Hymns: O My Soul Arise and Bless Your Maker

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 in-between hymns.

Today’s song is O My Soul Arise and Bless Your Maker from the 1999.

It’s fun to find a wide range of hymn performances, but I only found one visual performance of this one – and YouTube wouldn’t allow me to post it 😀. Perhaps I should perform it myself, but my worry is that my handsome face would distract people from the hymn 😀.

I suppose that 21st century music (as opposed to late 20th century music) is what most new churches are into nowadays, and the more conservative churches like to sing the older hymns. But some of us do like the songs that were published in the later 20th century. I only discovered this one in 2017, when I decided to find all the songs from Mission Praise on Spotify. For years, I preferred the old hymns. I probably still do, but I like to take an interest in all Christian music. And I feel quite nostalgic about the older “new” songs.

I just wonder if at some stage, there’ll be a revival of the late 20th century songs. I try to be positive about the newer songs. When I first attended Cork Baptist Church back in the early 1980s, I was keen to introduced new songs. And the older people tolerated me. So, I try to do likewise and tolerate new songs. The funny thing is, that by the 1990s, though I was only in my 30s, I depised all the new songs. I associated it with movements that I saw as silly or sinister. But nowadays, I think that any movement, particularly new and fast-growing ones, will have silly or sinister elements. But maybe they mature over time. Or sensible people leave them and start, or begin attending, better churches.

But ultimately, it’s about our own personal relationship with Jesus. I go to church to be among other believers. I don’t always fully endorse everything about churches that I attend. And though, I probably still categorize myself as a reformed Baptist, I try to be happy in any evangelical church that I visit. I’m not so keen on liberal/modernist churches, who don’t hold a high view of the Bible. And Roman Catholic churches have many traditions that aren’t biblical. But I try not to be too negative. All churches have genuine believers. Now that church attendance is falling in Ireland, there’s probably a higher proportion of genuine believers in all churches than there was when I was young – when many just went for cultural reasons.

Anyway, today’s hymn is written by Stuart Townend. He’s associated with New Frontiers, a movement that emerged from the restoration movement in the 1980s. Many in my circles were suspicious of that new movement at the time. But I had friends in such churches and attended them from time to time. Maybe, I hung back a little, but I never witnessed anything particularly silly or sinister. And the movement has matured. When I lived in London, I regularly attended Bermondsey Christian Fellowship (BCF), a new fellowship, and Westminster Chapel, an older, more conservative church. BCF is now merged into the City Hope church, and Westminster Chapel is led by Greg Haslam, who’s associated with New Frontiers. So, maybe there’s little difference between them. Perhaps all church will learn from one another, but new radical churches will probably always arise and some older churches might grow stale – sound, but sound asleep.

Nowadays, some say that worship music is all about money. It doesn’t cost me any money. I can just watch it on YouTube 😀. And I can find all the older hymns too. It’s great.

Psalm 103:1
Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Here are some audio videos of the song: