How each hymn / song matches the message / sermon / homily? A little hard work, all blessing.

Ever wonder how sometimes the music and the message were just woven together, as ordained by God Himself? Well many times, this is indeed a surprise to us service planners and church leaders. But there are ways to actively pursue this, with minor difficulty. One doesn't need to memorize every song in the hymnal and it's respective Bible passage.

This recent week, I stumbled upon an easy way to do this. I used LSB builder to produce a service, with 9 songs, ended in 1 hour, 1 relevant stanza in many songs. The hymns are very textual, which provide a rich setting to preach upon. How to do this?

I searched under "hymns" for the
Gospel lesson hymn suggestions. Under the "info tab", the stanza related to my specific sermon text would be selected. The day's hymnody was perfectly zoomed into the appointed sermon text. It was easily brilliant!

This benefits the preacher and the listener. This exercise in service planning helps prevent me from picking songs based on their sound only, or any other superficial reasoning. Of course, if one picks only one stanza to sing, the song should be familiar enough to pick up with on a phrase introducing it, or that the choir helps along.

Sincerely,

Pastor Shaw

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