Today I am working on my last reflective service based around Brueggemann's take on the psalms.  The psalms of reorientation (or 'new orientation' in strict Brueggemann langauge, and to be fair there's a subtle difference in meaning) which are the group of psalms which express a 'transformed faith' in the light of real life experiences.  Now, Brueggemann makes no claims that his classifiaction is definitive or even necessarily correct, but it has been a helpful framework to work with. 

What intrigued me was a comment he makes in his discussion of the last group of psalms where he draws on the work of another scholar who makes a distinction between 'songs' which are personal and 'hymns' which are communal... songs use 'I' language and hymns use 'we' langauge.  This is a very different way of distinguishing between the two from what I've come across elsewhere.  More typically people say that hymns 'tell a story' or at least have a progression of ideas verse to verse, whereas songs express a single idea.  I have to confess my own way of sneaking things into services that people might be reluctant to sing is to call them 'songs' whatever they are (so Iona or Taize stuff in a SoF church and vice versa or MP in a 'Green Book ' church).

Irrespective of what they are called, we will be singing a variety of stuff on Sunday evening from a number of different 'stables' as we endeavour to re-orient ourselves towards God in a world where life contrives to dis-orientate us.  Unusually I'll give you the running order:

I watch the sunrise (3 hanky weepy)

The Lord is King (golden oldie) (can't find a you tube version of it being sung - check your oldest hymnbook!!)

Let us break bread together (world church)

Sing of the Lord's goodness (kinda 70's feel)