RESOURCE
Singing from
the same playlist
John Murdock introduces the new PCI Worship Hub.
A
s part of its commitment to resourcing congregations for aspects of their weekly activities, the committee for Congregational Life has developed a new PCI Worship Hub. It is hoped that this will be a valuable tool to help those who plan and lead worship in our congregations.
Beyond the old congregational playlist Gone are the days when all our congregations simply used hymn books in the pews, usually one of the versions of the Church Hymnary or the Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook, perhaps supplemented by copies of Glory to God or Mission Praise. Back then, whoever was responsible for choosing the items of praise simply selected from these possibilities based on the theme of the service. Now there are many other books of hymns and songs, as well as an enormous amount of material available digitally from which psalms, hymns and songs
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Herald March 2023
can be selected. Many congregations project the words on screens and in some cases the hymn books, which were removed for health and safety reasons during the Covid pandemic, have not returned to the pews. Both of these developments have significantly expanded the range of possibilities in choosing praise.
Finding just the right song While it is a great advantage in having so much material available to us, the downside is that the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming and it can be difficult to choose what to use to fit with a particular theme. The advantage of using a hymn book is that the content is thematically arranged as in our denominational hymn books, or it may have a good thematic or scriptural
…the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming and it can be difficult to choose what to use to fit with a particular theme.
index at the back. However, this is not so easy with downloadable material. This is where the PCI Worship Hub aims to help ministers, praise group leaders, organists and anyone who even occasionally needs to choose items for worship.
What will be on the hub? The Worship Hub will provide links to a variety of worship resources under various tabs, as follows: Psalms in contemporary versions. The psalms traditionally have been at the centre of Irish Presbyterian worship. Indeed, until the end of the 19th century, only metrical psalms would have been sung, unaccompanied, during services of worship. With so many new hymns and songs being available today, the traditional metrical psalms, with a few well-known exceptions, have largely been squeezed out. Perhaps we are beginning to notice what we have lost; however, it becomes difficult to imagine a revival of singing the psalms if that is limited to
