The Sermon Song ™ : A New Genre in Sacred Music Taking

By: John Fisher
https://johnfisher.online/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6xg8gQPqSbvr_2kWEXDtDQ

Taking sermon notes, while prayerfully listening to what is being preached at my church, has led me to create a unique form of expression, “ The Sermon Song.” At First Presbyterian Church EPC, Fort Myers,Florida, our associate pastor, in his Saturday phone chain announcements, gives the text and a foreshadowing of what our senior pastor will be speaking on the next day. Our secretary will already have sent out the bulletin by email, so that with clipboard and pen in hand, I am ready to compose in our second pew each week.

I began taking sermon notes in high school with the vision that some day, I would become a preacher. My life never followed that path. Instead, I spent forty-six years as a teacher covering various subjects from second grade through college. In my retirement, I have composed and published sacred music for sheetmusicplus.com and recently published two books for Christian Faith Publishing.

In the summer of 2021, I took sermon notes on our associate pastor’s stirring sermon on King Jehoshaphat from II Chronicles. In the story, this good king is faced with a Moabite invasion with neighboring confederates that threatens to totally annihilate the Jews. All gather in Jerusalem to pray for deliverance, but Jehoshaphat is told by God, that this war is not theirs but his and that their responsibility is to sing, sing and sing. Doing what was commanded of them, his people are rewarded with a marvelous and miraculous victory.

I took notes and turned my notes into notes of song, as I composed a duet which I entitled “Sing to the Lord” ( which has since been published. ) But on the next Sunday, I presented the score to the associate pastor, who is also our choir director, and dedicated it to him. He read it, and on the subsequent Sunday, he arranged for the two of us to sing with his wife accompanying us on the piano.  And thus the sermon song was born.

Our senior pastor does not give random, moralizing, feel good sermons, but instead, takes a book of the Bible, and seriously preaches through it. I was especially moved, when in the summer of 2023, he began to take us through the Gospel According to Mark. With a brief respite during Advent, he made it to chapter 16 exactly on Easter Sunday of 2024.

Meanwhile, I was turning my sermon notes into verses set to hymns, spirituals, folk tunes, children’s songs, pop tunes and sometimes my own compositions.  For the first sermon song following Pastor’s sermon entitled,” Beginnings” with the text of Mark 1:1-13, I told the story of Christ’s baptism and temptation. Pastor foreshadowed how God would give the affirmation that Christ was His son, Mark 9:7, and contrasted the Fall in Genesis 3, set in the Garden of Eden to Christ’s temptation in the bad lands beyond the River Jordan. Then inspired by this all inclusive homily, I composed my sermon song, also entitled “Beginnings,” set to the Scottish folk song Bunessan, better known as “Morning Has Broken.”

In the beginning, the world was created.
In the beginning, the Word was made flesh.
Jesus our Saviour began his long journey,
Baptized by John, his spirit was fresh.

When he was baptized, he rose from the waters.
There was a voice, as a dove was released.
God spoke to all who had gathered by Jordan,
“This is my son, in whom I am pleased.”

Adam and Eve, they met sin in a garden,
Jesus was tempted in a desert so dry.
Because of what happened to Eve and to Adam,
Jesus for us, on the cross, had to die.

For forty days, he was tempted by Satan,
Helped on by angels, he never gave in.
Likewise, we’re challenged by forces of evil,
But by our faith, we are saved from our sin.

And my book reads on, through twenty eight more sermon songs, with an appendix of “Saint Mark’s Passion-A Service In Sacred Song,” which is a litany of scriptural readings followed by sermon songs to be sung by the congregation, a choir, children’s choir, duets and solos. In my second book, “Sermon Songs for the Acts and Revelation,” there are thirty eight sermon songs for Acts, followed by an appendix: “The Birth Of The Church In Two Acts” which follows the same format, demonstrating how sermon songs can be used. For Revelation, there are eighteen sermon songs and a Service of Lessons and Carols “Christ’s First Coming.” It took me four rejections until Christian Faith Publishing was willing to take on my manuscripts. For my writing, I am schooled in “The Chicago Manual of Style.” I am forever grateful to the editors for that magical phrase, “set to” to indicate the musical source for each sermon song, allowing my readers to sing their way through each Bible book and protecting me against any copyright infringements.

My editors were especially happy about an aspect of my books that makes them interactive. Opposite each page of a given sermon song is the simple word “Notes.” Just as I took notes, I challenge the reader to make their own notes on the scripture, the applied music, the poetry, or how they personally are affected by what they have read. My books have evolved into three purposes: 1) an aid in worship for choirs and congregational singing 2) a study guide for scriptural learning. and 3) devotional.