviticus passage, the sacrifice in the hymn is the life of the believer, in his or her work, speech, thought, use of gifts, doing the Lord's perfect will in acts of faith and love. 

It seems that many people had a problem with the word 'inextinguishable' in the sixth line of the hymn.  Bishop E H Bickersteth commented in The Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (see here):

The Editor believes that this admirable hymn would have been far more popular if it had not been for the very long word "inextinguishable."  Words of five syllables must be admitted into hymns sparingly; but for a whole congregation to be poised on six, practically leads to a hymn being passed by.   

The United Methodist Church 'History of Hymns' entry states that John Wesley himself edited this line to read, 'There let it for thy glory burn with ever bright undying blaze.'  So if Charles hadn't published Short Hymns independently of his brother, we might never have known the original!
I can't say I've ever found it to be a problem!  The hymn books with which I was familiar in the 1980s and early 1990s, when I first sang this hymn, all use Charles Wesley's original word.   I love the sense of the Lord kindling a flame of love on my heart and keeping it burning, the sense of committing my whole life 'in humble prayer and fervent praise', looking forward to the day when 'death thy endless mercies seal'.  None of these things would be possible without the Lord working by his Spirit in my heart and mind and life.

Given that Charles published O thou who camest from above independently from his brother John, it's fascinating to read the following in 'A Sketch of Mr Wesley's Character' by the Rev Samuel Bradburn (scroll to p 20), which was published in 1791 as an introduction to John Wesley's Select Letters, Chiefly on Personal Religion:

His modesty prevented his saying much of his own experience . . . he did not, when speaking of doctrines, produce himself as an evidence . . . Yet he was sufficiently explicit among his friends.  He told me, when with him in Yorkshire, in the year 1781, that "his experience might almost any time be found in the following lines:-

O Thou who camest from above,

The pure celestial fire t'impart,

Kindle a flame of sacred love

On the mean altar of my heart!

There let it for thy glory burn

With inextingishable blaze,

And trembling to its source return,

In humble love and fervent praise."

On another occasion, according to Edwin D Mouzon in The Fundamentals of Methodism (p 68), 

The nearest [John Wesley] is known to have come to professing [that he'd attained perfect love] was when to the question whether he had ever experienced the blssing of perfect love he replied by quoting Charles Wesley's hymn:

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire,
To work, and speak, and think, for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me;

Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete. 

Faith Cook (op cit, p 114) comments that 'it is thought that Charles usually composed his words with a tune in mind.'  It would be interesting to discover whether that is the case for O thou who camest from above, and what that tune might have been.  For me, the only tune to which I remember singing these words is Hereford which was composed by Charles Wesley's grandson, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, and which seems to fit the words perfectly. 

There's a lyric video here, sung to the tune Hereford.  A Youtube search will show up videos of this hymn sung to other tunes, such as Wilton or Stopford.

Be still, for the presence of the Lord

Last Sunday, BBC1 rebroadcast Songs of Praise: the UK's Favourite Hymn, which was first shown in September last year.  They counted down and sang the top 10, and at number 9 was Be still, for the presence of the Lord.  The songwriter, David J Evans, spoke to introduce the hymn, and the soloist leading the singing was one of my favourite singers, Lesley Garrett.  So I decided that this would be the subject of my next post on this blog.

At St Mary, Halewood, where I was Vicar for 8 years, we sang the last verse of this hymn as our introit every Sunday, reminding us that the power of the Lord was present and at work among us as we gathered to worship him.  So it has a particular place in my heart for that reason.

On the programme, the presenter, Aled Jones, asked David Evans if he remembered the first time it was performed.  This was his response:

We had a big Christian conference coming up that my church is involved in, and I thought, "Maybe I might see if people want to sing it there."  So, I performed it to a group of musicians.  And I was just absolutely stunned by the response.  Half the group were kneeling and several were weeping gently.  And I thought, "Gosh, this is a bit scary."  Cos I'd never really experienced anything like that before.  It was then that I began to realise that maybe I'd written actually something that had a bit of power to it.  

Favourite Hymns: 2000 Years of Magnificat (Marjorie Reeves and Jenyth Worsley, Continuum, 2001, p 197) tells us that David Evans is a musician and a teacher.  He was involved in the early house church/charismatic movement in the 1970s, and wrote this song in 1985 in response to his feeling that

Like Jacob at Bethel (Genesis 28) . . . that we were asleep on holy ground . . . I felt that our contemporary worship had been largely oblivious to the awesomeness of God's presence within it.

I think that one reason this song is so popular is, as the Revd Ian Poulton points out in his blog,  that it 'is both profound and very simple'.  He comments further that 'the breadth of Biblical theology encompassed in this single song is vast'.  As well as the story of Jacob in Genesis 28, the song reflects the story of Moses at the burning bush, Jesus' Transfiguration, and the ascended Lord Jesus in Revelation, and many more.  'Be still' is a command which we hear in Psalm 37:7, Psalm 46:10 and Zechariah 2:13.  As we are still before the Lord, so he has a chance to be heard as he speaks to us.

The Songs of Praise programme is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK until Saturday 8 August.  The section on Be still, for the presence of the Lord begins just over seven minutes into the programme.

There is a lyric video here.

Will you come and follow me?

After looking at an old hymn set to a new tune, I thought I'd take a new hymn set to an old tune for this post.

"Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" is a question attributed to a number of people (eg Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Whitfield, William Booth) to make the point that there's no reason why good, popular tunes shouldn't be used with Christian words to praise the Lord.  (Of course, such tunes have to be old enough to be out of copyright before that can happen!).  Before going any further, it seems that the most reliable attribution of the quote above is to the Revd Rowland Hill.  According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, E W Broome wrote in his book The Rev. Rowland Hill (1881), 'He did not see any reason why the devil should have all the good tunes'.

The earliest lyrics associated with the tune of Kelvingrove are about a young woman, forced to marry the man who had raped her because she became pregnant as a result.  According to Traditional Tune Archive, this song was published in the second volume of The Scottish Minstrel (c 1811).  The tune was there called Kelvin Water, "although the tune is much older than that volume."  The name of the tune comes from Kelvingrove, which was described in The Book of Scottish Song (1843) as 'a picturesque and richly wooded dell through which the river Kelvin flows, [which] lies a very short distance to the north-west of Glasgow'.  It was a popular place for lovers' trysts.  In 1852, the land was purchased by Glasgow Town Council, and used to create West End Park, now known as Kelvingrove Park.

At least two more sets of words (each more sanitised than the last!) were written for the tune in the early nineteenth century.  The version of the words which appeared in The Harp of Renfewshire (1821) refers to the tune as Bonnie lassie, O.  It seems that this tune is best described as a traditional Scottish tune, whose origins (before 1811) are lost in the mists of time.

The advantage of using a traditional tune like this, especially one with its origins in the oral folk tradition, is that its very 'singable', and already fairly well known.  As Dr C Michael Hawn (see link below) points out, Scottish (along with Welsh and Irish) folk tunes provide a Celtic flavour, which is currently popular.  Kelvingrove appears to have originally been played in 2/4 time, but there is a 3/4 version which is often used with Will you come and follow me?  (In Anglican Hymns Old and New (Kevin Mayhew, 2008), versions in both time signatures are given).

The lyrics Will you come and follow me? were written by John Bell and Graham Maule of the Iona Community.  John Bell also arranged the 3/4 version of the tune, although I don't know if the time signature was original to him.  The copyright date for the hymn is 1987.  The words take the form of a dialogue between Jesus and his followers - the first four verses  of the hymn are Jesus' challenge to those who would follow him, and the final verse their (our) response.  The hymn emphasizes the radical nature of the Lord's call on our lives, a call which Jesus himself describes in these words: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Mark 8:34).   Dr C Michael Hawn, in his article in the United Methodist Church History of Hymns, calls the text 'prophetic', and points out that it uses 'many words not usually found in traditional hymns'.

In the three decades plus since the publication of Will you come and follow me? it has become a very popular hymn, which lends itself to both traditional and contemporary worship.  I find it both highly challenging (there's no room for compromise in following Christ's call), but also very enjoyable to sing.

I found two Songs of Praise videos of this hymn.  Sadly, they both omit the third verse.

• This one was recorded in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, where I was ordained priest in 1998 - I even spotted a few members of my former church family in St Mary Halewood amongst the congregation!

• I've also included this one, because it was recorded in Glasgow, where the tune Kelvingrove originates.  

If you want to hear all five verses, there's a lyric video here.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Before the throne of God above

I learned this hymn while I was a Curate in Liverpool in the late 1990s.  In preparing to write this post, I've learned that the tune we sing it to was only written in 1997, so it was a very new addition to the modern repertoire!  It's a powerful and emotional hymn, reminding us that we can't possibly approach the throne of Almighty God on the basis of anything we have done, or anything we are, but only on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, his resurrection and ascension to heaven, where he is ever interceding (praying) for us.

The words of Before the throne of God above were written by Charitie Lees Smith/Bancroft/De Cheney (1841 - 1923).  She was born Charitie Lees Smith in Ireland.  Her father was a clergyman.  She married Arthur Bancroft in 1869, and was widowed in 1881.  Charitie later emigrated to California, where she married again in 1891: she and Frank De Cheney divorced in 1915.  All three of her surnames are used in different hymn books.

Before the throne of God above was first published in England in 1863, and in America in 1865.  Charles Spurgeon included it in Our Own Hymn Book in 1866, and he clearly memorised the words, because he quoted part of this hymn in his last public address (quoted by Chris Fenner, taken from The Sword and the Trowel) (London: Passmore & Alabaster, February 1892), p 51):

Though I have preached Christ crucified for more than forty years, and have led many to my Master's feet, I have at this moment no ray of hope but that which comes from what my Lord Jesus has done for guilty men.

                           Behold him there! the bleeding Lamb!
                           My perfect, spotless Righteousness,
                           The great unchangeable "I AM,"
                           The King of glory and of grace.

Miss Smith included this hymn as the title piece in her own collection of 26 poems, Within the Vail and Other Sacred Poems in 1867.  She wrote the following preface to the book:

The following hymns and verses, illustrative of some phases of a believer's experience, have been written at various intervals during the last few years.  With some of them the public is already acquainted, and the favour with which these have been received, in their separate form, has emboldened the author to offer this unpretending little collection to the reader.

May these verses find an echo in other hearts, and be of help, especially in hours of trial, by reminding of a Saviour's sympathy and a Father's love.  May they help some to take humbly and patiently the chastisement which is sent, not less in tenderness than in wisdom.  We are 'not as yet come to the rest, and the inheritance.'  Thank God, we shall soon enjoy both!

The author will make but one, it is hoped, reasonable request, namely, that those who are disposed to reproduce any of the following pieces, will do so without altering the form in which, after consideration, the writer has thought it best to leave them.

This shows how the hymn appeared in the author's own book:-

Before the recent tune was written in 1997, Before the throne of God above was set to many different tunes.  Hymnary.org lists or gives page scans showing it set to: Dunedin, Breslau, Sweet Hour, Festus, Jerusalem, Intercession, Galilee, Duke Street and Darley.  

Chris Fenner, in his comments on Hymnology Archive quotes a letter from Vikki Cook, who composed the modern tune, Before the throne.  She tells of how she first heard the hymn in 1997.  She was part of the worship team in  her church, who learned the hymn to the tune Jerusalem and taught it to the congregation.  It didn't go down well!  The tune wasn't familiar to American ears, and as Vikki says, "it was not a very good match for these words and did nothing to highlight the truths being communicated.  I didn't care for the melody much either, but I fell in love with the words!"

Vikki took a copy of the words home with her, and stuck them in her Bible, so she could read them in her quiet times.  She continues, "I spent many mornings with God weeping over those lyrics.  I had to find a way to sing these words to God, even if it was only for myself.  When I made up my mind to write a new melody it came surprisingly quick, in about an hour."  She played the tune to her husband, and then to their worship leader, and it began to take off.  "I'm amazed at how God has used this song in the church at large, especially when I think that I just wrote this new melody so that I could worship God in my quiet times with Him.  Even though it has been several years, I still weep when I sing the part that says, "for God the Just is satisfied to look on Him, and pardon me."

If you know the modern version of the hymn, you'll have probably noticed that Vikki Cook made some minor changes to the words in her version.  She's also written a fourth verse, which appears in Anglican Hymns Old and New (Kevin Mayhew, 2008).  It was written to be included in Jesus Son of God: A Dramatic Musical for Easter (Nashville: LifeWay, 2003), created and arranged by Gary Rhodes, but isn't usually included in hymn books or recordings.  (I'm grateful to Chris Fenner for researching this and letting me know).  I include the words to that verse here, with the author's permission:

            I bow before the cross of Christ,
            and marvel at this love divine;
            God's perfect Son was sacrificed
            to make me righteous in God's eyes.
            This river's depths I cannot know
            but I can glory in its flood,
            the Lord Most High has bowed down low
            and poured on me his glorious love,
            and poured on me his glorious love.

You can hear Vikki's original recording of Before the throne of God above here.

There's a lyric video here.