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Let me encourage you to sample and purchase CDs from the website of Red Mountain Music, a ministry of Red Mountain Church (PCA) in Birmingham, Alabama. Red Mountain has made a number of worthy contributions to the ‘hymn-rewrite’ movement, in which many great hymns forgotten over time or locked away in unsingable or obsolete tunes have been set to newer, simpler music. They call it ‘traditional text with truly contemporary music.’ Groups such as Red Mountain and Indelible Grace, along with individuals such as Chris Miner, are like restorers of antique furniture, who can bring out the true loveliness in an old piece and restore its usefulness.

Brian T. Murphy (who was a student at Auburn University while I was assistant pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Auburn–and he also helped us tremendously by playing piano for our worship services back then) writes on their web site:

…hymns ring true in a way that many modern songs simply do not. At times, it seems our ancestors had a stronger command of the language than we do. Their words drip with truth and paint pictures of the kingdom that make believers long for heaven. I cannot begin to describe what reading through these old hymnals has done to encourage the spirits of the musicians that play here. We find ourselves continually able to rest in the truth of these great lyrics, always with a sense that we are part of something much bigger than us or our little church. We are excited about this time in the church, and we are thrilled about this music.

The peculiar contribution of Red Mountain Music has been the The Gadsby Project, a reworking of 14 hymns from Gadsby’s Hymns, published in several stages during the 19th century. The Gadsby hymnal contains the text of 1,156 settings of psalms and hymns, most of which were penned during the 17th and 18th centuries. A goodly number of lesser-known hymns by masters such as Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Joseph Hart and John Newton have been mined from this hymnal, and Red Mountain Music has done the Church a great service by reacquainting us with these songs of Zion.

I would also recommend their 2006 release Help My Unbelief, which continues in the spirit of The Gadsby Project by drawing from that vast resource. What is remarkable about Help My Unbelief is that it is a collection of hymns on the theme of doubt, struggle, longing, and crying out to God for help. These songs give expression to Christian struggles and laments in a brutally honest way in the biblical expectation that Christ meets us in the midst of the mess of our lives, and he does so as one who ‘will not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax.’ Help My Unbelief is a collection ‘for God’s prodigals and sojourners as they wait patiently for the Kingdom to come.’

It’s been a while since I focused a post in on a great online resource. Today I wanted to briefly highlight The Cyber Hymnal. It is a website that specializes in all things concerning hymnody. Here are just a few things you can do there:

• Find the lyrics to your favorite hymns
• Find an audio file of your favorite hymn tune
• Find historical information on hymns, tunes, hymn writers, and tune writers
• In addition to this there are pictures, trivia, Scripture cross references, bibliographies, etc

You may be wondering who runs this site. The site owner(s) have chosen to keep that information private, saying,

This is a pri­vate Web site, do­ing our best to ad­vance God’s king­dom, us­ing the tools He gives us. We be­long to the same de­nom­in­a­tion as Je­sus: “Christ­ian.”

In general, I consider intentional internet anonymity a red flag. However, I’ve used The Cyber Hymnal for years and have not found any objectionable material or ulterior motives.

How do I use The Cyber Hymnal? Let me give you two anecdotes.

Since today is Friday, I’m in the process of concluding my sermon preparation for Sunday. The end of that process usually includes me picking a suitable hymn with which to conclude the service. If at all possible I want that hymn to be a fitting response to what I preach. Often I will find a great hymn but am unsure whether the tune is one with which we as a congregation are familiar. Enter The Cyber Hymnal. I simply go over to cyberhymnal.org and listen to the tune. If the tune is easily sing-able I include it. If it isn’t, I pass on it for another hymn. This morning I passed.

I’ve also gotten into the habit of singing the psalms. I ordered a copy of the old Scottish Psalter. I went with that version because I’m not musically gifted in any way. Some of the tunes in the Trinity Psalter are intimidating to me. The Scottish Psalter puts almost all of the psalms to common meter. Put simply, I could sing every psalm to the tune of Amazing Grace if I had to. But I’d rather not do that. Enter The Cyber Hymnal. I simply searched for all of the tunes that are in common meter. I picked the ones I liked and continue to use them for my private devotional singing.

The Cyber Hymnal is the most useful online resource for those interested in the traditional hymns. It is certainly worth a glance. You won’t regret it.

You’ve probably noticed that the ubiquitous chorus Happy Birthday to You almost never appears in films or television programs. You may have heard it explained that Paul McCartney and/or Michael Jackson own the copyright to the song and charge an exorbitant licensing fee for authorized use of the tune. That is only partially true. Neither McCartney nor Jackson (please stop singing ‘Ebony and Ivory’–that means all of you…I mean it!) own the rights, but the company who does has deep pockets and an itchy trigger finger when it comes to enforcing their rights. For more on the history of the most widely-known song in the English language (yes, even more widely-known than Sinatra’s My Way), you can read Mark Steyn’s history on his ‘Song of the Week’ feature.

Chip Stam, Director of the Institute for Christian Worship at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has a weekly “Worship Quote of the Week” you can receive as a free email (click here for more info). This week’s is a Charles Wesley poem about the atoning death of Christ. The opening line is based on Lamentations 1:12:

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me,
which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.

ALL YE THAT PASS BY
All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh:
To you is it nothing that Jesus should die?
Your ransom and peace, Your surety He is:
Come, see if there ever was sorrow like His.

For what you have done His blood must atone:
The Father hath punished for you His dear Son.
The Lord, in the day of His anger, did lay
Your sins on the Lamb, and He bore them away.

He answered for all: O come at His call,
And low at His cross with astonishment fall!
But lift up your eyes at Jesus’ cries:
Impassive, He suffers; immortal, He dies.

He dies to atone for sins not His own;
Your debt He hath paid, and your work He hath done.
Ye all may receive the peace He did leave,
Who made intercession, “My Father, forgive!”

For you and for me He prayed on the tree:
The prayer is accepted, the sinner is free.
That sinner am I, who on Jesus rely,
And come for the pardon God cannot deny.

My pardon I claim; for a sinner I am,
A sinner believing in Jesus’ Name.
He purchased the grace which now I embrace:
O Father, Thou know’st He hath died in my place.

His death is my plea; my Advocate see,
And hear the blood speak that hath answered for me.
My ransom He was when He bled on the cross;
And losing His life He hath carried my cause.

—Charles Wesley, 1707-1788, from METHODIST HYMNS, 1779.

Major League Baseball opened the 2007 season last night, with the New York Metropolitans defeating last year’s World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1. With baseball season underway (and college baseball, which I follow more closely, has been swinging since February), it’s worth musing on the most familiar, popular baseball song of all time, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Did you know that neither lyricist Jack Norworth nor composer Albert Von Tilzer had never been ‘taken out’ to a ball game at all? Mark Steyn has written an informative and entertaining piece on the history of the 7th-inning-stretch sing-along classic.

Bonus question: Think about the oom-pa-pa tune. Aren’t there some hymns from the turn of the 20th century that sound eerily similar? Bonus points if you can name some…

I can’t believe that U2’s album, The Joshua Tree, was released twenty years ago today. I feel so old! The Joshua Tree was the first tape I ever owned. You can imagine my nine-year-old glee at opening that small Christmas present to reveal the now famous black and white album cover. It remains to this day my favorite album of any genre. I’ll give you, the readers of The Sweet Dropper, the chance to answer one, none, or all of the following questions:

1. What was the first album (regardless of media it was recorded on) that you ever owned?
2. What is your favorite U2 album?
3. Can you believe that The Joshua Tree is twenty years old?

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