Great God, your whole creation shimmers with your beauty.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

 

You crowned human beings with glory and honor.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

 

You elected Israel to be a blessing to all nations.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

In the fullness of time you sent Jesus to us.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

 

This lively Caribbean song belongs firmly among our Easter celebrations and could make a striking entrance or gathering song. Marty Haugen has expanded the simple original refrain by composing four Easter stanzas that are accompanied, appropriately, by the refrain itself. The stanzas are available from Hope Publishing. Stanzas 1, 2, and 3 will fit very nicely with the gospel lessons for the sixth, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Easter, respectively (notice that they don’t quite fit in order), while stanza 4 would work for the first three Sundays.

 

Since there are no words for the congregation to sing except “Halle, halle, hallelujah,” it might be easier to teach the song by rote than to have them read it. Children will certainly be able to “feel” the rhythm more easily than they could read it. One of the advantages of this, of course, is that you could have the entire congregation join in a procession, singing.

 

Under the best of circumstances, this song is sung a capella, with the choir “accompanying” the congregation by singing in harmony. If you’d like, have some maracas or other rhythm instruments play an ostinato like the one printed here. If a tonal accompaniment is necessary, it should be with percussive instruments such as piano or guitar, rather than organ. Maybe there’s someone in your congregation who plays a steel drum! No matter what, have fun with the song, and enjoy praising God.

(from Reformed Worship, Issue 50)

 

John Bell (b. 1949) was born in the Scottish town of Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, intending to be a music teacher when he felt the call to the ministry. But in frustration with his classes, he did volunteer work in a deprived neighborhood in London for a time and also served for two years as an associate pastor at the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam. After graduating he worked for five years as a youth pastor for the Church of Scotland, serving a large region that included about 500 churches. He then took a similar position with the Iona Community, and with his colleague Graham Maule, began to broaden the youth ministry to focus on renewal of the church’s worship. His approach soon turned to composing songs within the identifiable traditions of hymnody that found began to address concerns missing from the current Scottish hymnal:

 

I discovered that seldom did our hymns represent the plight of poor people to God. There was nothing that dealt with unemployment, nothing that dealt with living in a multicultural society and feeling disenfranchised. There was nothing about child abuse…, that reflected concern for the developing world, nothing that helped see ourselves as brothers and sisters to those who are suffering from poverty or persecution. [from an interview in Reformed Worship (March 1993)]
 

That concern not only led to writing many songs, but increasingly to introducing them internationally in many conferences, while also gathering songs from around the world. He was convener for the fourth edition of the Church of Scotland’s Church Hymnary (2005), a very different collection from the previous 1973 edition. His books, The Singing Thing and The Singing Thing Too, as well as the many collections of songs and worship resources produced by John Bell—some together with other members of the Iona Community’s “Wild Goose Resource Group,” are available in North America from GIA Publications.