Hymns From the Heart: Modern Words to Well Known Tunes

By Jan Chamberlin

This collection of eighty hymns by New Zealand song-writer Jan Chamberlin is divided into sections for the seasons and occasions in church life. These contemporary hymns are written to make sense for twenty-first century people. There are no Victorian ideas with flowery included adjectives here. As Jan is a lyricist not a composer she suggests one or two familiar tunes that may be used with each hymn. The use of well-known tunes will be especially appreciated in smaller congregations or where there is a shortage of accomplished musicians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kereru Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780473343644

Book preview

COPYRIGHT PAGE

‘Hymns from the Heart – Modern words to well-known tunes’

Written by Jan Chamberlin

This edition © November 2015 Kereru Publishing Ltd

Text Copyright © Jan Chamberlin 2015

The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the New Zealand Copyright Act 1994

Except as provided by the New Zealand Copyright Act 1994 no part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa)

ISBN Number 978-0-473-34365-1 (Kindle)

ISBN Number 978-0-473-34364-4 (ePub)

Cover design © 2015 Tamar Hawkins – Hawkins Creative Ltd

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and with a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Kereru Publishing Ltd

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Whangaparaoa 0930

New Zealand

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www.kererupublishing.com

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FOREWORD

I’m a hymn writer – but I don’t write music.

Some people lose interest when they find out that I’m a lyricist, not a composer of music. I don’t know why, as I think I am following in the great Methodist tradition of the Wesley brothers, who were primarily lyricists. I have an old hymnbook by Charles and John Wesley, and there are no tunes given at all. The metre (the number of syllables in a line) is given, and the congregation could choose a suitable tune that fitted that particular metre. In fact, most of the tunes we now think of as belonging to various Wesley hymns were written long after the Wesleys were dead, as congregations continued to put the Wesley words to their favourite tunes.

So, John and Charles Wesley did exactly what I and many other current hymn writers do – they wrote new words to well-known tunes, so that people could sing a new hymn without having to learn a new tune.

I have hymn writers on both sides of my family. One of my earliest memories is of standing at the piano in my great-grandparents’ home in Karori, and singing with my maternal great-grandfather. I would have been about four years old, and Grandpa loved to play and sing things like ‘Jesus loves me’ and ‘Jesus bids us shine’ with me. His name was Thomas Oliver Stokes, and he wrote poems, songs and hymns. Recently I was given a folder of his work, and it is among my most precious possessions

My paternal grandfather Bill Leadley also wrote poems and hymns. He fought in WWI, and is the man featured in the book I compiled from his diary of Gallipoli - Shrapnel and Semaphore, a Signaller’s Diary of Gallipoli.

I have written poems since I was very young, for birthdays and anniversaries, for people who were ill, and just for my own amusement, but didn’t think about writing hymns till much later. As a child I thought that everyone could write poems and hymns, and was surprised to find as I grew up that they couldn’t.

I started writing hymns seriously about 17 years ago. One of