Psalms by theme

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Unoriginalname

Puritan Board Junior
This is just my curiosity but in churches that practice EP are the psalms to be sung on a particular Lord's day selected by theme or something else? I was just wondering since the psalms seem to differ from each other vastly in mood if that was taken in to account when picking a psalm or if there was a formula for picking psalms to sing? I hope that my question is clear I am having a hard time articulating what I am trying to say.
 
In my church that practices EP, the pastor usually selects psalms that will complement his sermon. (For example, if he was preaching on unity, he might have us sing Ps 133. If he was preaching on repentance, we might sing 32 or 51) A lot of times we start out the service with one of many standard praising psalms such as the later 90's, 122, etc. Our session also introduced a "psalm of the month" a couple years ago where we sing one psalm selection every Lord's Day for a month to encourage memorizing it. We also usually sing one of the psalms of thanksgiving when giving tithes. That's at least what my church practices.
 
We at present are not exclusive psalmody, but mostly so. We will open with a Psalm as per Nathan's church, then as we read through the Book of Psalms we sing secondly a section or whole of the psalm we have just read and commented on. We then later on have a New Testament Reading, a psalm will be selected that harmonises with the reading, we read 2 Cor 7 last week, so we sang a section of Psalm 51 on repentance, we'll close with a psalm that responds or summaries the major point of the sermon.
 
Thanks I do not know anyone personally who practices EP so I was never sure if there was a uniformed way of picking psalms
 
Most that I know select Psalms based upon the message. For example, on the Sabbath when my daughter was baptized, we sang three Psalms that made mention of God's covenant and/or our children. The seminarian who presently preaches for our congregation ordinarily makes selections according to the nature of his sermon. On the other hand, I know of some congregations that relentlessly follow a pattern of singing through the Psalms in order, regardless of what the message is about. The last I heard, my old congregation in Colorado Springs did something of a mix -- picking Psalms of praise and Psalms appropriate to the sermon (as Nathan indicated), while also having a consecutive singing through the Psalter (the first or second Psalm sung being the consecutive track). It varies from congregation to congregation.

Some also follow the old pattern of having an explanation of one of the Psalms being sung. In the old days, the Psalm explanation could be nearly as long as the sermon itself (a minister I know referred to the old RP practice as "the church of two sermons"). At our old congregation in upstate New York, the Psalm of the month would be explained --- the pastor would give three to five minutes explaining about one stanza of the Psalm each Sabbath, going sequentially through it.
 
Eric, I happen to have a 1973 RPCNA Psalter beside my computer. The back has a topical index similar to that which you might find in a collection of non-inspired hymns. Here are the first few items:

Accepted sacrifice
Access to God
Adoption
Adoration
Advancing
Affliction

One of the elders of my church also made a concordance of our psalter.

Another practice that we do is singing sequentially through the psalms, just as a congregation would read sequentially through the bible.
 
The normal practice is to select Psalms relating to the subject of the sermon. I haven't heard of any other.
 
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