Well I received my sample copy of this in the week and I do have a couple of issues with it. Firstly the size of the print seemed to be fairly small and I think it could be difficult to read for some people.
The second thing was what appears to be a lack of consistency - one hymn has a number of verses with the words printed within the music staves making it very easy for musicians to sing when they are leading - other hymns have the music on one page and the words on the opposite page which makes it very difficult for musicians to sing (unless they know the words off by heart.
I do wonder if this is going to be a massive damp squib all round as from what I know and hear there are lots of churches that care not aware of the publication of the new book - I think we are the only church in our circuit that has taken any interest in the book and in fact it appears that many of our members have not heard of this book - not a good sign given it is published this year.
1 comment:
It seems to me that in the main, the churches that can afford the new book are those which won't want or need more than a few copies of it, whilst those churches which want it will be those that can least afford it:
'Richer' churches will probably use a projector and so will not require many printed copies, certainly not of words editions. They may also, like our church, buy one copy of new contemporary worship songbooks and have a MRL licence to allow music copies to be made of most songs.
'Poorer' and smaller churches in my experience tend to be those without a projector - many of these will feel they should get the new book because it is effectively the new Methodist Hymn Book.
Maybe it's intended as a Methodist resource to avoid us falling into non-Methodist 'heresy' (witness the controversy over the penal substitution reference in 'In Christ Alone') - apart from that, I'm not at all sure what it's purpose is supposed to be - we already have H&P for pre-1980 hymns and most of us who use newer material already have many sources for it!
The Methodist Church has plenty of work to do helping to build the Kingdom here, but in my opinion, publishing a new hymn book is a diversion for us when other publishers are providing good quality contemporary material already.
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