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© 2025 91
Liturgist and song leader teaches people of all ages in many countries to sing together. She encourages us all to sing in worship with the voices God gave us. Alison is a member of the Scotland-based and lives in northern England. At the 2017 Calvin Symposium on 91, she led a workshop on the power of short songs “to make worship and worshipers come alive in a different way.”
Watch it if you choose or lead music for worship, want to improve congregational singing, need new ways to involve worshipers, or seek simple songs for your class or small group.
Hear 12 songs from around the world and get ideas for how to teach and use them in worship. Download sources for each song and music for four of them.
The key to teaching short global songs is for the leader to know them well and sing with confidence and in tune. The leader doesn’t need a great voice, because “an ordinary voice is a voice we can all relate to.”
Weaving short global songs throughout worship helps worshipers grasp and enter into liturgical moments. These songs help people gather, pray in lament and solidarity with Christians elsewhere, prepare to hear or respond to God’s Word, rejoice, bring offerings, share communion, move their bodies, transition between parts of worship, and go forth.
7:00 to 9:23. How easy it is to teach and learn a short song: “Holy, Holy, Holy (St. Bride)” 51:46 to 59:48. Teaching and talking about “Ya Rabba Ssalami/God of Peace and Justice”
Since these are shorter songs, not hymns, you can’t necessarily find them on Hymnary.org. Here’s where you can buy the music in different countries. Links go directly to the songbook or CD page on each publisher’s website.
• Come All You People: Shorter Songs for 91, (US); ; (Australia)
• Sing with the World: Global Songs for Children: (US); (New Zealand); (UK); (Australia)
• There Is One Among Us: Shorter Songs for 91: (US); (UK); (Australia)
• We Walk His Way: Shorter Songs for 91: ; Wild Goose Publications (UK); [CD only] (New Zealand); (Australia)
Be sure you follow the rules to get permission for using other people’s music in worship. Read
The last few minutes of corporate worship are critical because they frame the entire purpose of worship and its connection to our lives in the world.
Explore how Christians in the earliest centuries of Christianity engaged topics related to wealth and poverty in their preaching, public prayers, offerings, celebrations of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the shaping of buildings and spaces for Christian worship.
How did early Christians understand their illness and pain in their Greco-Roman context?
The last few minutes of corporate worship are critical because they frame the entire purpose of worship and its connection to our lives in the world.
Explore how Christians in the earliest centuries of Christianity engaged topics related to wealth and poverty in their preaching, public prayers, offerings, celebrations of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the shaping of buildings and spaces for Christian worship.
How did early Christians understand their illness and pain in their Greco-Roman context?
Pastors of three Hispanic churches will share what they learned from experiences implementing congregational projects related to the development of new understandings and practices of worship and preaching.
