Where Special Requests Are Special
Most churchgoers like the chance to request favorite hymns—but end up choosing the same dozen songs again and again, often because of their lively tunes rather than their texts. Pastor Lawrence Roff has several ways to beat that problem. At Fairfield Presbyterian Church in Fairton, New Jersey, where request time is part of each Sunday evening service, he has successfully used the following: • Assign someone to research a well-known (but not threadbare) hymn and give a brief report in the service. "I loan books from my library that tell details about the author and composer, the hymn's period of church history, interesting events about its composition, doctrinal or literary highlights in the text," says the pastor. "We do this especially for Christmas carols." • Announce that each person requesting a hymn must add why he or she wishes to have it sung. This may relate to a key life event, a striking reference to a doctrine, or a devotional theme. One woman who lost both her mother and father within a three-week period, for example, had good reason on the one-year anniversary of their deaths to request "Whatever My God Ordains Is Right." • Occasionally feature a theme—"Tonight let's choose only psalm settings" or "hymns about the holiness of God," or providence, or the Second Coming. For other evenings Roff has guided choices to a certain writer: Watts, Wesley, or Luther. "A new appreciation for the richness of church music is growing in the congregation," says the pastor. "People are getting beyond catchy melodies to content."
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