I am being naughty this week. Not massively, but knowingly doing something that will annoy some of the good people at D+1. It is cluster pulpit exchange Sunday (or preacher exchange as someone who is very literal pointed out) and it is my turn to go to the last vestige of "Green Hymnbook is the only true hymnal" in this area. They have a nice little set of Mission Praise which used to be used by the morning congregation but the evening folk hated it with a passion (I think it's that way round anyway). Now they have combined into one service and the order I've been sent says quite clearly BHB. So here's my bit of mischief - sing the three (out of four) hymns that are in the green book from Mission Praise.
I do love my little congregation who, since we moved over to service sheets, sing from any source I come up with and are none the wiser. This means they've sung loads of things they'd otherwise have objected to and enjoyed them. Nowt so queer as folk, as the saying goes.
Comments
And nowt as devious as a Baptist Minister.
Nowt whatsoever
More strength to your arm!
They have cheerfully sung material from MP and the red Baptist hymnnbook in the past, though admittedly it was on printed sheets with the CCL number, which then got made into a home-grown hymnbook.
The deviousness of the Baptist minister takes many forms!
Andy! Not the RED Baptist hymn book!!! Wow, that really IS devious.
How are they on the black one and the blue one?
The modernisers probably fought long and hard to get the church to sing from the modern green hymnbook and then got stuck.
I fear the same fate for those of us who who stick slavishly to the Complete Revised Updated Second New Edition of Mission Praise, volumes 1 to 5.
Some say 'I follow Apollos', some say 'I follow Paul', still others say 'I follow Cephas', and some say 'Yes, but none of those old fossils could write a decent tune, and anyway I get a lot more out of the worship at Alexandria!'
Or, Isaac Marlow, if the psalms were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for me - what's with all these 'humane inventions' anyway?! You'll be singing out loud with conjoined voices next....