Sing Along with Sunday Services

I found myself thinking about Sunday church services the other day. Many changes have come about since my Sunday school days. My Sunday school experiences was not related to one church. Growing up in a small community, plus several moves during my youth, gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with customs of several different religions.

Do you remember attending a Catholic service when you were expected to wear a hat, or head covering to church? And if you weren’t Catholic, there were other things that were different for the young Protestant child. Each church had their specific traditions like responses to specific prayers, etc. As I remember the one thing we all had in common was saying the Lord’s Prayer.

Bible verses were taught at Sunday school, the same verse often enough that the young ones remembered it.

And then there was the music. If you are not musically inclined, I bet there are very few that remember when pipe organs were played in church, and always a piano. And then there were the familiar hymns. Of course, most of us knew how to read basic music, knew when to sing high notes and when there were low notes. Yes, much of the old-time gospel music had a lot of high notes and some of us just skipped past those parts. But most of the songs were so familiar that it was not a problem to sing along.

Yes, most church services have changed a lot over the years, but I still can be moved to tears when I hear “The Old Rugged Cross,” “How Great Thou Art” and some of those traditional hymns. It is hard sometimes to remember that we need to make way for the young. For those of you that feel the same, just pull out the old record player or maybe search the Internet and you can still sing along.