Hymns for the Church Year

Description

Are you interested in using use hymns for the church year as part of your family devotions? Or are you interested in being sure that your family learns to treasure the great hymnody of the church? This PDF offers a selection of three or four hymn titles paired to the church year’s weekly lectionary readings.

This project follows the one-year Historic Lectionary, but is appropriate for the three year lectionary series as well, and this project uses hymn titles and numbers from the Lutheran Service Book.

Simply start whenever in the year it is and mark your first selection with a 1 or an A. Singing one hymn a week, you will learn 156 over three years. PLUS, your congregation may sing the very hymn you are learning on Sunday morning!

You will need a Lutheran Service Book.

Complete index is available in product images.

To make this as family-friendly as possible, four documents are downloadable with purchase. The schedule is available in PDF and odt, and the index is available in PDF and odt.

More Details

Because the church year fluctuates, there are actually more church weeks in a year than can fit into a calendar year. That means that some great hymns for the church year simply won’t make it into every year’s rotation. It also means that you may want to keep an eye on the liturgical week listed in your weekly bulletin! Sadly, even with those extra weeks, not all the great hymns fit onto the list.

Please note that this list is written to encouraging hymn singing. I’m not sure that all of these can be memorized within one week! Also, if someone would like to learn how to accompany hymns at home, beginning piano students can play the melody line. As they improve, play the melody (top) and bottom line, adding in the other lines as possible.

For those without a piano at home, many of these tunes are already on the Internet at hymnary.org. Simply search the first line of the hymn or, in the lower right corner of each page, you can find the hymn tune. (When a hymn’s accompaniment is not included within the pew edition of the Lutheran Service Book, I included a fourth possible hymn.)

Admittedly, sometimes I included holiday options, too, which brings us to a total of 195 LSB hymns listed in this guide. Peruse my selection in the index.

Blessings as you and your family build on the wealth of hymnody at home as well as at church!