Singing Through the Gospels

By David Alexander

In 2004 I translated several Taiwanese hymns into English, paying attention to syllable stress and rhyme of lines. In the process, I learned that some tunes familiar to me from church life in Taiwan had taken root. What you'll find in this collection combines the result of that versification process applied to a project to set scripture passages for congregational song. If you access these contents electronically, you'll be able to click on the links to tunes. Most are accessed through one click. For those that take more, you have my sincere apologies. Sing your way through the gospels, adding melody to your enjoyment of the writings that come to us as by Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Alexander
• Release date: Nov 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463288344

David Alexander

Originally from Los Angeles Vietnam Veteran (18th Engineer Brigade, 577th Engineer Battalion) Undergraduate degree in Spanish Graduate degrees in Theology (MA) and Education (EdM) Clergy (Reformed Church in America and Presbyterian Church in Taiwan) 39 years of life in Taiwan. Took citizenship there in 2018 and promptly retired to Holland, MI. Life in Taiwan included college campus ministry, parish ministry, publications work and theological education. Finished career as a lecturer in practical theology and director of the language center of Tainan Theological College.

Book preview

Acknowledgments

The grace of God

The love of a good woman

The fellowship of colleagues

The wonder of Taiwan

Introduction

When I arrived in Taiwan in 1976 to learn about missionary life overseas, I was a naïve young man in my 20s. Taiwan’s Presbyterian Church, which had nearly a thousand local congregations nationwide at that time, principally worshipped in Taiwanese, though large numbers of its members who were ethnically aboriginal used a plethora of different languages. That language diversity continues even in the 21st Century. In 1976 the Taiwanese language churches principally used a hymnal that had been published in 1964 after several years of editorial work. During my initial two years in Taiwan, I slowly became familiar with a few of them.

Returning to Taiwan in 1982 and taking up permanent residence, participation in local congregational life became part of my habitual practice. The tunes in the 1964 hymnal took ever deeper root in me. One section of that book was entitled Gospel Songs. The tunes were American and British from the second half of the 19th Century. The hymnal had legs. It wasn’t replaced until 2009. But many churches resisted. Where the newer collection became standard, some clergy and others who chose the songs from week to week persisted in only using things that had been in the earlier book.

For various reasons beginning in 2004 I translated the older book into English. That got me started in setting things for singing. I learned to pay attention syllable stress and rhyme of lines. A few years later I turned my attention to doing the same thing with scripture passages. That’s when I discovered that the