Hymns: 1981 Memories

I mentioned in my last post, that I started attending Cork Baptist Church in the autumn of 1980. Unlike the Pentecostal and charismatic groups in Cork at the time, Cork Baptist Church had been there for hundreds of years. It goes all the way back to 1640. But, unlike other Protestant churches in the city, it was thoroughly evangelical. I felt at home there, and I stayed there until I moved to Limerick in 1988. But, particularly in the early years, I had many friends in the other fellowships. Being young, I was always keen to be out of the house. So many of my musical memories of that era feature these other fellowships.

My friends in Dunlops saw it as a bit of a joke that I’d become a Christian, but they were all very friendly about it. It’s long gone now. It closed a couple of years later, but I still visit the site. And sadly, many of my friends, even some of the younger ones, are no longer with us.

• It Is a Thing Most Wonderful
  I chose this hymn for my baptism service in the Spring of 1981. Generally, in the New Testament, people were baptised immediately after they became Christians. When I was attending The Upper Room, some months earlier, they were baptising new believers and asked if I wanted to be baptised. I was a little hesitant because at that time, I thought my infant baptism might have counted as my baptism. I wanted a bit more time to think it through.
  
  However, I did take the next opportunity, which was at the Baptist Church. And it was a very happy night. I remember an elderly Christian lady giving me a gift of Learning and Living by John Blanchard. I always appreciated chatting to older Christians. Now I’m old myself 😀.
  
• I Serve a Risen Saviour
  This is another one that I associate with my baptism. The youth choir sung the chorus as each of us emerged out of the water.
  He lives, he lives
  Christ Jesus lives today
  He walks with me and talks with me
  Along life’s narrow way
  He lives, he lives, salvation to impart
  You ask me how I know he lives,
  He lives within my heart
  
  Baptism is a picture of the resurrection. So, the song is appropriate for baptisms, especially when we emerge from the water. I remember, many years later, someone criticising the last line. We know he lives, not just because of a subjective feeling. We know he lives because it’s part of history.
  
• Abba Father
  This was one of the newer choruses that we’d sing at youth clubs and Scripture Union meetings. It felt a little strange mixing with middle class Protestants, because I thought of myself as a working class Catholic, as had been most of the folk in the Pentecostal churches. But I received a very warm welcome. I was more aware of the cultural differences than they were.
  
  I did wonder what Abba meant in this context. Abba (the group) was huge at the time. Well, it’s the Aramaic word that a child would use for their father, a little bit like dad. It showed an intimate relationship. The word is used in at least three times in the New Testament.
  • Jesus used it in the garden of Gethsemane:
    “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)
  • Paul used it to describe how the Holy Spirit changes our relationship to the Father:
    “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Rom 8:15)
  • Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” (Gal 4:6)
    
• Oh for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
  It’s amazing to think that Charles Wesley wrote 6,500 hymns. This is probably my own personal favourite of his. I must have sung it thousands of times over the years, but I first heard it in Cork, probably at the Baptist church. It’s one of the few hymns, where the men and women sing different parts—well, you can choose which part to sing yourself.
  
• What a Friend We Have in Jesus
  This one isn’t addressed directly to God, but it’s all about prayer. It was written by Joseph Scriven, who was born in Ireland in 1819. His fiancée drowned the day before is wedding.
  
  Prayer is a key part of our personal and corporate lives. When I started attending evangelical churches, I noticed that people prayed in their own words rather than following set prayers in the liturgy. I was a little nervous at first about doing this myself. I wondered how long it would be before I’d be expected to do it 😀. I did eventually start praying out loud, but it didn’t really matter. Some people pray out loud, and others just follow along silently. Some people tended to shout prayers in the Pentecostal churches, which I would have found way more difficult.
  
• Great Is Thy Faithfulness
  I associate this one with the Baptist church, but also with the Cork YMCA. At that time, the YMCA used to have a Sunday night gospel meeting, which I used to attend after the Cork Baptist Sunday evening meeting. That’s where I preached my first sermon 😀. We also had a youth club in the YMCA. At Christmas 1981, the YMCA had a concert. A man from Bandon mentioned that one of the hymns was written by the writer of This Ole House, which was a hit for Shakin Stevens that year. The song was originally a gospel song, with the house representing an aging body.
  
  Ain’t gonna need this house no longer. Gettin’ ready to meet the saints.
  
  Alvin Stardust released Wonderful Time Up There later that year, another gospel song, but it only got to number 56 in the charts 😀.
  
  I think that I heard Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne for the first time at the YMCA too, sung by a Salvation Army lady.
  
• All Hail the Power of Jesus Name
  My main memory of this one was singing it in the Gospel Hall in Fr. Matthew street on one Sunday evening, when a few of us visited from the Baptist church. The Gospel Hall is part of the Brethren, a movement that was founded by an Irishman in the 19th century. They’re sometimes called the Plymouth Brethren to distinguish them from other movements that use the same name. Their main distinctive is that they didn’t have full time pastors, and their hope was that Christians would cease having denominations and go back to the pattern of the New Testament church. Many charismatic groups had this hope too, but the Brethren were in no way charismatic.
  
  The movement held an annual St. Patrick’s Day conference in Ashton school in Cork. I attended it in 1981 and 1982. There were obviously some differences on minor issues among evangelicals in Cork, but we learnt a lot from each other at the same time. We also used to sometimes drop down to Riverside Hall in Bandon and Mallow Street Hall, in Limerick. And of course there was Merrion Hall in Dublin. All the Brethren meeting places were called halls, and they called themselves assemblies rather than churches.
  I remember Bono mentioning that he went along to a youth club at Merrion Hall as a teenager. Some Brethren assemblies are still functioning as traditional Brethren assemblies, but others have become modern fellowships or Baptist churches. And a lot of the old halls have been replaced by modern buildings.
  
• O Worship the King
  In the autumn of 1981, some of us went to Waterford Baptist Church and Limerick Baptist Church to help with the Sunday service and to do a little bit of street evangelism. Having been a Stranglers fan in my teens, I had started playing the organ, modelling myself on their organist, Dave Greenfield. But now, this was my first opportunity to play in church. I remember having to learn this hymn and Be Still My Soul. I subsequently played the keyboards many times in church over the years. And I even finally mastered the guitar in my 50s 😀.
  
• Because He Lives
  This was a modern one at the time. It was written in 1971. Here’s the chorus:
  Because he lives, I can face tomorrow,
  Because he lives, all fear is gone,
  Because I know, yes I know, he holds the future,
  And life is worth the living, just because he lives
  
  I often sung this one to myself if I was nervous about something, such as speaking in the open air. All fear wasn’t really gone. But we’d sing it to mean that there’s no need to be afraid. At that time, and for some years after, we’d have an open-air preaching session outside Cudmore’s on Winthrop street on Sunday night. I was always a little nervous, but I was keen on it. And not everyone got involved, but people have different gifts and are drawn to different things at different stages of their lives. Even before I was a Christian, I was always trying to win people over to my opinions 😀, so it was no surprise that I was into evangelism.
  
• When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
  This is one we’d often sing at communion. We used to sing it to an older tune, ROCKINGHAM, but nowadays, it’s often sung to a Celtic tune, O Waly Waly (as in the link). I used to think that this was an Irish tune, but it says here that it’s English 😀.

Tuckey Street Songs

They had a little fellowship that met upstairs. Now they meet in Cove Street. At one stage, they recorded some of the songs on a home cassette tape. I still have the tape, but I wouldn’t upload it to the web without permission 😀. But I found most of the songs on YouTube (sung by all sorts of artists). I’ve linked to any that I can find. It gives a good indication of what we sung in the late 70s and early 80s. Many new songs have been written with similar titles, so it’s tough work searching for them. And some might be buried in whole worship tapes from the period that people upload, such as Vintage Worship Tapes.
Here is the list.
01 I Hear the Sound of Rustling
02 Come and Let Us Go Up to the Mountain
03 He Brought Me Out of the Kingdom of Darkness
04 Emmanuel
05 Father We Love You
06 The Greatest Thing
07 Lord Give Me Also Springs of Water
08 Come and Praise the Living God
09 You Shall Go Out With Joy
10 Open Our Eyes Lord
11 Jesus Stand Among Us
12 When I Feel the Touch
13 Thank You Lord
14 Praise the Name of Jesus
15 His Name is Higher
16 How Long (Written by a member of the fellowship based on Psalm 13)
17 Holy Spirit
18 I’m Satisfied (Written by a member of the fellowship)
19 In Your Way and in Your time
20 I Want to Worship the Lord
21 Within the Veil
22 Let Me Have My Way Among You
23 Thank You Thank You Lord
24 I Will Enter His Gates
25 Unto Thee O Lord
26 Worthy Art Thou
27 All Hail King Jesus
28 He is Exalted
29 Lift Jesus Higher

Another memory of that year was Walk in the Light. I learned that one at a Baptist Youth weekend in Carrig Eden, Greystones, Wicklow. On our car journey, we listened to the soundtrack of Gospel Road by Johnny Cash. 1981 was also the year that I first met Herbert Carson, who was probably the most well-known Baptist in Irish circles. I’m avoiding using personal names in this blog, apart from those of famous people, and Herbert was famous, to us at least.

He had originally been an Anglican Clergyman. He used to debate in Roman Catholic seminaries and wrote a good many books including a few on Catholicism. I had the privilege of driving him from Limerick to Cork in 1993. (Oh me nerves 😀)
Here are some of his books:

It was also the year that I saw Bob Dylan in concert in Earl’s court. The actual concert (27/6/1981) was recorded and features on the extended version of his Trouble No More album. A good number of Christians travelled over from Cork. Just £25 for the ship and hotel.

And later that year I discovered that some of the U2 guys were Christians. I was one of the first people in Cork to buy their first single, and I used to see them in the Arcadia the year before. Then, because I saw rock music as a bad influence, I tried to pull back from it. I was surprised to learn about them. Many years later a friend mentioned that they once showed up at his Christian fellowship in Limerick. I read later that someone had given a prophecy that they should give up rock music, and then they drifted away from evangelical churches. You do get a very wide spectrum in the evangelical world. At that time too, someone mentioned that Ian Paisley was an evangelical Christian. Both of them feature in Gay Byrne’s The Meaning of Life.

Perhaps neither of them would have wanted to identify as evangelicals, because they didn’t agree with all that goes on in the evangelical scene. And many (or maybe most) evangelicals might be a bit embarrassed by them too. But the way I see it, is that I wouldn’t want someone being put off going to an evangelical church because they perceived that it was right wing or left wing or whatever. You get all sorts of views among evangelical congregations, although most would be somewhere between Bono and Paisley 😀.

And finally, 1981 was the year of Chariots of Fire. I didn’t actually see the film until 1982, but given that much of the story revolved around an evangelical Christian (who later became a missionary in China), it was popular among Christians. I remember our Christian Union in Thomond College of Education (now part of University of Limerick) showed it around 1984.

Chariots of Fire ends with the hymn Jerusalem. We’d never sing that one in church. It’s about England, and the first verse is a lot of nonsense. But the second verse is fine (though some might want to substitute Ireland for England 😀. Words are important in hymns. But music is a gift from God and sometimes, however poor words are, music lifts us emotionally. Just as Ole Ole Ole Ole might bring us back to the 1990 World Cup, with the euphoria attached to Ireland doing so well, sometimes a hymn might bring you back to a period of your life that was spiritually significant. And Jerusalem does that for me.

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant Land.

I actually went to England the next year and, in my own small way, helped to build the kingdom of God (Jerusalem) there.

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 You Want Me – Human League
• This Ole House – Shakin’ Stevens
• One Day in Your Life – Michael Jackson
• Shaddap You Face – Joe Dolce Music Theatre
• Ghost Town – The Specials
• Good Year for the Roses – Elvis Costello
• One of Us – Abba
• The Land of Make Believe – Bucks Fizz
• Wedding Bells – Godley & Creme
• Shut Up – Madness

10 Events

• Ronald Reagan Inaugurated as U.S. President
• Assassination Attempt on Reagan
• Prince Charles Marries Lady Diana Spencer
• First Space Shuttle Launch – Columbia
• Pope John Paul II Shot in Vatican City
• IBM Launches the Personal Computer (PC)
• MTV Launches in the U.S.
• AIDS Epidemic Officially Recognized
• Bob Marley Dies
• Irish Hunger Strikes Begin

10 Films or TV Shows

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Das Boot
• Chariots of Fire
• For Your Eyes Only
• Arthur
• Time Bandits
• An American Werewolf in London
• Only Fools and Horses
• Bergerac
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

10 Famous People Who Passed Away

• Bob Marley – Jamaican reggae icon, known for No Woman, No Cry and Redemption Song
• Albert Speer – Nazi architect and Minister of Armaments, later imprisoned at Nuremberg
• Bill Haley – Rock and roll pioneer, famous for Rock Around the Clock
• Hoagy Carmichael – Composer of classics like Stardust and Georgia on My Mind
• Harry Chapin – American singer-songwriter, known for Cat’s in the Cradle
• Moshe Dayan – Israeli military leader and politician
• Mike Bloomfield – Influential blues guitarist, played with Bob Dylan and Electric Flag
• Bobby Sands – Irish republican who died during a hunger strike in prison
• Natalie Wood – American actress, starred in West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause
• Joe Louis – Legendary American boxer, world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1949