Peter Moger, National Worship Development Officer for the Church of England, presents part two of a two part series on selecting hymns:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In my last article, I offered some thoughts on the placing of hymns and songs at\u00a0various points in the liturgy, using the RSCM\u2019s Sunday by Sunday<\/em> hymn lists in VL,\u00a0looking in particular at opening hymns and hymns before the Gospel.<\/p>\n The main liturgical purpose of a hymn at the Preparation of the Table<\/strong> (often called an ‘Offertory Hymn’) is to manage the \u2018gear-change\u2019 from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Sacrament.\u00a0 It should be long enough to cover the preparation of the Table and the gifts (and perhaps also the taking of a collection, and censing in some traditions) \u2013 so a hymn of double metre (e.g. 8 7 8 7 D) works well here.\u00a0<\/p>\n Offertory hymns don\u2019t have to be overtly sacramental, but inevitably many hymns chosen for this point in the service are.\u00a0Coming before the Sursum corda<\/em> at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, this hymn can be a powerful means of encouraging the congregation to prepare to join their worship with that of ‘the whole company of heaven.’<\/p>\n The distribution of Communion<\/strong> is the place for a devotional hymn or song which helps worshippers meet with Christ in the sacrament.\u00a0A hymn with a strong sacramental theme works best here.\u00a0The volume of this hymn is crucial: unaccompanied singing is often preferable here (if you have singers to lead it), as is the use of Taiz\u00e9 chants or quiet worship songs.<\/p>\n The job of the final <\/strong>(post Communion) hymn<\/strong> is not to get the clergy out of the way so that everyone can have coffee, but to send out God’s people ‘to live and work to his praise and glory.’\u00a0It is a mission hymn.\u00a0Common Worship<\/em> makes it clear that post Communion hymns should come before the blessing and are not intended as recessional hymns.\u00a0 Hence, as long as they do\u00a0their job,\u00a0they don’t have to be over-long.<\/p>\n Peter Moger<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Peter Moger, National Worship Development Officer for the Church of England, presents part two of a two part series on selecting hymns:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vislit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}