Hymns: 1980 Memories

I date my conversion to Sunday August 17th, 1980, about a month after I bought Saved, by Bob Dylan, in Pat Egan’s record store in Patrick Street Cork. I initially attended The Upper Room, which at that time was in a street off Camden Quay in Cork, above some sort of a fruit warehouse. I can still remember the smell of fruit 😀. That area’s all changed now of course, but The Upper Room still meets in Cork, near the City Hall.

• Marching On
  In my previous post, I mentioned Oh when the Saints go Marching in, which I’ve never heard sung in church. But Marching on is a wonderful joyous hymn, which I’ve only heard in Pentecostal churches, though the YouTube clip shows a Presbyterian church singing it.
  
• And Can it Be
  This hymn was written by John Wesley’s brother, Charles, who wrote 6,500 hymns. We sang this in most churches that I’ve been in, but I first heard it in The Upper Room. I was a little puzzled by one line:
  Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.
  
  Aren’t Christians meant to be humble and uncertain? Why was he boldly approaching the eternal throne? Well, the answer lies in the latter part of the verse – through Christ my own. Because Jesus died for our sins, we are forgiven and adopted into God’s family. So, we no longer need to fear God’s judgement (if we have repented and trusted in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour). So, we can come boldly before the throne of grace, though we might feel ‘fear’ in the sense of awe, which is different.
  
  Heb 4:16 (King James Version)
  Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
  
  In Ireland, the word bold often means naughty. As a child, you must be good, not bold. But in this context, it means confidently, as in to boldly go where no man has gone before 😀.
  
  The YouTube clip that I linked to shows it sung at Westminster Chapel, London. Martyn Lloyd Jones, a hugely influential figure in the modern evangelical world, ministered there until 1968. Back in 82-83, while working with London City Mission as a voluntary evangelist (a sort of gap year program), I often attended that church when RT Kendall was the minister.
  
• How Great Thou Art
  I only remember singing this one once in The Upper Room, but I was quite surprised to hear it because I had heard it before. Way back in 1972, when I first became interested in pop music, it was released by an Irish showband called Kelley and the Nevada. It’s definitely among my top 10 hymns. Its roots are in Ukraine. The words and tune are great. Some years later I discovered that it can be sung to the tune of the Isle of Innisfree 😀.
  
• From the Rising of the Sun
  This is one of the songs that wasn’t included in the hymn book. I did find it on YouTube, but the style is very different from how we used to sing it. It saddens me that I can’t find some of these old choruses at all. Maybe some are lost forever. I spent some time looking for Thank You, Thank You, Lord for Saving Me. I do have it on an old tape from the Tuckey Street Fellowship (Now Cove Street Fellowship), but many of these old choruses are hard to find on the web.
  
  What I remember most about Thank You, Thank You, Lord for Saving Me, was mishearing a line and singing, “My soul has escaped as a bird, out of the snare of the Father.” Why would I want to escape from the Father? I soon discovered that it was out of the snare of the fowler 😀. So maybe it’s better to have the words in a visual format, such as in a hymn book, than just pick them up by ear. The song was based on Psalm 124.
  
• He is Lord
  This one is short and simple. We had many like these that were easy to remember and sing to ourselves throughout the week. This one is based on the following verse:
  Phil 2:10-11
  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
  and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.
  
• His Name is Higher
  Again, this was very typical of the time, short simple songs that focus on worshiping Jesus. In the meetings, people would just spontaneously start these, and everyone would join in.
  
• How Lovely on the Mountains
  I mentioned this one in a previous post. It was sung in Galway for the Pope’s visit in 1979. I was quite surprised to hear it in the Upper Room, but it was one of the popular charismatic songs of the 1970s, based on Isaiah 52. So many of the choruses were based on Old Testament passages. It was a great way into the Old Testament.
  
• I Want to Worship the Lord With All of My Heart
  This was another brief one. I must have sung lots of traditional hymns at the time, but these newer ones tend to stick in my mind more.
  
• In the Name of Jesus, We Have the Victory
  Again, this is short, but a great one to remember in our personal devotional lives and when we face trials and challenges.
  
• Only a Prayer Away
  This one was sung by a little choir in the Upper Room. The last line has stuck with me down through the years, even though I never heard or sang the hymn since.
  Although He’s the Lord of all Glory, He is only a prayer away
  
  It’s wonderful to know that one small aspect of a meeting, such as a little song, or even a line from a conversation, can touch a person throughout their lives, or might come back to someone 40 years later.
  
• Wonderful Birth to a Manger He Came
  I don’t remember singing this one, but I do remember a lady soloist singing it in The Upper Room back in Easter 1979, over a year before I became a Christian. The Upper Room fellowship used to preach in the open air outside Murrays in Patrick Street. I’d often listen to them while waiting for the bus outside Woolworths. One Saturday I had a chat with a man from the Upper Room, and I decided to drop in the following night. At that time, the Upper Room was in Drawbridge Street, a little side street near where Pat Egan’s record store used to be. It was my first time attending an evangelical church.
  
  I remember approaching, hearing an accordion playing up the stairs. Then, I went up, and I think there was a group visiting for a special service. The soloist who sang the song was among them. I had lots of conversations. I was a very inquisitive 17-year-old. I remember them having to turn the lights on and off to get people out after a long period of chatting after the meeting. It was such a contrast with Mass, where we’d all dash for the door after the priest said The Mass is Ended Go in Peace, and we’d all say Thanks be to God. The thanks was meant to be for the Mass, not for the fact that the Mass had ended 😀.
  
  I remember asking the Pastor some questions. One thing I asked was how am I to view relatives who died without being born again. He said, they will be in heaven, if they reached out and trusted Jesus before they died. That was a great comfort to me. We don’t get to heaven by passing a theology exam. For many, it’ll be just a simple matter of relying on the cross rather than our own merits. But it’s not a good idea to put off coming to Christ until we get old. We might die suddenly, or we might lose interest in the afterlife altogether. Now is the time.
  
  I did consider committing my life to Jesus then, but I still wondered if I’d make a good Christian. I suppose I thought that I’d need to be pretty perfect from the beginning, or at least have a happy positive disposition, which I didn’t have 😀. In Catholicism, you’d often hear stories of saints being converted, and it just seemed too big a thing. And I had all sorts of other minor queries and objections.
  
  But I did commit my life to Christ a year and a bit later. I did mingle with all the fellowships in Cork. But Pentecostal churches were sometimes a bit intense for me, with some people shouting and crying and speaking in tongues and so on. It’s the sort of thing that often happens in revivals, but you wonder how much of it is the Holy Spirit and how much of it is people wanting attention. But that sort of thing can happen in any fresh and vibrant movement. You’ll always get people who’ll want to take it to extremes.
  
  I settled in Cork Baptist Church in the autumn of 1980, though I did hang around a good bit with Pentecostals and charismatics. And at that time, I was prone to want to nudge the Baptist church in a slightly more Pentecostal direction. Pentecostals believe that you are baptised with the Holy Spirit sometime after conversion, and that gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians, such as tongues, should be sought after today. They don’t just belong to the New Testament era. I’ve held various positions on that matter over the years.
  
  Martin Lloyd Jones, who I mentioned earlier in this post, was not a Pentecostal, but he did agree with their doctrine on these matters. However, he, like many others, felt that people are prone to wishful thinking. God is sovereign, and he might or might not give you the intense experiences or gifts that we see in the New Testament. We shouldn’t fake them. We should await the real thing. Nowadays, many people accept a milder form of what Pentecostals believe. Most evangelical churches are livelier than they were 40 years ago.
  
  Over the years, the different wings of evangelical churches have influenced each other. People are sometimes critical of charismatic and Pentecostal churches because that’s often where you’ll get the radical, silly side of evangelicalism. But the movement has seen huge growth. And most Pentecostal and charismatic churches that I’ve been involved with, including the Upper Room, would be the first to criticize the extreme wing of the movement.
  
  Although the Upper Room is quite a small fellowship still, it has been hugely influential, and some of the bigger churches of Cork were founded by people who started their Christian lives there. I had various influences in my journey to Christ, but in the first couple of years, The Upper Room, and Tuckey Street Christian Fellowship played a key role, along with the Baptist church. I’m avoiding using people’s names because I don’t think I’d like my name banded about the Internet. Do unto others as you’d have them do to you 😀. But I met some wonderful people in all the fellowships.
  
  

Finally, here’s some music, events, and films/TV shows that would have formed the background to 1993. I don’t necessarily endorse all the songs or films😀, but thinking of them takes me back to 1993.

10 Songs

• Don’t Stand So Close to Me – The Police
• The Winner Takes it All – Abba
• Ashes to Ashes – David Bowie
• Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime – The Korgies
• Going Underground – The Jam
• Xanadu – Olivia Newton John
• Do Nothing – The Specials
• What’s Another Year – Johnny Logan
• Babooshka – Kate Bush
• Duchess – Genesis

10 Events

• Mount St. Helens Eruption
• John Lennon Assassinated
• Iran–Iraq War Begins
• U.S. Boycotts Moscow Olympics
• Ronald Reagan Elected U.S. President
• Smallpox Declared Eradicated
• Italian Earthquake Kills Thousands
• Pac-Man Released
• El Salvador Political Crisis
• Zimbabwe Gains Independence

10 Films or TV Shows

• The Empire Strikes Back
• Airplane!
• The Blues Brothers
• 9 to 5
• The Elephant Man
• Flash Gordon
• Hi!-de-Hi!
• Yes Minister
• Bracken
• The Live Mike

10 Famous People Who Passed Away

• John Lennon – Legendary musician and peace activist, co-founder of The Beatles
• Alfred Hitchcock – Master of suspense, director of Psycho and Vertigo
• Steve McQueen – Hollywood actor known for Bullitt and The Great Escape
• Peter Sellers – Comic genius, famed for The Pink Panther series
• Jean-Paul Sartre – French philosopher and Nobel laureate, key figure in existentialism
• Ian Curtis – Lead singer of Joy Division, influential in post-punk music
• Mae West – Actress and sex symbol known for her witty double entendres
• John Bonham – Drummer for Led Zeppelin, considered one of the greatest in rock history
• Josip Broz Tito – Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, leader of the Non-Aligned Movement
• Oscar Romero – Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated while saying Mass