Tom Read chats with Neil Bennetts from The Worship Foundation about why it’s important to think about where our songs come from, and the importance of having a local voice.
The Modern Hymnal is a community of worship leaders who are committed to seeing more UK written worship songs being sung in UK churches. We are passionate about seeing new songs and songwriters being raised up. We believe that change starts with the people who are choosing the songs their church sings every week, and by joining this community, each member makes a commitment to intentionally include more UK written songs in their weekly set lists.
We are also passionate about supporting new artists and music from the UK, and we curate a variety of different playlists to help people discover great new Christian music from the UK.
Song Submission
Community members can submit new songs from British and UK based songwriters through our website. These can be songs that they have written/released, or songs from other people.
Song Curation
We curate different playlists to help people discover new songs coming out from the UK. There is a Core Playlist of songs that our community have been using in their churches. There are also playlists designed to help promote new UK Christian music.
Song Selection
We ask community members to consider trying songs from our playlists list in their set list each week. We also provide song charts, lyrics, and other resources for all the songs on our Core Playlist.
The Modern Hymnal is primarily aimed at UK based worship leaders, songwriters, and those responsible for choosing the songs sung in their church. These are the people who can actually make the change, and so we want to start there.
- The song must have been written by at least one British songwriter
- You may only submit one song per month
- The song should have been released within the last 12 months
- Songs should only be submitted once
Yes! Community members can submit their own songs. We have a playlist that features all of the new releases from members of our community. This is a great way to share your music and for the community to support each other.
The idea behind The Modern Hymnal is to encourage some unified action, because without it this whole thing is just a good idea in theory. Our hope is that you will discover some great new songs from UK songwriters and you will want to sing these songs in your church.
We allow each member to submit one song per month, and to only submit a song once.
Of course. We are well aware that there are many churches and denominations that regularly sing many UK written songs, however our research tells us that many of those songs are older songs. Of the UK songs currently in the top UK CCLI charts, only one of them was written in the last decade. One of our aims is to support and raise up new songs and songwriters, while continuing to support the historical songs and writers already embraced by the church.
We celebrate songs from all over the world, and we do not believe that UK songs are any better, or worse, than songs being written in other countries. However we do believe that it is important for the voices of UK songwriters to be represented in UK churches, and currently we feel that the balance is not right. If this is something that resonates with you then we welcome you to join us.