Retuned hymn – Page 5 – The Musical Diary of Greg Scheer

Abba Father

Calvin College’s chaplain Andy De Jong is doing a chapel series on the Lord’s Prayer. He asked if I would compose a new tune for a text by Thomas Troeger called “Let All Who Pray the Prayer Christ Taught.” It turned out to be quite a challenge. It’s quite a thick text which doesn’t lend itself naturally to the meditative spirit you’d expect from a song about praying. So I put Troeger’s text in the mouth of the leader and gave the congregation a simple “Abba, Father” as a response. Here’s the demo. I hope you like it. More importantly, I hope that Thomas likes it, because I’ll be working with him next summer at Lake Junaluska. I can just imagine our first meeting: “Greg Scheer. (silence) So you’re the guy who ruined my song.”

Psalm 82: Stick it to the Man

Update: For sheet music or to adopt this orphan tune, head over to gregscheer.com.

This Sunday at Church of the Servant we sang the Psalter Hymnal version of Psalm 82, “There Where the Judges Gather.” After the service Ron and Deb Rienstra commented that the tune which accompanied the text was too nice. What it really needed was a tune that got across the “stick it to the man” tone of the Psalm.

How could I resist?

I spent the next few days writing and recording this new version of “There Where the Judges Gather.” The tune, appropriately enough, is called “STICK IT TO THE MAN.” Do punk rock and metrical Psalms go together? You be the judge. Listen to the MP3 here.