THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

For several years, I served as the song leader in my church. During that time, it was my responsibility to select the music and lead the congregation in the singing every week.

I took that responsibility seriously. The hymns and songs that I selected had to be doctrinally sound, and appropriate for worship with a God-centered worldview. Within those parameters, I tried to select music that would reinforce and support the text and the subject of my pastor’s messages.

Some of us have been singing the hymns for years; the words roll off our lips but the messages often don't engage our minds or penetrate our hearts. With the apostle Paul, I want the congregation to "sing with understanding."

So it has been my practice to select one hymn each week, research it, and then highlight it with a short introductory commentary so that the congregation will be more informed regarding the origin, the author's testimony, or the doctrinal significance of the hymns we sing.

It is my intention here, with this blog, to archive these hymn commentaries for my reference and to make them freely available to other church song leaders. For ease of reference, all the hymn commentaries in this blog will be titled IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Other posts (which will be music ministry related opinion pieces) will be printed in lower case letters.

I know that some of these commentaries contain traces of my unique style, but please feel free to adapt them and use the content any way you can for the edification of your congregation and to the glory of God.

All I ask is that you leave a little comment should you find something helpful.

Ralph M. Petersen

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Sunday, August 5, 2018

****SO SEND I YOU

Most of you are familiar with the missionary hymn, SO SEND I YOU.   But what you may not know is that the author wrote two different versions. 

(But first, I want to announce that you may obtain your own FREE copies of our hymnbook, from the table at the side entrance of our auditorium.)   

Now, for "The Rest of the Story." -

Margaret Clarkson always hoped that God would call her to serve on the mission field.  In her younger days, she spent seven years working in a mining camp in northern Ontario, Canada.  She was alone with no church or Christian friends.  

One day, while reading her bible, she read John 20:21, "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so, send I you."

She believed that God must have wanted her in that place for a purpose.  And that’s when she began to write a poem that expresses the miseries and hardships of a missionary’s life.

The poem describes a calling that is unappreciated, underpaid, unloved, rebuked, scorned, scoffed, and burdensome; a life of suffering and loneliness.  She had sacrificed all her personal desires and ambitions to show God's love to hard-hearted people who reviled and hated her.

And that is the background for, and the subject of the hymn that has been called the finest missionary hymn of the 20th century.

Except for ..."The Rest of the Story!"

According to Margaret Clarkson, “...twenty-some years later, after more life-experience and contact with real missionaries, I realized that the poem was really very one-sided; it told only of the sorrows and privations of the missionary call and none of its triumphs. [So,] I wrote another song, in the same rhythm, that sets forth the glory and the hope of the missionary calling.  Above all, I wish to be a biblical writer, and the second hymn is the more biblical one.”

Her first hymn wasn't wrong; it was just self-centered.  It emphasized the failures and frustrations of someone who was striving to do God's work in her own strength.  


Unfortunately, the original hymn was already widely known and accepted before Margaret wrote the revised text that she much preferred.  Both versions are published, side by side, in our hymnbook on pages 310 and 311.  If you were to compare them, you would see how 20 years of serving God had changed her heart.  Now, with self out of the way, she was seeing God's work from a whole new perspective.
   
SO SEND I YOU (with its new subtitle, By Grace Made Strong), declares the great grace of a mighty God who is our strength, our peace, our comfort, and our joy.  He never promised an easy, comfortable life but He does promise that He is with us and will lead us through all our trials and tribulations.  And He uses weak and imperfect people to accomplish His work by His power and for His manifest glory. 

And with my apologies to Paul Harvey, 
now you know "The Rest of the Story."

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