February 2025 Message from an Elder

Dear Friends,
I hope those of you who were brave enough to make New Year resolutions find yourselves one month on with them still intact. Well done if that is you.

Those of us who were in church on Christmas Day looked at Christmas carols and asked ourselves questions like, “Why do we sing carols?” “What are they?” We decided that some were songs about events that happened two thousand years ago, some were about the response that shepherds and wise men made to those events, some like Good King Wenceslas were about Christian men putting their faith into action, and some were prayers or contained prayers within them, whilst others were songs of praise and worship, and some were statements about our beliefs.

I was given a lot of help in being taught how to prepare worship services, particularly how to choose relevant hymns. We do not always have an introit but if we do it should prepare us for the coming service or remind us why we have come into God’s presence. The opening hymn should be one of praise. The next one should be related to the bible reading or moving the congregation towards receiving the sermon or message that is about to be preached. The closing hymn should I feel be a good rousing
hymn that encourages us in what we have heard sending us out ready to work for Jesus.

We have at a couple of our Wednesday worship services studied a hymn. I am not suggesting that you abandon Bible study in favour of looking at hymns, but rather that you look at hymns as well. You may be surprised at what you discover, and some of the scripture contained in our hymns.
We have hymns for all the different events in our Christian year, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Harvest. I am sometimes shocked when I hear, “Why do we have to sing such dreary songs in Lent?” I hope you can work that one out for yourself.

I am not wanting our worship leaders to conform to my ideas of how a service should be. One of the things I like is the diversity of our worship, but I do think the ideas I suggested above might, if considered, enhance our praise and worship maybe making it more meaningful.

Thank you all for your support, wishing you a happy and prosperous 2025.
Yours in Christian love, Dave.