They never sing all of the verses

You are very right! Churches are horrible about this. It is actually a pet peeve of my dh so we don't have a problem with it at our church. I certainly have favorite verses in some songs but in order to get the whole message of a song you need to hear every word.

 

At my old church, they used to replace the words "When we've been there ten thousand years..." with "When we've been there forever more..." in the song Amazing Grace. Not only did they totally not listen to the words before they made that change, but their change also makes that part of the song completely pointless.


Correct form:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.


Their version:

When we’ve been there forever more,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.


It still bothers me and I'm not even a member there anymore.

 

My favorite example was a call to worship of "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," where the choir sang only the first verse.

Imagine entering a worship service, with these words (and only these words) echoing in your head:

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

 

The thing is... not even the printed version in most hymnals have all the verses. Amazing Grace has more than five verses. A Mighty Fortress has more than five. They pick and choose when printing the hymnal. Now... I'm not stating the adverse opinion that we further cut them down, I also dislike the fact that most folks have never heard the third verse of any song out of the Baptist Hymnal (provided of course that there are always four verses... if there's three, you might sing them all!). We try to sing them all. Keep up the good work everyone, and encourage your worship leaders, song leader, music directors or ministers to sing them all! (Except for some of those Wesley hymns with 34 verses... my goodness!)

In His Grip,
joshua

 

There are good reasons to not sing all of the verses of a hymn, and it is certainly not "wrong" to sing less than all. As Joshua pointed out, many hymns have more verses than will fit in a hymnbook so we don't sing them all anyway, even if you sing everything in the hymnbook. Some verses are bad theology or bad poetry. Some verses communicate wrong affections, or trivialize the truth or person of God. Sometimes a verse might not fit in a particular flow of thought for a service.

We generally sing all verses at least sometimes. But we are not slavish about it.

 

If you adhere to that as a standard, then you break it every time you sing the National Anthem.

Hymns by nature are written so that singing of all the verses is not required. Some hymns have 5, 8 or even 12 verses. A few hymns have as many as 20 or more verses. Suffice it to say that hymns were not designed to have every verse sung as mandatory. It is perfectly appropriate, and even desireable, to keep the hymns to 3 verses or less.

Also, hymns are ever-changing. Old hymn tunes get new texts all the time. The hymn tune commonly known as "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" has some 8 different texts to it. The Christmas tune "O Come All Ye Faithful" used to be sung with the text of "How Firm A Foundation". "A Mighty Fortress" has some three or four texts that all begin with "A Mighty Fortress", one of the most popular having "our stronghold and protection" instead of "a bulwark never failing".

 

I do not think it is "wrong", but I do think it is unfortunate if some verses of some songs are never sung at all.

 

I always wondered why churches did that, but sang the chorus/refrain after each verse. (Being used to pop, it seemed strange to have the chorus after every verse, instead of after every two verses when I first became a Christian).
So perhaps they should sing the refrain after every two verses. Some refrains are as long as a verse anyway.

 

I bet some people would walk out of the church if the music ministers tried to sing every verse of some songs. My favorite song with five verses may be the song someone else hates to sing.

And when you add a chorus to each verse it can make a song take up more time than a sermon.

 

Some verses are best left out anyway because as was already mentioned, they are theologically or poetically wrong.

Our Music leader likes to change the last verse on amazing Grace to "forever more" also, and thinks everyone else should, too! I agree that it messes up the verse.

 

It doesn't really make sense as "forever More."
"When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun," makes sense.


"When we've been there forever more" isn't even grammatically correct.

 

It's not the Bible...doesn't matter to me.

Joseph Botwinick

 

By golly, if they are gonna sing hymns, sing all the verses!

 

We sing all of the verses provided, and occasionally some that are not.

Of course, we have between 30 minutes and 1 hour song service before preaching.

If memory serves, Amazing Grace has 15 verses.

Doxology (commonly known as "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow") is only a tune. There happen to be many different songs written to that tune. "Praise God..." is only a single verse song written to the tune of Doxology. There are many other songs that have that tune, but they are usually only a few verses themselves, so we almost always sing "Praise God..." as the last verse to that tune.

I may not know a lot, but I know a thing or two aboutr hymns.

 

I am thankful our church which sings alot of hymns and some praise songs. Sings ALL the verses on every hymn song. I agree there is so much doctrine in the hymns.

I cry every time we sing OH CAN IT BE. I try not to, but I do. My pastor says everytime that song is played he has a hard time too. He say we aught not sing it right before he has to get up and speak.

 

I am like Brother Joseph. It does not matter to me. However, I do like to sing all the verses myself. Sometimes I sing them while driving in the car. Man, you get some looks that way!

 

And Can It Be ( Song )

And can it be that I should gain, an interest in the Saviours blood? Died he for me , who caused His pain? For me , who Him to death pursued ? Amazing love ! how can it be. that thou my God shouldest die for me?

Tis mystery all ! Th'immortal dies ! Who can explore His strange design ? In vain the first-born seraphtries. To sound the depths of love Divine ! Tis'mercy all ! let earth adore, Let angel minds inquire no more .

He left His father's throne above, So free, so infinte His grace ; Emptied Himself of all but Love , And bled for Adams helpless race; Tis'mercy all, immense and FREE; For, O my God , it found out me.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay Fastbound in sin and nature's night; Thine eye diffused Quicking ray, I woke, the dungeons flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose went forth and followed Thee.

No CONDEMNATION now I dread; Jesus ,and all in Him, is mine ! Alive in Him , my living head, And clothed in RIGHTEOUSNESS Divine, Bold I approach the eternal throne, And claim the CROWN, thro Christ my own.

Amazing Love How Can It Be That Thou, My God Shouldest Die For Me AMEN

WHAT DOCTRINE He paid it all, pursued me and set me free from sin, I am clothed in his righteousness not my own. Some day I will see him in heaven and receive crowns because of what HE has done not me.

 

Beats singing the same song 15 times And generally is shorter anyway Although 7 verses of All Creatures Of Our God And King with the Hallelujahs included can hurt

 

I am basically in favor os singing all stanzas. There are rare occasions (a medley, singing one stanza for impact (ie st. 2 of "I Stand Amazed" "For me it was in the garden..." for the prayer in Gethsemane)etc)I don't use all stanzas.

We also need to be careful of theological points as we sing and/or delete stanzas. Trintarian hymns usually follow this pattern: St. 1 - Father, St. 2 - Son, St. 3 - Spirit, and St. 4 - the Tinity as a unit. When we delete St. 3 we leave the Holy SPirit out. Just a thought.

Also, many times the next stanza begins with the last thought of the previous stanza. Leaving stanzas breaks the continuity.

I'm not legalistic in this, but generally we sing all stanzas.

Tim