I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the very modern hymns.
Today’s song is Come People of The Risen King It’s from 2007.
I never remember hearing this one in church, but we should sing it more here in Ireland. It has an Irish feel. Of course, I wouldn’t want to just sing Irish hymns, but it’s nice to include a few now and then. One of the key themes is the notion of the gospel going to the whole world and all people rejoicing together.
Come, young and old from every land –
Men and women of the faith;
Come, those with full or empty hands –
Find the riches of His grace.
Over all the world, His people sing –
Shore to shore we hear them call
The Truth that cries through every age:
“Our God is all in all”!
And nowadays, in Irish churches, you do get people from almost every land. Back in the 1980s, the newer charismatic churches tended to have Irish ex-Roman Catholics and the more traditional evangelical churches might have had a few British and American immigrants and a few Irish Protestants, who we “sort of “saw as half-British. I used to wish that my Baptist church had a more Irish flavour to it, and that it had more Irish ex-Catholics like myself. I thought that ordinary people would feel more at home in the church if they saw it as more “Irish”.
And that soon happened. But before long, a huge wave of immigration occurred from across the world. So, now you get people from many nations in the churches. And that reflects society in general. So, evangelical churches are not longer seen as a little bit of Britain or America in Ireland. But maybe it was never a big deal in the first place. It’s just that some Irish people used to think that to be Irish was to be Roman Catholic, but that’s all changed now too, though statistically, it’s still largely Roman Catholic.
And couldn’t you argue that the Roman Catholic church is a little bit of Rome in Ireland 😀. The ancient Celtic church wasn’t tightly linked to Rome, and some say it wasn’t linked at all. And we were always happy to have American or British music, movies, sport and so on. And of course, you have all sorts of nations represented in terms of food.
So we needn’t think in terms of making the churches more “Irish”. I think that people across the world do value their own cultures, but most resent their own culture being forced on them. In reality, we all like the best of all cultures across the world along with elements of our own culture. I wouldn’t like us to lose our own culture. So, it does please me to hear hymns with an Irish flavour along with international hymns.
Anyway, here are some other versions of today’s hymn:
Hibernia Gospel 