Book Review: The Sing Hymnal

I did not grow up in a traditional church. I knew what hymnals were and over time, our church moved away from using a physical hymnal to just having the words of a song in our bulletin. The church I attended during my college years used a hymnal which I thought was strange, but I discovered a lot of my favorite worship songs were in the hymnal. 

Sadly, over the years, many churches have gone away from using a hymnal or hymns in general. There is a resurgence happening where more and more churches are using hymnals while at the same time, more modern hymnals are being written which infuses modern worship songs with hymns of long ago. The Sing Hymnal is now being added to the list of brand-new hymnals being published for the body of Christ to use in their corporate worship gatherings. 

This hymnal has a collection of modern worship songs mixed with songs that have been around for year. Some of the modern songs include ones written by Keith & Kristyn Getty, who were the main contributors to this hymnal, Matt Boswell, Sovereign Grace Music, and a couple of songs from Chris Tomlin. In case you were wondering, I did not see any song from Bethel, Hillsong, and Elevation Worship bands. 

This hymnal also contains a collection of verses in the English Standard Version (ESV) and quotes from various Christian theologians. I will admit there are some in there that I would have left out, but that in itself should not take away from how good this hymnal was put together. 

Just like any other hymnals, there are different topics match with the appropriate song for that topic. I was surprised they had a section for the Psalms. However, this was my one big disappointment with this hymnal. While they had many songs based on the Psalms, they did not cover all 150 of them. Not sure why the Getty's omitted some of them, but I thought it was a real shame they did not include songs based on all of the Psalms. My hope is they will release a follow-up to this with a Sing Psalter similar to what The Master's Seminary did with their Hymns of Grace and produced their Psalms of Grace.

Overall, a well put together hymnal for the church to use not just corporately, but also in their homes whether in private worship or singing with friends and family. 

I received this book from Crossway in exchange for an honest review.