Posts by: Chuck Bumgardner
We sang several songs in our Sunday morning service which emphasized the believer’s quiet and confident trust in God in the midst of the trying circumstances which he puts into our lives.
“Now Thank We All Our God” was written by Martin Rinkart (and translated from the German by the incomparable Catherine Winkworth). Rinkart [...]
Continue Reading →As a general rule, each month I teach one new or more unfamiliar hymn (or occasionally two) to our congregation. (In March, it was a newly written hymn, “Come to the Waters,” by James Montgomery Boice and Paul Jones.) Looking toward Easter, I wanted to suggest a number of hymns that might be [...]
Continue Reading →Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.
Other refuge have I none, hangs [...]
Continue Reading →This entry is part 2 of 1 in the series”Children and Hymnody”
Our family loves to learn hymns together. We are consciously trying to shape our children’s musical world to emphasize the good and the beautiful in music, and learning good hymnody is part of that endeavor.
One tool that we’ve found to be helpful [...]
Continue Reading →A few Sundays back, I structured our congregational singing around the theme of God’s pardon of guilty sinners on the basis of Christ’s death. There is a wonderful section in John Bunyan’s work The Holy War which relates how the rebellious city of Mansoul was conquered by Prince Emmanuel, and recognizing their hopeless state, [...]
Continue Reading →Samuel Rodigast, “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right”
This outstanding hymn was introduced to our church back in 2009, and after singing it for a month of Sundays in order to learn it, we hadn’t sung it since because it is not in our hymnal. Definitely a situation which needed rectifying, so I re-introduced it [...]
Continue Reading →“Blessed Jesus, at Thy Word” makes an outstanding musical call to worship. The text is superb, and the tune LIEBSTER JESU is a good fit. As well, it is translated from the German by the incomparable Catherine Winkworth. What more could one ask? It can be found in the Trinity Hymnal. Online, you can [...]
Continue Reading →Recently, I came across an article entitled “Art, Nakedness, and Redemption” by William VanDoodewaard, a church history professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. In this thought-provoking treatment, he inquires how the believer ought to treat visual media which portray human nakedness — whether in classical and Renaissance art, or in modern cinema. Somehow, [...]
Continue Reading →This month, our pastor preached through the Ephesians 6 passage on spiritual warfare. We used Wesley’s “Soldiers of Christ, Arise” (to the usual tune DIADEMATA), but over the course of the series, I introduced a number of the lesser-known stanzas (out of the 12 original ones). I was pleased beyond measure to find [...]
Continue Reading →This entry is part 2 of 17 in the series”Missions and Music”
In relation to critiquing other cultures in an age of cultural relativism, Titus 1:12-13 caught my eye a couple of years ago as I was working through this passage, in particular, Paul’s quotation in 1:12, and his estimation of it in 1:13.
The [...]
Continue Reading →Over the years, I’ve become hesitant to sing ”O Holy Night,” a Christmas song widely used as a solo because of its dramatic nature and vocal difficulty. Our common English translation is by John S. Dwight, a rather loose translation (so I understand) of the French Cantique de Noel . Dwight was at various times in his [...]
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