New songs for modern missional worship, rich in Christian teaching and contextualized in modern culture. Contemporary hymns, psalms, songs of lament and praise written by members of the Louisville, KY-based Sojourn Community.
More Details On Sojourn/Isaac Watts Worship CDs: What Do We Mean By “Based on the hymns of Isaac Watts”?
After hearing the two podcast interviews with the co-producers (Neil Robins of Dirt Poor Robins, and worship arts pastor Mike Cosper) of the upcoming Sojourn worship music project — two CDs of songs based on the hymns of Isaac Watts — some of you have asked what we mean by “based on the hymns …”
Pastor Mike answered this question in his audio interview, explaining that Sojourn songwriters composed new melodies but were also allowed liberties with the texts. In some cases our writers left the texts pretty much as-is, in some cases they merely updated antiquated pronouns (exchanging “thee” for “You,” for example) and in some cases did more extensive work.
In our modern era of copyright protection this might seem unusual, but in the long history of world folk music, right up through guys like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, and including many of the great American blues performers of the 20th century, it was seen as a viable and honored task to shape a traditional song, work over some of the lines, add a verse, fit it with a new melody, and arrange it in a fresh way.
I thought you might like to be taken inside this process for one of our new songs to see what this means. Let’s walk through the writing process of one called “All Who Believe,” which I wrote with Rebecca Elliott, based on Watts’ hymn “The Lord on High Proclaims.” This is the third song we’ve written together. We wrote “All I Have Is Yours” for Before the Throne, and then a song of confession and dedication that we’ve been singing in Sojourn worship gatherings since the fall called “Let Justice Roll Like A River.”
Like those two, the process for “All Who Believe” is that I came up with the lyrics and then Rebecca composed the music. Watt’s original included four verses of four lines each. The first thing I did was to combine verses 1 and 2 together, then verses 3 and 4, making two verses out of four. The reason some people find old hymns to be monotonous, musically, is that many of them are 4-line verses, where the melody repeats after every verse. So by making two verses out of four, I knew Rebecca would introduce melodic variation into the second half of each verse, giving it a more interesting sound than would be possible otherwise.
Then I decided to add a chorus. I have nothing against the older hymnic pattern of verse-only — I stuck to that pattern on Before the Throne’s “Lead Us Back.” But I do like the modern pop construct of a chorus. It’s a good place to have a “summation of thought” in the lyrics and to introduce more musical variety. Again, to help Rebecca come up with different melodic ideas, I decided to alter the poetic meter of the chorus. So if you read the whole song like a poem, you’ll notice that the chorus doesn’t have the same cadence as the verses. You’ll see what I mean in a minute, but now let’s compare Watt’s original lyrics with my revisions:
Watts’ verses 1 and 2:
The Lord on high proclaims
His Godhead from His throne:
“Mercy and Justice are the names
by which I will be known.
Ye dying souls that sit
in darkness and distress,
look from the borders of the pit
to my recovering grace.”
I didn’t change the first four lines at all; they are what drew me to this hymn in the first place. The next four lines — I changed the “Ye” to “You.” I also didn’t like the “it” rhyme in lines 1 and 3. You singers know that “it” is not the best sound to end a line with. I wrestled with this because I do like the imagery “look from the borders of the pit” but I ended up changing these lines to:
You wounded souls that lie
in darkness and disgrace,
look on my wounds before you die,
receive my healing grace.
The long “I” sound as a line-ending rhyme is more pleasant to the ear than the “it,” and I also changed “distress” to “disgrace,” for two reasons. First, it restored a perfect rhyme rather than the imperfect of “distress/grace” (which may have been a perfect rhyme in Watt’s day — pronunciations change over time. Also, of course, Watts was English, and so his dialect was different than most Americans, who ourselves pronounce some words differently from region to region).
Second, I prefer the contrast with grace that “disgrace” provides. We aren’t just distressed — helpless, under seige. We are disgraced. It’s our fault. Christ was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.
So next comes the chorus — a completely new section. I wrote:
Jesus, our hope, our righteousness
Holding the keys to hell and death
Loosing the captive; freeing the slave
and He will save … all who believe.
Each of the four lines holds at least one direct Bible reference, which is definitely “in the spirit” of Watts and is something I try to do in my worship songs. Even when we’re not writing “scripture songs” we still need the objective, blessed truth of scripture. The words of God are life, and so the people of God should sing them, speak them, pray them, live them. Rebecca came up with a wonderful melody for this. I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Here are Watts’ original verses three and four, followed my by reworking of both of these together, which then becomes verse two of our new song:
Sinners shall hear the sound;
their thankful tongues shall own,
“Our righteousness and strength is found
in thee, the Lord, alone.”
This third verse, which becomes the first half of my second verse, provided for a departure. It’s a good verse, but it doesn’t add much, and some modern ears might be tickled by the line “their thankful tongues shall own.” More so, though, I wanted to get back to the concept in Watts’ first verse, “Mercy and justice are the names by which I will be known” which is one of the things that drew me to this hymn. After writing that line, he didn’t develop it as fully as I was expecting. So I changed his third verse to:
The weak, the sick, the poor
in Christ will have a home.
The rich will learn that what they hoard
belongs to God alone.
Here we see God’s mercy and justice — both for the weak, sick and poor, and for the rich — it is not only justice that causes the rich to learn that all they have is really God’s, but it is mercy. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Continuing on with Watt’s final verse:
In thee shall Israel trust,
And see their guilt forgiven;
God will pronounce the sinners just
and take the saints to heaven.
I didn’t change this too much. I came up with:
In Jesus we will trust
and see our guilt forgiven.
He will pronounce the sinners “just”
and take the saints to heaven.
Of course, I don’t consider myself anywhere near Watts’ league as a songwriter. He is one of my songwriting heroes. In the end, I wouldn’t say whether my changes are an improvement, but I do feel that this new song is a good fit for the cultural context in which I live. And I feel that Watts, who altered David’s songs by putting them in European hymn meter and making references to Christ more obvious, would understand and approve of this.
stay tuned the rest of this week for a feature on Sojourn pastor-elder Chad Lewis, who also happens to be the singer-songwriter behind our “Fading Grass” CD, some worship theology from pastor Mike Cosper’s Gospel Class material, and a fun new video feature.