We attended an RPC church recently in which only the Pslams were sung. Later I was at a conference in which the speaker (Michael Horton) said that singing the Psalms was a better way than regular hymns because in singing a Psalm, one gets the whole counsel of God rather than the favorite bits and pieces that someone decided to write up into a hymn. Certainly I can agree with that. However, we noticed that at this RPC church, they didn't sing the whole Psalm. They had divided it up into segments, each with its own tune, and they would sing the segments, not the whole thing. Furthermore, in an effort to get the thing to rhyme, the grammar of the sentence had been so rearranged that one had to spend alot of time trying to figure out what one had just sung.

In the Episcopal church, I grew up chanting Psalms. I think this is a really better way: the tune is simple, one gets the whole Psalm, and rhyme does not matter.

Nevertheless, I still love the old hymns. With the instruments. And the organ. There, I said it. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/uhoh.gif" alt="" />

Stand Fast, Craigellachie!