Notes, for my EP brethren, I believe I've accounted for the alternate practices of Precentors and account for most of the main Psalters, but if there's anything I've missed on that account, please let me know and I'll update this guide to include things helpful for EP Psalm Sings. If we had a significant Continental Reformed contingent, the Anglo-Genevan Psalter would also be something to use.
Setting for this group: 8 adults who were part of a small group, 2 adult guests, 7 children from in utero to 8 years old. 2 of the adults were adept accompanists on the piano. The outing was held at the house of a member who had a piano. Between us, we had about 8 Trinity Hymnals, 4-5 Trinity Psalters, 3 Blue Trinity Hymnals, 3 Books of Psalms for Worship, and 2 Books of Psalms for Singing, along with some paper copies or printouts.
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The author of this article has a bit of an unusual perspective, being a project team lead in his day job and someone who loves group singing of psalms and hymns. He has been a part of multiple outings of Christmas caroling and he has also had the blessing of visiting Exclusive Psalmody congregations that have regular psalm singing events within and outside of services. The author himself cannot play an instrument but knows others who do and sought to organize a hymn and psalm sing for his small group.
This can also be a great way to introduce Psalm or Scripture praise singing to a group that is used to hymns, as many of the tunes to familiar hymns are used to set Psalms for singing.
What’s needed:
Step 1: Initial Logistics
1a. Identify an appropriate date and time for the group you’re gathering. If it’s a small group, you’ll need to solicit good days to host it on, and if it’s a churchwide thing, then it’ll need to be scheduled as other special events are put on the calendar.
1b. Identify where the event will occur, whether it’s at someone’s house, the church, or somewhere else.
1c. If your group or church uses instruments, you’ll need to assess who knows how to play what instrument. If you have players but not the instruments (such as might be the case with a group), it’s fairly inexpensive to rent a digital piano. In the really minimalist or barebones approach, you can use an app that includes piano tunes. If this is the case, I’d highly recommend limiting the tune selections to those found within the Book of Psalms for Worship’s app (even if you don’t sing the psalms from that book itself), as that one is exceptionally well designed to repeat stanzas and adjust the tempo for any of its tunes.
1d. If your group or church does not use instruments, who is adept at leading the singing as a Precentor?
Step 2. Determine if there will be a specific theme for the gathering (the most stereotypical is Christmas caroling/lessons and carols but it could be thanksgiving). Prayer is especially warranted to be focused on what theme or how broadly potential favorites should be solicited.
Step 3 (optional): If you’re soliciting favorites from the group, I recommend creating a form in Google Forms (see the appendix) to collect and organize the selections. I’ve anonymized the ones from our recent outing. If it’s a larger setting like a congregation, you could limit this to your existing hymnal and psalter, but if it’s a small group, there might be more freedom to choose from multiple sources. In this regard, those who exclusively use the 1650 Split Leaf Psalter have a distinct advantage since there’s a high cross-applicability to particular tunes and psalms.
Step 4: Once you’ve gotten your initial selections, then you’ll need to spend some time identifying the meters and specific tunes for each of them. You’d also curate out any hymns that are truly not sound to sing for theological reasons at this stage. This sorting process is especially important if your musician or precentor knows some of the tunes but not all of the ones he or she might be called upon to play/lead.
Step 5: Give your list to the musicians or precentors and solicit their feedback on how many of the tunes linked to the selections they know outright, could learn, or probably couldn’t learn before the date of the singing event. Ask for which tunes they know/can learn and which they can’t. You can print the words and put the tunes below on printouts for alternate tunes.
Easy examples of cross-applicable tunes:
Step 6: Share the list with your group more broadly, and perhaps create a youtube playlist of the pieces with good representative performances of each psalm or hymn. Assuming it’s a small group, inventory who owns hymnals and psalters that the group can share at the gathering.
Step 7: Compile a “service” using printouts. Sources include:
Step 8: Print your resources, including multiple copies of the spreadsheet. Make sure if you use resources online that a particular hymn or psalm lines up exactly with what people will be singing in the books. We discovered that the Red Trinity Hymnal only includes stanzas 1, 3, and 4 of What Wondrous Love Is This? Depending on the scale of your group relative to hymnal/psalter ownership, you may need to seek copyright permission of one or more of the pieces (this is a problem the 1650 singers do not have to worry about).
Step 9: Execute basic event logistics such as making coffee, getting cookies/desserts, drinks, and the like. These will be very group or congregation specific. If guests are coming to someone’s home, make sure you secure RSVPs and let the hosts know how many and who to expect. Pray for the singing to go well and be edifying to the group.
Step 10: Gather together. [Event planners, you should have in mind how long you want the group to sing for, whether it’s a half hour, 45 minutes or an hour. We did 7 out of a pool of 16 in an hour with a few logistical hiccups in the way]
Step 11: When it comes time to sing, you’ll either have a structured setting, similar to a Lessons and Carols setup or you have people in the group/congregation call out from the list that’s been assembled. Here are some pointers for that:
Step 12: As you’re going, mark down which ones the group has done so you can have a reference sheet for the next hymn or psalm sing, to pre-seed the pool with the ones you didn’t sing.
Here’s a sample form for community-sourced Hymn and Psalm selections.
Setting for this group: 8 adults who were part of a small group, 2 adult guests, 7 children from in utero to 8 years old. 2 of the adults were adept accompanists on the piano. The outing was held at the house of a member who had a piano. Between us, we had about 8 Trinity Hymnals, 4-5 Trinity Psalters, 3 Blue Trinity Hymnals, 3 Books of Psalms for Worship, and 2 Books of Psalms for Singing, along with some paper copies or printouts.
----
The author of this article has a bit of an unusual perspective, being a project team lead in his day job and someone who loves group singing of psalms and hymns. He has been a part of multiple outings of Christmas caroling and he has also had the blessing of visiting Exclusive Psalmody congregations that have regular psalm singing events within and outside of services. The author himself cannot play an instrument but knows others who do and sought to organize a hymn and psalm sing for his small group.
This can also be a great way to introduce Psalm or Scripture praise singing to a group that is used to hymns, as many of the tunes to familiar hymns are used to set Psalms for singing.
What’s needed:
| Prayer for whether to have this, logistics, what songs to sing, and for those assisting. | Musical instruments (if not at the place and if using) |
| Location | Instrumentalists for the piano/guitar/organ or Precentors for acapella singing |
| Group/Congregation | Normal small-scale event standbys like cookies, coffee service, and the like |
| Time and Date logistics |
Step 1: Initial Logistics
1a. Identify an appropriate date and time for the group you’re gathering. If it’s a small group, you’ll need to solicit good days to host it on, and if it’s a churchwide thing, then it’ll need to be scheduled as other special events are put on the calendar.
1b. Identify where the event will occur, whether it’s at someone’s house, the church, or somewhere else.
1c. If your group or church uses instruments, you’ll need to assess who knows how to play what instrument. If you have players but not the instruments (such as might be the case with a group), it’s fairly inexpensive to rent a digital piano. In the really minimalist or barebones approach, you can use an app that includes piano tunes. If this is the case, I’d highly recommend limiting the tune selections to those found within the Book of Psalms for Worship’s app (even if you don’t sing the psalms from that book itself), as that one is exceptionally well designed to repeat stanzas and adjust the tempo for any of its tunes.
1d. If your group or church does not use instruments, who is adept at leading the singing as a Precentor?
Step 2. Determine if there will be a specific theme for the gathering (the most stereotypical is Christmas caroling/lessons and carols but it could be thanksgiving). Prayer is especially warranted to be focused on what theme or how broadly potential favorites should be solicited.
- For example, if a member of a small group was recently cured of a life-threatening disease, a long stretch of unemployment or financial distress resolved, or the like, a group might wish to sing specific songs and psalms of thanksgiving for deliverance.
- Other themes might apply in seasons of difficulty or trial for the group or congregation.
- If you go with a theme, you or your leadership group would be selecting the psalms or hymns, or at least constricting the scope of possible selections.
- Alternately, you might simply want to solicit favorites from the group/congregation in advance either explicitly asking for a theme
Step 3 (optional): If you’re soliciting favorites from the group, I recommend creating a form in Google Forms (see the appendix) to collect and organize the selections. I’ve anonymized the ones from our recent outing. If it’s a larger setting like a congregation, you could limit this to your existing hymnal and psalter, but if it’s a small group, there might be more freedom to choose from multiple sources. In this regard, those who exclusively use the 1650 Split Leaf Psalter have a distinct advantage since there’s a high cross-applicability to particular tunes and psalms.
Step 4: Once you’ve gotten your initial selections, then you’ll need to spend some time identifying the meters and specific tunes for each of them. You’d also curate out any hymns that are truly not sound to sing for theological reasons at this stage. This sorting process is especially important if your musician or precentor knows some of the tunes but not all of the ones he or she might be called upon to play/lead.
Step 5: Give your list to the musicians or precentors and solicit their feedback on how many of the tunes linked to the selections they know outright, could learn, or probably couldn’t learn before the date of the singing event. Ask for which tunes they know/can learn and which they can’t. You can print the words and put the tunes below on printouts for alternate tunes.
Easy examples of cross-applicable tunes:
- Common Meter (CM) - Amazing Grace/New Britain/Virginia Harmony
- Long Meter (LM) - Old 100th/Doxology
- Short Meter D (SMD) - Diademata/Crown Him with Many Crowns
- 10.10.10.10 - Be Thou My Vision/Abide with Me
- 8.7.8.7.D - Nettleton/Come Thou Fount or Hyfrydol/Jesus What a Friend to Sinners
Step 6: Share the list with your group more broadly, and perhaps create a youtube playlist of the pieces with good representative performances of each psalm or hymn. Assuming it’s a small group, inventory who owns hymnals and psalters that the group can share at the gathering.
Step 7: Compile a “service” using printouts. Sources include:
- The Cyber Hymnal The Cyber Hymnal™ (hymntime.com) or Hymnary.org are good resources to find hymns. My.Hymnary is really nice for compiling and generating specific public domain pieces.
- Psalter.org - Sing the Psalms using any device. is very good to gather texts and tunes for Psalm singing assembled by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America or the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which includes the Trinity Psalter that’s a single version of each piece from the Book of Psalms for Singing.
- The Free Church of Scotland has multiple helpful resources: Psalm & Praise Resources – Free Church of Scotland. Specifically they’ve got their 2003 Psalter and the Lovely Sing Scripture freely available for use, no more than 6 selections at a time.
- 1650 Users can find that here: 1650 Scottish Metrical Psalter – The Westminster Standard or The Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650 (cgmusic.org)
Step 8: Print your resources, including multiple copies of the spreadsheet. Make sure if you use resources online that a particular hymn or psalm lines up exactly with what people will be singing in the books. We discovered that the Red Trinity Hymnal only includes stanzas 1, 3, and 4 of What Wondrous Love Is This? Depending on the scale of your group relative to hymnal/psalter ownership, you may need to seek copyright permission of one or more of the pieces (this is a problem the 1650 singers do not have to worry about).
Step 9: Execute basic event logistics such as making coffee, getting cookies/desserts, drinks, and the like. These will be very group or congregation specific. If guests are coming to someone’s home, make sure you secure RSVPs and let the hosts know how many and who to expect. Pray for the singing to go well and be edifying to the group.
Step 10: Gather together. [Event planners, you should have in mind how long you want the group to sing for, whether it’s a half hour, 45 minutes or an hour. We did 7 out of a pool of 16 in an hour with a few logistical hiccups in the way]
Step 11: When it comes time to sing, you’ll either have a structured setting, similar to a Lessons and Carols setup or you have people in the group/congregation call out from the list that’s been assembled. Here are some pointers for that:
- Musician/Precentor’s choice for the first hymn or psalm. Make that the first two choices if you have a pair of musicians or precentors. They’re facilitating for everyone else so they should get the first call.
- Host’s choice next. If it’s a group vs. meeting in the church, they’re providing the resources of their home and a little thank you is to give the next choice.
- If you have guests, this is a good way to involve them since they weren’t solicited for hymns or psalms.
- As the leader, try to make sure that at least one of each member of your group’s selections is called out and if necessary yourself call out any that have been overlooked.
Step 12: As you’re going, mark down which ones the group has done so you can have a reference sheet for the next hymn or psalm sing, to pre-seed the pool with the ones you didn’t sing.
Here’s a sample form for community-sourced Hymn and Psalm selections.
