Give honor to the Lord (Gelobet sei der Herr)
ByDan Wilt
Creative Project
I have chosen to sing an old traditional hymn with my guitar in a fresh way. The song is called "Gelobet sei der Herr" ("Give honor to the Lord") and is from 1665.
The motivation for this is accessibility. In our church we have a separation of older people singing with the organ and young people singing with a band. And it's not only a different music style, but also completely different songs and mostly a different language (English). With this chosen song I try to build a bridge between these two groups.
I use the traditional words. For this creative project I sing one verse in German and one verse in an English translation (by Prof. em. Z. Philip Ambrose). In our worship in September I plan to sing three German verses, and with our band.
I stick very close to the original chords to allow the singing of the original voices, but I simplify the chords to make it more "guitar compatible".
To study this song I bought a copy of our hymn-book. This is to show my esteem for this kind of music (although it's not my music at all, I'm grown up with the Rolling Stones). But I want to be "willing to die to myself to serve … others, all toward us all encountering Christ in worship. (I) am committed to learn new songs that will access the prayers of people's hearts in our community." (1)
The song is in the hymn-book's section "Worship and Praise". The first line "Give honor to the Lord, My God" shows, that this is not a direct address towards God, but an invitation among the congregation. This is a typical difference between the traditional hymns and our contemporary worship songs.
(1) Essentials in Worship Values, Dan Wilt, p.23