There’s a great wave of new, fresh, creative, beautiful arrangements of old hymns. These are the top 5 that I’ve found, please comment below if you have any others you’d like to nominate.

1. Jesus Paid It All – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

I think I listened to this on repeat for a week straight. One of the most powerful arrangements I’ve ever heard of one of the most powerful worship songs ever written. Hard to beat that.

If any are interested in a loop for this arrangement I have one published.

2. Battle Hymn Of The Republic – Page CXVI (Hymns II)

Page CXVI has plenty of awesome arrangements but this is one of the more surprising ones. I didn’t expect to be blown away like I was with this arrangement. It’s hard to rock this one with it’s march shuffle rhythm, but they found a way. When the chorus opens up it’s a beautiful thing.

Other killer songs from their Volume I Hymns album: Nothing But the Blood, Joy

3. Come Thou Fount – Coram Deo Church (Doxology)

Vocals on this are just killer, the lead male vocal channeled his inner Rufus Wainright perfectly. Probably the simplest arrangement on this list, but all the great arrangements of this song I’ve heard are simple, it’s just the way this song was meant to be played I think.

4. I Sing the Mighty Power of God – Ex Nihilo (Rain City Hymnal)

So many great songs of this album, but this arrangement builds on each verse just so well and when it eventually goes for it towards the end, the pay off was well worth the build up. Also for you more adventurous types that dig some electronica, there’s a Sandman Theory Remix of this that’s awesome!

Other killer songs from this album: Doxology (The Northern Conspiracy), The Solid Rock (E-pop), Here Is Love (Ex Nihilo)

5. How Deep The Father’s Love For Us – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

It’s only appropriate that this Mars Hill’s Good Friday Service sit as the bookends to this list. I said before I think that set is probably the best worship set I’ve heard start to finish. Just absolutely incredible.

So what songs did I miss that deserved a mention?

Over the past couple years my heart has really been moved towards re-arranging hymns, due in large part to the influence of Mars Hill’s worship leaders but also due to a conviction on singing theologically rich lyrics. One of my favorite hymns is “The Solid Rock” by Edward Mote. I’ve done a couple versions of this song and always enjoyed E-pop’s version of this song, but on one particular listen it moved from appreciation to an urgency to do it.

Most of the time I try and respond to that urgency in my spirit, there are a lot of songs I have in the queue to loop so I have to prioritize in some way. So this arrangement is a version off of the E-pop arrangement. Same hook in the piano melody but used some different instrumentation, rhythm and added a more heavy instrumental section.

Remember to vote on the loop below, this really helps me get a sense of what folks find useful. Also it is used to calculate top loops widget in sidebar for people to quickly see the better loops.

Song: The Solid Rock by Edward Mote (E-pop arrangement), Album “Rain City Hymnal Vol. 1”
Key: Bm
Bpm: 72 (3/4)
Click-In: 2 bar

Section: Time (bar)

• Verse 1: 0:47 (20)
• Verse 2: 1:27 (36)
• Chorus 1: 1:47 (44) *Note: a beat drops in chorus (each chorus drops a beat)*
• Verse 3: 2:20 (57) *beat 2 is now beat 1*
• Chorus 2: 2:40 (65)
• Verse 4: 3:14 (78) *beat 3 is now beat 1*
• Chorus 3: 3:34 (86)
• Instrumental: 3:47 (92) *back on beat 1*
• Chorus 4: 4:07 (100)
• Outro: 4:20 (105) *beat 2 is now beat 1*

If you download this loop or you’ve benefited in any way or are appreciative of the service, I’d ask that you please consider donating whatever you feel the loop is worth. The amount (including $0) I leave up to you.

 

 The Solid Rock (Loop) [5:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download: aif / mp3 / mid / rns (Reason 4) / vocal cue

When I first started dating my husband about nine years ago, I would write letters to him everyday, sometimes 2 or three a day. Some were for him, some were just about him. Most I would keep in a shoe box and save for a later day. I would write to him in class and leave it for him in the locker we shared. I couldn’t wait to check it after the next period to see if he’d written back yet. In the letters, I could say what I truly wanted to tell him, whether declaring my “undying love” or just letting him in on what my day consisted of while we were apart or venting to him about whatever crisis was ailing me. Those letters got me through so many days. And they kept my heart turned toward him. It sounds cheesy and childish I know, but at the end of the day, today in fact, I’ve learned an interesting truth – What is a song but a letter set to a melody? What are the Psalms but the heart of David written and sung? “Words immersed in music can touch places in our hearts that nothing else can reach.” (Excerpt from Lisa Bevere’s book, Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry).

Ephesians 5:18-19 says this: “Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart for the Lord.”  All of a sudden, I am taken to the old movies where a lady sings about her affections for her beau to a group of her friends crowded around listening to every word.  I have experienced that. There are a lot of songs that have made me think of my husband and how much I adore him. Just yesterday I was listening to “The Truth” by India Arie. The chorus says this:                                                        Cause he is the truth
Said he is so real
And I love the way that he makes me feel
And if I am a reflection of him then I must be fly because
His light it shines so bright

Just thinking of my husband and singing these words awakened a love for him within me.  Ephesians tells us to sing our love for God to one another. Worship doesn’t only keep our eyes set on Him… it keeps our hearts turned towards Him. He is “enthroned in the praises of Israel” (Ps. 22:3) He is exalted to His proper place in our lives, both as King and as the object of our desire, through our songs.

This lesson has challenged me in the area of my writing. What has been my motive? To write a catchy hook with unpredictable lyrics? Obviously, those are important aspects – creatively.  But the simplicity of honest praise/worship is as easy as a letter. If I can write pages and pages about my feelings toward a man who has the ability to disappoint and cause pain, then surely I can write about a God who never fails and with whom my heart is completely safe – Whether  it be about our undying love, or whatever might be ailing me at the moment, whether to Him or about Him. And if those words can fit well in a melody with a catchy hook and unpredictable lyrics… well then, I’d say that’s a recipe for a freakin’ good song!

A small group of us recently went to the Continuous Worship conference at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I’ve read much of Mark Driscoll, subscribed to his podcast and I love what he’s doing so I was really excited about this conference. I knew very little of their worship music theology or style. I think I had heard one or 2 tracks that I thought were very strange but couldn’t quite remember why I thought so. I would be reminded why shortly.

They opened up the conference with their style of worship and it was such an interesting dichotomy of current, cutting edge music set to hymnals. I found myself loving the music, and really they play exactly the style of music that I love to write and love to play, but being lost in the words. Despite being raised in the church, I didn’t know hyms because I was raised in the Vineyard and we didn’t sing hymns. So I didn’t know really any of the lyrics and the things about hymns is there are 5 verses and none of them repeat. So I found it very tough to sing although I really wanted to. From the looks of it a lot of people were in the same position as I. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they played at all, they are powerful songs, I just didn’t know them. I’ve never attended a regular Sunday morning service at Mars Hill but I’d imagine the congregation doesn’t have trouble since they’ve heard the songs numerous times. For us non-hymn knowing visitors it was a challenge.

Since then I’ve downloaded a ton of their songs from their music RSS feed and the songs have really grown on me. I admire their creativity, their maturity in arrangement and how much they value theologically sound worship music. My taste doesn’t line up exactly by any means, it’s hit and miss for me, but that’s not unique at all. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone that I like every tune from(not even Jeff Buckley). One of my favorites is the arrangement of Come Thou Fount by E-Pop. The leader of E-Pop, by the way, is in a band called Barcelona who’s recent album is amazing. Checkout Come Thou Fount below:

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E-Pop: Come Thou Fount

Tim Hughes recently wrote a blog post about a American newspaper article bashing cutting edge(not Delirious) music. I’ll just paste the entire blog post here since it’s pretty short:

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Below is an extract from an American Newspaper objecting to new trends in church music.

“There are several reasons for opposing it. One, it’s too new. Two, it’s often worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style. Because there are so many new songs, you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances making people act indecently and disorderly. The preceding generation got along without it. It’s a money making scam and some of these new music upstarts are lewd and loose.”

Who were they attacking? It wasn’t Delirious? or Matt Redman. They were attacking the hymn writer Isaac Watts, famous for writing ‘When I survey,’ in 1723! The old hymns once upon a time were radical and cutting edge. Our music and our songs must also always be pushing new ground. Let’s go for it.

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We hear much the same throughout our culture today. Condemning anything new, anything that hasn’t been baptized by religion and tradition. I don’t understand how we as a people can grasp onto a particular cultural expression at some point in our history and say, “that is a perfected expression to God and nothing to follow can be so again”. But that’s precisely what the article above is doing. The only thing perfected is God and his word. We seek to honor, worship and praise God in every possible way, through every culture, through every style, through music, through art, through film, all creation will praise, and every angle of creativity should be meant to glorify God.

Our God is so big and so many people offer worship is so many unique ways, whether it’s drums in Africa, guitars in America, bagpipes in Scotland, or silence in China…all of it is perfected offering through Christ, and none of us can sit here and say, ‘because it doesn’t sound like an old hymn we already know, it’s ungodly’. And by the way, I don’t know a lot of old hymns, so does that make those hymns wrong? Dumb. If we have that arrogant attitude then we’ve missed the heart of God and have a truly distorted view of worship. I will always search my spirit and commune with God to see what new song he has implanted in me. I fear no man’s opinion of my sincerity in worship, only God’s rebuke of my tired, effortless, useless fire when I could have entered into God’s presence and worshipped him in spirit and truth and sung a new song, uniquely crafted to respond to his unique touch in my life.