... and I am researching stuff around urban hymnody.  So, using my trusty HymnQuest, I did some keyword searches on

City

Cities

Town

Towns

Urban

Urbanised

Urbanisation

Only the last of these failed to turn up any results!  it has to be said, that the ones with 'urban' and 'urbanised' were undoubtedly very worthy but not very singable in my view.

But here is you little challenge...

HymnQuest says it has 40,981 texts, so of these how many contain the follow words:

City

Town

Urban

Then, out of the following hymnals in use in and around my 'patch' which have the highest number of items with references to city/ies or town/s...

Baptist Praise and Worship

Common Ground

Church Hymnary fourth ed.

Mission Praise (complete extra fat edition)

Songs of Fellowship (Books 1 - 4; bk 5 not yet in HymnQuest)

Recognising that SOF and MP are substantially larger collections than the others, how significant is the numerical difference?  (That's largely rhetorical btw).

If you have any of these books, and means of searching them electronically, now go and see just how these references play out and what they might say to town and city dwellers....

Interesting stuff!

I also came across a teeny work called 'Hymns of the City' which contains just 32 items... published by the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield.

Well, a week on Sunday I start my three week evening series on 'sprituality in the city', so I guess I'd better start reading the books I picked up on the topic!

Today there is little in the diary, worship prep for Sunday as just about there, so I am planning to sit quietly and read a collection of essays called Spirituality in the City (ed. Andrew Walker, London, SPCK, 2005).

My three week series is...

An urban spirituality?

Urban hymnody and liturgy

Praying our patch (an urban prayer walk)

Should be fun. 

If anyone wants to suggest any resources please feel free (I have Crumbs of Hope, Clare McBeath and Tim Presswood).