Do you typically sing out of a hymnal during your Sunday morning service/meeting? (If more than one service, please average)

We always use our hymnals, but we do projections as well for hymns or songs that aren’t in the hymnal. I think hymnals are going the way of all flesh. I tried to order some new ones to replace the raggedy ones, and I had to wait a long time. The publisher said they only print them twice a year now.

Our hymnals went away when the church renovated into theater seating. Prior to that we never used them. Everything is projected onto multiple screens and the majority of the music would not be in our old hymnals.

We do both.

I like singing using a projection screen (the songs used at our church include the music) because everyone’s heads are lifted and it sounds so much better.

The downside is that I sometimes can’t see the screen because of taller people in front of me, and my younger kids can’t see it at all.

Although we use our “Living Hymns” hymnal for the majority of our congregational singing, we also use the “We’re Singing” songbook produced by The Wilds Christian camp. Since we don’t have a pianist, as song leader, I have to rely much on recorded piano accompaniment and my own guitar. I also use projected lyrics from time-to-time for songs and hymns that are not in either of our books.

I have always preferred standard notation instead of just lyrics because I want our people to sing parts as much as possible if they can read music and, even if they can’t, I still feel that keeping the notation in front of folks keeps them familiar with it so they can still get a good visual feel for the relative position of notes versus pitch.

Since the purpose of SharperIron is to think and try to positively express ourselves for the building up of others, I’ll only briefly(!?) say that the use of projected lyrics is my strong preference. But…PLEASE make the lyrics large enough to read (same for the notes/scripture the pastor uses in the sermon)! Using a couple screens or more usually helps with difficulty seeing the screen, which SHOULD be placed high enough to see but not so high you crane your neck to see it. Centrally located, if possible, so that the music leader sort of remains the leader. And have a backup plan for the possible glitch/failure of the projection system (have a full service set of copies hymns for all musicians so that you can transition quickly and easily to them if necessary (assuming the hymnals are still in the racks). And hymns and praise songs can easily be put together in medleys: try going from a hymn into the praise song, back to the chorus of the hymn, etc. So many options—if the songleader/praise team prayerfully prepares well in advance. One more thing—please don’t rehearse right up to the beginning of the service! And one more thing—don’t rehearse the “special music” in the auditorium just before the service. It makes me wonder if the song is just being thrown together at the last minute (and if it’s a song the person does often, I’m SURE that’s the case!). And one more….(just kidding).