by John Calvin | May 11th, 2008
I had a somewhat embarrassing event happen to me today… I am the hymn leader at our small church, and that typically means I get to pick the hymns. We have a very good pianist, so usually I just bring a list of the hymns for the service (we don’t print them in the bulletin). Today though…
1. I had been out of touch this week, preparing for exams, and so when the pastor found out that we would have extra people for the service and would be using our backup hymnals, he went ahead and picked hymns so that he could verify that they were in both hymnals. No problem…yet.
2. I get the message such a short time before the service that I didn’t get to talk to the pastor about it.
3. When I read the list, I realized that two of the five hymns he had picked I didn’t even know! Needless to say, I couldn’t get to talk with him before I had to lead them. He had printed them in the bulletin this week, so there was no going back!
4. When I look up the hymns, I find that one is in 6/4 and the other in 6/8 time–both of them REALLY hard to conduct, at least compared to 3/4 or 4/4.
5. I’m pretty good at sight-reading, so I just ask the pianist to play the first hymn through once before we sing it…
6. Somehow, I manage to figure out the tune and lead the singing. Didn’t sound like many others knew the tune either, but it wasn’t the worst singing I’ve ever heard. When I finished, the pastor stood up and asked us to sing the second verse over again–a capella!
Somehow with the Lord’s help I managed to get through it without disgracing myself. When I talked to the pianist later (our pastor’s daughter) she was shocked I didn’t know them–apparently they are both old favorites in her family. Memo to self: I think next week I’ll make sure to correspond with the pastor and pianist about the hymn selections a couple days ahead of time!
Feeling somewhat more humble about his hymn leading now,
John Calvin Young