Hymnal Fail

I was visiting my Dad in Maine this past weekend, and we headed to church Sunday morning like we always do.  Since he is the pastor, they notice pretty quickly if he skips a week or two.  He is a Baptist minister, but at home we go to a Methodist church, and so his church uses a different hymnal that the one I am used to.  In fact, since his current church is a “community” church, I don’t even think they have the standard Baptist hymnal that I have seen around either.  They use what is called “The Celebration Hymnal.”

We sang several things from this Hymnal, but I started noticing some weird things during the service.  For instance, in the first hymn that we sang, we were instructed to sing verses 1 and 2.  Here is what the hymn looked like:

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see much difference between verses 1 and 2.  Why did they even print them as separate verses?  Did they think we would not notice that they were padding the hymn, trying to make it look longer?  Is this just lazy composing, or sneaky editing?  I’m not sure.

But then we moved on to our next hymn, entitled “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”  Here it is:

Wait a second!  That is not a hymn!  That is the second half of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” masquerading as its own song!  That is cheating!  Now I am definitely beginning to suspect tricky editors.  That would be like me writing a song called “Do You Remember When We Used To Sing?” and just put down the chorus to “Brown Eyed Girl” a couple of times, obviously including all of the sha-la-la-la-las.  I’m just saying that I think people would be pretty suspicious.

And on another note, I don’t think all of the songs in there are actually hymns.  I think they just started sticking random stuff in there to fill space.  Like check this out:

Isn’t “Higher Ground” a Stevie Wonder song?  I’m pretty sure it is.  I also saw “Joy to the World” by 3 Dog Night in there, as well as something called “Rock of Ages,” which I’m fairly certain is a heavy metal Broadway musical of some sort.

This is all just to say, stop cutting corners, hymnal manufacturers!  I’m on to you, and I’m spreading the word!  Amen.