A New Resource for Worship Preparation
One of the regular features in the weekly bulletin is a list of the proper for the next week’s worship service. “Propers” are the parts of the service specifically appointed for particular Sundays or festivals in the church year. This includes the Scripture readings as well as anything followed by “of the day”—Psalm of the Day, Hymn of the Day, even Prayer of the Day. The list of next week’s proper can be a helpful resources to prepare for the upcoming divine service. You might read through the appointed readings Saturday evening. You could read, or even sign, the Hymn of the Day and consider how its words conveys the message of God’s Word in poetry. Maybe you incorporate the upcoming week’s proper into your daily devotions; you could also do the same with that week’s proper. (Let this be a not so subtle hint to take a bulletin home with you if you’re in the habit of dropping it on the back table on your way out of church!)
Starting this week, we’ll have another resource available to help you prepare for worship. On the church website, we have a page with information for each Sunday in our current worship series. The information on this page is also what’s included in the bulletin each week: a description of the theme for the day, showing how all the parts of the proper tie together, along with the list of those readings, hymn, psalm, etc. We include this information in the weekly email newsletter as well. The internet also provides us with another capability: a music preview for each week.
If you go to the current series page and click on each week’s theme, you’ll open a section with the information for that week. At the bottom of each week’s section, there will be a link to a Service Playlist. This will take you to a YouTube playlist with recordings of the hymns and psalm we’ll be singing that week. This way you can know not only the Hymn and Psalm of the Day for that week, but the other hymns that have been selected for the service—and even give them a listen ahead of time! Like the other resources already provided, this can be helpful both for preparing for worship and for connecting your personal devotions throughout the week with our corporate gathering on Sunday/Monday.
A few more helpful notes on the playlists:
The videos in the playlist are pulled from what is available on YouTube, and not newly recorded by our musicians. So, the exact style and setting of a hymn might be a little different from how it is played on Sunday. Videos with hymn lyrics may also be slightly different from the hymnal, especially with hymns translated from other languages.
Occasionally, recordings of hymns might not be available for the playlist. For example, our opening hymn for this coming Reformation Sunday, “What Threat of Harm Can Hinder Me” (CW 875), is fairly new and so there are no videos of anyone performing it on YouTube. (But also don’t worry about “new”; the style is similar to many older hymns.) The playlist description will note when a hymn picked for Sunday isn’t in the playlist.
Sometimes, a good recording of a tune might have a different hymn title connected to it, since many hymns share tunes. Again, the playlist description will note specifically which hymns we are singing. Videos may also reference other hymnals’ numbering. The page numbers from Christian Worship: Hymnal and Psalter are included in the playlist description.
In whatever way you use it, I pray this new resource will help you to meditate on and treasure the wonderful gift of God’s Word.