Lord of the Dance (Jesus ... not the other guy)

Here's a little something for Easter.  This is an arrangement of the well-known Easter hymn "Lord of the Dance", which is set to the familiar folk tune that is also known as "Simple Gifts".

I developed this arrangement for a Fuller Chapel service back in the day, and was blessed to perform it with a live dancer.  This is a demo recording, done in my friend Brad's apartment, that we made so the dancer had something to choreograph and practice to.

I'll never forget after the service when Fuller's beloved, respected (and British) Old Testement scholar (and my Psalms Exegesis professor), John Goldingay, came up to me afterwards and said, "you've taken an English folk melody and turned it into a Nashville pop tune!"  I've always chosen to take that as a compliment. :)

Enjoy the song!  Listen/download on SoundCloud here:
12 Lord of the Dance

High In The Heavens Eternal God (Psalm 36)

This text--"High in the Heavens, Eternal God"--is a paraphrase of Psalm 36 (really just verse 5ff) by Isaac Watts, which I found online while perusing all (yes, ALL) of his hymns online at CCEL a few years ago.  It was an unfamiliar text to me, but I've since found that its still around in a few hymnals.

Inspired by this text, which hadn't become known to me but which I thought spoke with some evocative and quite up-to-date-sounding lines, I composed a new, contemporary/folk/pop worship tune to it. A free leadsheet of this retuned hymn can be viewed and downloaded here, and you have my permission to use in any private or public Christian worship setting (with attribution, please).

In 2008, while leading worship with my friend Ben Brody at Whitworth, we recorded this live with the team and congregation gathered for the Whitworth Institute of Ministry.

I've posted that recording to my SoundCloud page for listening and/or downloading here.

Let me know what you think!  Comment below, or tweet me @lukehyder

The Summary of the Law - AUDIO!

Here's a rough recording of my Summary of the Law song (love God and love neighbor) posted to SoundCloud ... WARNING: It was recorded live sitting at my desk, directly into SoundCloud, using the built-on mic on my laptop.  So it's not great quality, and it distorts whenever it gets too loud.  But it's something!  :)  I hope is that this can be useful to any of you who wanted to hear how the song goes.  The leadsheet (words, melody and chords) is of course still available in the previous post.

The Summary of the Law

The Summary of the Law

Last Fall our church was going through a series on the Ten Commandments.  To bring a New Testament connection to the series we decided to make use of the Summary of the Law (Jesus' words about what is the greatest commandment, as recorded in Mark 12 and Matthew 22).

As a liturgical element, however, The Summary of the Law can get a little clunky if its just spoken or read responsively every time (IMHO).  So I decided I'd try to set it to music.

The result was a simple, singable worship chorus (a little 80s-Maranatha-sounding if you ask me), which we worked into the services during that series from time-to-time as a different way of incorporating The Summary.

In case this is something you or your church might be interested in, here's a link to a free downloadable PDF of the leadsheet for this song.  Click here.

If you give it a try with your church or just sing through it on your own, come back and leave a comment, or send me a tweet (@lukehyder), and let me know what you think!