Worship & Music

Worshipping together is vital to the growth and development of our faith in God. Our times of corporate worship reflect a desire to be under the power of God’s revealed word and to approach God in a way that reflects the biblical patterns of worship. Hence our worship sermons typically follow the pattern below and lasts for about one hour:

• Welcome
• Opening Item of Praise
• Opening Prayer
• Message for the Children
• Praise
• Reading of the Bible
• Second Prayer
• Praise
• Exposition of the message of the bible
• Closing Praise
• Concluding Prayer and Benediction (2 Corinthians Ch13 v14)

For any visitors perhaps the most noticeable aspect of our worship is our praise. We sing metrical versions of the Book of Psalms. We do not employ any musical accompaniment to these items of praise instead we have a precentor, normally a man who stands up and begins the singing after which the congregation join in. To a modern eye this may seem a strange practice but is one that has its roots firmly in the history of the Scottish Church following the Reformation in Scotland. Until recently we sung the 1650 version of the Scottish Metrical Psalms but now we also use a supplementary Psalter that has translated the Hebrew poetry from the Book of Psalms into a more modern and understandable form of praise. This new Psalter, called ‘Sing Psalms’ was produced with the greatest of care by the Free Church of Scotland Psalmody Committee over a considerable number of years. The final product meets their stated aim to translate from the original Hebrew passage of scripture into an idiom that modern English language readers are accustomed.

An example of the work of ‘Sing Psalms’ is shown below.

Take Psalm 100. In the 1650 Edition of The Scottish Psalter it read:

1 O all ye lands, unto the LORD
make ye a joyful noise
2 Serve God with gladness, him before
come with a singing voice

Whereas the ‘Sing Psalms’ version of Psalm 100 is as follows:

1 Shout to the Lord with joy,
all who to earth belong.
2 Adore the Lord with joyful hearts
and come to him in song.

We are very privileged to have some very gifted musicians within the congregation. Two examples of this musical ability are Murdo Urquhart and Roy Stewart. Murdo and Roy have both composed tunes that we use to sing some of the Psalms to.