Sing! Hymnal: A Resource for Churches and Families

Sing! Hymnal: A Resource for Churches and Families

October 31, 2025

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Guest: Dr. Matt Boswell

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/31/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:

Welcome to the program, to the Stand in the Gap today Friday edition. My normal co-host Sam, is overseas in Israel. This is Pastor Isaac Crockett, and I’m excited to introduce a first time guest to you today, Dr. Matt Boswell. He’s a pastor, a singer songwriter, a professor, a husband, and a father among many roles that you play. Matt. Matt, you’ve got this incredibly busy schedule, and I thank you for taking time to be with us on the program today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Matt Boswell:

Thank you for having me. It’s an honor.

Isaac Crockett:

Matt, we want to talk today about the new hymn from Getty Music and Crossway, the Sing Hymnal. It’s a great resource. It’s helped the little church where I pastor up on the northern border of Pennsylvania and southern New York state. It’s helped my family, it’s helped me personally, and this resource, this hymnal Sing Hymnal has, it’s been something that’s kind of been long awaited by some people, and we’re just so thankful for the work that you and the folks at Getty Music have done in getting this out and putting together just such a quality resource that is so well thought through. But before we go into that, I just want to talk a little bit about maybe how you got involved with Getty Music and kind of the role you play now. For me, I’ve always appreciated how much Getty Music has emphasized the local church.

Keith has been on our program many times. I’ve been friends for years with Johnny McCabe, and they’ve always been asking, what can we do to help pastors? What can we do to help churches? You are a pastor. You pastor, your whole life has been kind of influenced by pastors. Your father was a pastor. I think your grandfather was a missionary. And so I’d just be curious how this role, you’re a musician and a songwriter, and you’re also a pastor, a church planter, a professor, but how did you get into becoming a musician and become the songwriter and so influential with Getty Music?

Matt Boswell:

Well, I’m so grateful to have grown up in a pastor’s home, and that’s where my grandparents were missionaries in Brazil for the entirety of my dad’s childhood. And so just being around pastors my entire life played an indelible role in my life. I grew to love the church the way that I saw my dad and my granddad do. Around the age of 15, of course, I was always influenced by church music, singing in choirs and learning piano as a kid. But around the age of 15, I started learning more about the Lord and growing deeper in my relationship with him. And the only thing I knew to do was to sing about it and was very influenced by church music being written at the time and just tried my own hand at it. And for the 31 years I’ve been trying to write songs to help churches sing to the Lord.

And growing up in a pastor’s home, I was kind of the black sheep pursuing church music instead of preaching, and I’m glad I did. And I’ve been able over the years to keep one foot in each world. And so in my church here in Texas, I preach every Lord’s day, but throughout the week, I’m still always turning ideas over my mind, seeing what it is we need to be singing as a church. I’m writing primarily for our local church and then sort of afterward with an eye to what other churches could be singing as well.

Isaac Crockett:

I think in history of some of my favorite hymn writers, Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley and John Newton, they were theologians and they were pastors and also gifted and writing songs. And I just so appreciate you and Matt Papa and Keith Getty and many, many, many others on the Getty Music team. Could you maybe before we really introduce more about the hymnal, but here in this first segment, maybe talk to us just a little bit about the history of the Sing Hymnal. I know there’s a lot that went into it and there’s some beautiful new hymns that are in it and songs, but you’ve also preserved these old hymns, some of them ancient hymns that have been there throughout history. Could you maybe just kind of talk us through a little bit of the process that went into creating that hymnal?

Matt Boswell:

Yes. So as a person who’s been deeply shaped by hymnals and my own prayer life and devotional life being helped by the use of hymnals hymn, singing, even just reading through the hymns of the faith, I was thrilled when Crossway came out with their desire to publish a hymnbook. I knew Keith had already been dreaming about it from the Getty Music perspective. And when those two teams came together, I could not have been more excited because I knew what you would get with Keith as the general editor is both a wonderful representation of hymn that he, through the ages maintaining the best hymns through history hymns of the church has loved and cared for through the ages, accompanied by things that we’ve been writing over the last 25 years, and having this mixture of old and new together. I knew it would be a wonderful addition. Of course, other hymnals have done the same thing, but it’s been quite a while since we’ve had a hymnal published in our day. And so I knew it would be a tremendous contribution to the field. And then Crossway does just everything with such beauty and excellence, and I knew they would take care of the whole project in a way that really only they can do. And so I was very excited about both of these teams coming together to produce the Sing hymnal.

Isaac Crockett:

And I can say from a pastoral point of view too, that it’s hard to find good hymnals. The little church I met, we are replanting it and we wanted to get new hymnals for the church, and all the good ones that I went to were out of print it seemed like. And then Johnny McCabe and some others told me that they were coming out with the Sing hymnal. So we just waited until we could get that. Real quickly, we only have about a minute left before our first break. What were some of the hardest things? I imagine it was hard to limit the hymnal, what songs you could or couldn’t include any hints on some of the struggles you guys went through making that?

Matt Boswell:

Well, one of the things with modern Church singing that we wanted to speak into was how narrow some of the topics had become. And so one challenge is if you think about the index, the subject index of a hymnal and the breadth of how Christians have sung together, the challenge is how to weed through centuries of wonderful hymns and find just the best representation, leaving enough room for other things to be sung, singing of God’s providence and his love and the work of Christ and the Christian life, and how all of these things feed together in our singing. So one challenge was how do we work and whittle it down to the best of the best that we can present to a local church for their use in singing?

Isaac Crockett:

Well, I have to say, I think that you and the team have done a wonderful job doing that. My wife is more of the musician, our family, our whole family. We do some music, but my wife is more of the musician and she just, especially, we play a lot of piano in our church and some other instruments, but it’s just musically really good for me as a pastor loving hymns singing them my whole life, just, I love all the songs that have been put in there, the old ones and the new ones. It’s like, oh, that’s a good one. Oh, that’s a good one. And so I’ve been very, very happy with this hymnal. I’m excited about it. We’re going to take our first break, but we’ve really just scratched the surface of how this new hymnal, the Seeing Hymnal by getting music and crossway, how it’s impacting churches and believers. It’s this new resource that’s an old resource, it’s an old hymnal, but it’s a new hymnal. So stay with us as we dive deeper into its role, the way it helps revitalize worship for congregations and families. We’ve got a lot more to talk about as we talk to Matt Boswell about the new Seeing him Know when we come back.

Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I am interviewing Pastor Matt Boswell, first time guest on our program. Many of you would recognize him from getting music. In fact, I’ve enjoyed meeting of our listeners and television viewers at different Getty events at the Sing conference. I’ve run into a lot of you at the Sing conference, and I’ve even run into people just waiting to get into a Getty Music concert and things like that. And so we love having folks from Getty Music on Pastor Boswell has never been on our program before, and he very graciously agreed to do this very last minute. In fact, he jokingly said right before we started the program that he’s standing in the gap for Keith Getty because something came up a funeral and Keith had to fly out today when we were going to be recording.

And so Matt has graciously volunteered to stand in the gap for his friend Keith. And so Matt, thanks again for being on this program. We’re talking about this resource. Hymnals are old, but it’s hard to find a good hymnal that includes the old hymns and the newer hymns. And so Crossway and Getty music have worked together to bring this beautiful, it’s beautifully arranged. I have several different versions of the hymnal and they’re all just top quality paper and all of that, but just the other benefits in it. There’s resources in this that are very helpful. And then the music, of course, these hymns are great. And so Matt, let’s go back to talking about the hymnal. How does the sing hymnal, how does it help churches find theologically rich songs with meaning in an age where we have a lot of modern trends that seem to be encouraging shallow religious entertainment and kind of skipping over the deeper doctrinal things?

Matt Boswell:

Well, one of the things that the singing of our churches must do if we’re to have the word of Christ to dwell in us richly is by having enough doctrine to fill our thoughts with who God is. That then leads us to the praise of who he is. And when I think about that, I think about the Apostle Paul. So in these doxological moments, he has throughout his writings, these hymns, these ancient Christ hymns. For example, in Philippians two, it’s not just praise to Christ that he’s wanting to get at. He wants us to know who the biblical Jesus is and allow the doctrine of Christ to lead us to the praise of Christ. And I fear sometimes in modern singing, we do well to praise Christ. That’s good. We would do better to dig down deep and to sing of what we believe about Jesus, who Christ is, what his substitutionary life and death and resurrection means for us as the people of God. And when those truths, when gospel truths sink down in us, we would do well to respond with praise and adoration and surrender and all the wonderful responses and right responses to Christ that are fitting.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that. My wife and I were just a few days ago at an event and there was a large praise service going on, and the first number of songs were beautiful, but they were very, what I would call shallow. They were not very tied to doctrine, very repetitive. And sometimes I’m driving and I hear that on the radio and it’s very beautiful and it’s neat, but it was incredible. There were tens of thousands of young people at this event, and it was incredible that when they got to a hymn, I’m trying to remember now, I think then sings my soul, my Savior God, to the How Great Thou Art, I think was the hymn they closed with the atmosphere changed and those doctrinal statements and these basically prayer of affirmation of who God is and what we believe. It was incredible the way that the whole auditorium, it was more than an auditorium, but these tens of thousands of people that those truths being proclaimed together.

It was different than the earlier songs and it was something we noticed and our kids noticed and it was really, really neat. I wonder, let’s go to this one. How can this hymnal encourage congregational participation? As a pastor, we’re always wanting to see our congregation participating when we have these services, especially maybe there are some cases where people might be unfamiliar with some of the traditional hymns. We have a number of folks coming to our church just recently that didn’t sing hymns before. They didn’t really sing church songs before. How can a hymnal be a resource to help teach those sort of hymns and things to a congregation?

Matt Boswell:

Well, part of what I love with the hymnal is seeking to do is give the church back her song and encourage people from across the generations to raise their voices together. So we introduced the Singh Hymnal. We actually got a little bit early before it went to market around Midsummer. Crossway sent us some of the first batch of hymnals and we used them in our church straight away. And one of the great joys that I have as a pastor is looking across our child and seeing older saints and younger saints singing side by side from the same book encouraging one another. So from where I sit, I can see my grandmother, who is our oldest member, she’s 90, and just in the next section over her also on the front row is a group of high school boys that love opening their hymnals to sing.

And I love across the generations of seeing voices raised together in praise to Christ. It matters not when this song was written. So we don’t make a big deal over this hymn is new, this hymn is old. We just want to present the truths that we’re singing and allow those to resonate the body of the church and let it give praise. Every church is singing, every church sings when they gather. And so what we want to help is shape. What are they singing? Why are they singing? Many believers don’t have a theological vision of why they sing to begin with, much less how that should be practiced within the life of our church. And I think a hymnal has a way to give the people back their song, whereas in more entertainment driven churches where the ask of the worshiper is really just sit passively, listen to the things happening on the stage. One of the benefits of the Reformation was giving the people the praise of God in their own language. And I think what this hymnal has the ability to be one contribution of is instilling within people their voice and their part in the great choir, in the congregation when they gather. And so I think those are some of the benefits that I see immediately in helping churches sing.

Isaac Crockett:

Oh, well, Matt, I think we could talk about this for a whole program, and this is one of the things we’ve talked about before, why I love the sing conference from Getty Music because there’s so much teaching and doctrine that goes in with the music there. And this is so true. At our little church, I bought the hymnals for our church, 40 some of them, and now we need more already. We’ve been growing since then. And so I had several folks say, oh, well, can we have these? And I said, well, you can if you’ll bring them back on Sundays. We also use a screen. So a lot of folks, if they don’t read music, they don’t actually use the paper hymnal necessarily. And so it’s been neat to see many of our folks coming to church with their hymnal and their bible together and seeing it in their homes and they’re using it to read it.

They’re using it of encourager folks for years to use a hymnal with their Bible for devotions, and they’re doing that. So it’s neat how this works and this particular hymnal has been so well prepared for that. Let’s talk about that, the layout of this hymnal. How can it help maybe, and it may be larger churches too, but especially smaller churches or I work with a lot of rural congregations and we don’t necessarily have a lot of instrumentalists, and how can it help some of these smaller churches who are looking to build a robust worship service but they don’t have a lot of musical resources? How can a hymnal like this be a help to them?

Matt Boswell:

Okay, let me answer that, but let me go back to something you said a minute ago just to describe what that looks like for our church. So our church is a 7-year-old church plant, so it’s a new church and we do use screens. In fact, you can read the lyrics to the songs that we sing three different ways. You could look at the screens, which we still provide since the time we planted. We also printed just the lyrics of every hymn that we sing so that people could that home and use in private devotions or in family worship throughout the week. And then also now we’ve introduced the hymnal. And so it is challenging because a lot of people don’t read music in our day that has continues to be the case. And so what we’re having to do then is actually have classes to teach people how to read music.

And this is not a new idea. Even back in the 1850s in London, when Spurgeon wanted to introduce a new hymnal, they created these singing schools within their church where people could come and learn how to read music together. And so we hope to do the same thing this coming spring is offer singing schools in our church where you can come and learn how to read music. But I think looking at the hymnal itself, how it helps us is the hymnals is organized under three main headings. There’s the worship service where it moves from a cult of worship and hymns of adoration, songs of confession and assurance, hymns of prayer and communion. And so one of the main sections shows hymns gathered around and organized by how a typical worship service might flow. The next section is on the Christian life. And this section is designed to equip believers in their daily and family life, including Psalms and songs for children.

And so in that way, the hymnal is not meant just for the congregation, but also for the home. For many years, believers had hymnals in their homes and they used them personally and with their families, and we want to see a recovery of that. And then finally, there’s a section on the life of Christ, and this section covers hymns that are tied to the church’s year for those who use a more traditional church calendar year from advent through to Christ’s return. And so there’s multiple ways that this hymnal is organized in order to help Christians sing regardless of the environment they’re praised to Christ.

Isaac Crockett:

Matt, this is great, and I thank you so much that we could spend several programs I think on this because of what you’re talking about here. It’s really neat that this is Reformation Day, the day that Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the door and Wittenberg, and we’re talking about these things and we are looking for revival of this kind of singing. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today as we talk with Pastor Matt Boswell about the Seeing Hymnal. Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap today to our Friday edition. And I just want to remind you that if you want to hear all of this, maybe you’re just right now tuning in. You could go back to our archives, you can go to stand in the gap media.org and listen to the whole program.

If you were listening last segment and you heard Pastor Matt Boswell talking about some of the things he’s doing at his church, everything from teaching people music to putting the words of these hymns into people’s hands so that they can use that in their family devotions and personal devotions and get familiar with these hymns, you maybe want to share that with somebody in leadership at your church or maybe you’re pastor and you want to go over that again and share it with others. You can listen to this program again. In fact, I would highly encourage you to listen to it again and to share it with somebody else from your church or maybe your pastor and some other churches that could use this. You can go to Stand in the gap media.org or what I like to do, in fact I do this, I share programs all the time with friends.

I’m just getting ready to text a friend of mine, a program that would be appropriate for him with something he’s going through. I go to our app Stand in the Gap app. It’s in the iTunes store for Apple products or iPhones, iPads, and it’s in the Android store for non iPhone phones. But you can go to Stand in the Gap app, download that, and you can share any of our archives, radio or television archives, as well as if you listen to Spotify or iHeartRadio or some sort of podcast format. You can find our programs on your favorite podcast platform as well and share it that way. But a lot of neat things, and again, pastor Boswell just went over some really helpful practical steps. And then maybe you’re thinking about buying the Sing hymnal for yourself or for your church. And I’ll ask Matt to fill in any blanks that I’m leaving here, but it’s easy to find.

You could go to Crossway, you can go to pretty much any online book seller and find this. You could go to Amazon is really easy to get it. Christian book distributors, Westminster online bookstore, almost anywhere where you could buy a book online, you can go and you can find the Seeing Hymnal and there’s choices of different types of binding and things like that. But it’s been incredible for our church. Matt was just sharing how incredible it’s been for his church. Matt, I want to ask you some questions about families, but before I do go into that, is there anything I’m leaving out about where folks could find the sing hymnal to purchase for themselves?

Matt Boswell:

I think that’s great. I think Crossway through their website always has them available, and even Amazon, Westminster, all those places have them available.

Isaac Crockett:

Alright, well, Matt, my family, we for years have enjoyed listening to and buying and downloading copies of music from the Gettys music that you and Matt Pop have wrote. We have three albums that you and Matt Pop have put together. I still kind of do an old school. I download it like it’s an iPod from iTunes store and I listened to it on my iPhone, like an iPod and I play that. We were just on a family trip and we had about 15 hours in the car. We just listened to a bunch of your songs and other Getty music, but my wife likes to download it and our kids play. She plays piano and our kids do too, but then they play violin and guitar and trumpet and sing, and we’ve really enjoyed that. But having the hymnal has been really helpful to have all these hymns, old and new right there in the hymnal. We’ve loved having it as a family. But Matt, how can families incorporate this hymnal, the seeing hymnal into family devotions and really just daily family life?

Matt Boswell:

One of the things I’m talking with, particularly with younger families in our church is what the practice of family worship looks like. And from the time our kids were very small, every day, every evening would read God’s word together. We would pray together. And then singing historically has been a vital part of family worship practice, but that’s often what will get left out in today’s practices of family worship. Early on, I bought our kids all their own hymnal that they could sing from during family worship, even from before they could read music. Older kids would have theirs open and singing next to younger kids. And so that’s been a part of our practice of family worship. And I hope that as a result of having the new singing hymnal available, that more families would consider that they would regularly open God’s word together, that they would pray together and they would also sing together as an expression of their faith.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that. I grew up in a home where my dad didn’t really read music. My parents wouldn’t consider themselves musical. My dad had a nice strong voice, but at our family devotion time, he would call it family altar. We would sit around and we would sing hymns and songs and things. And I’m so glad we did. In my family where my wife is very musical, we get to incorporate that a lot. But so many times we talk about kids, oh, they need confidence or something. Well, Arise, My Soul Arise written many years ago by Charles Wesley talking in, I think it’s the last verse about, to my God, I’m reconciled his pardoning voice and he owns me for his child. I don’t fear. And the last line I think goes with confidence. I now draw near with confidence. I now draw near Father Abba, father cry.

Well, that’s the confidence our children need. Or we went through Catechisms with our kids and we still go through that and the Heidelberg catechism of what is our only hope in life and death that we are not our own but belong to God. And you’ve taken those ideas and wrapped that up into a him that can catechize our kids, that can teach the doctrines that they’ll remember. And you have the song, Christ, our Hope in Life and Death. What is our hope in life and death? Christ alone. Christ alone, what is our only confidence that our souls to him belong? And to see my kids teenagers on down singing that confidently in home, in the car, in front of our church congregation, it’s exciting to see these things taking root in the younger generation. What about a busy parent that so many parents are just coming and going and all over the place. How can a hymnbook like this be a resource to help a busy parent teach their kids the value of worship?

Matt Boswell:

Well, you just mentioned catechism a moment ago, and I believe in catechism. Our church practices catechism. We teach our middle school kids. The whole curriculum is built around learning through questions and answers. I think that’s vital. And yet, music is another expression of catechism. Through the hymns that we sing, you’re able to take these truths with you wherever you go to meditate on them and turn them over in your thoughts as you’re working, as you’re going, as you’re playing. And so I think for the busyness of our culture, rich doctrinal hymn, singing can be a way that we do keep the truths of God fresh in our thoughts and always near our hearts. And so I think in that way, thinking through hymns as an expression of catechism can be a wonderful resource for busy parents.

Isaac Crockett:

Now you’re a musician and I’m curious, you love music. How have you sought to instill a love and a joy for worship and for music into your children rather than them just kind of growing up with it, taking it for granted maybe and seeing, oh, this is just kind of boring maybe. What are some steps you and your wife have taken to help it be endearing to your children?

Matt Boswell:

I think when our children see mom and dad singing to the Lord and see that music has a place in their lives, it gives them a model. And in this sense, it truly is more caught than taught. And I think if they see parents enjoying singing to the Lord, enjoying Christ in the psalms, I think that is a contagious way of worship to the Lord and an effective means of discipleship. One of my favorite things. Now, my twin daughters are seniors in high school and they help lead our student ministry on Wednesday night. And so I’ll sneak in a room and hear them singing one on piano, one on guitar and them singing harmony together, practicing leading our youth group. And I love walking in the room and I’ll try to sneak a video where they’re not watching so that I cannot forget these moments. And I didn’t sit down and tell them like girls, you should really consider learning a musical instrument and you should really consider trying to help lead others in song and just they saw Dad doing that and picked it up and I’m very grateful.

Isaac Crockett:

Real quickly here, we have about a minute before our next break, but how could this hymnal be a spiritual resource for an individual, maybe somebody who’s dealing with some grief or some really difficult trials? How could a hymnal like this help them with comfort and healing that they may need?

Matt Boswell:

I think that is one of the most beneficial reasons to own a hymnal, is to help our prayer life and to give us songs to sing, not between expressions of suffering, but to sing through suffering. You have a whole body of hymnody right there at your fingertips where maybe you don’t have the words to pray or to express how you’re feeling, but others have given us language to express ourselves. And so we borrow the language from others and make it our own, and it helps our hearts to sing through whatever we are walking through, even through times of great joy to have a Thanksgiving hymn or a song of praise to God that just helps us express what we need to say to the Lord in these moments. That’s the benefit of having a hymnal near you at all times.

Isaac Crockett:

So there’s so many benefits of this. You talked pastorally at the beginning of the program, and there’s so many benefits in our churches to having a good hymnal. And the Seeing hymnal is such a wonderful one. It’s got just so well put together and you were describing the three sections of it in things, but as fathers dealing with our families and with ourselves individually, this is just a huge treasure. It’s a benefit, it’s a resource. And I hope that you’re reading your Bibles and studying your Bibles, but I hope that you’ll consider getting a hymnal. And again, I highly recommend going to Crossway or any of the online booksellers looking for the Sing hymnal from getting music and using that in your life from family devotions to comforting our hearts in the midst of trials. The Sing Hymnal is truly a spiritual treasure for us.

Please stick with us. We’re going to take another short break, listen to some of our partners, and when we come back, we want to wrap up a final conversation with Matt Boswell. We’ll be right back after this. Welcome back to our program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and we are wrapping up a very interesting conversation we’ve been having with Pastor Matt Boswell, who is a singer songwriter for Getty Music. And we’re talking about the Sing Hymnal, a resource for churches and families and so many other things, Matt, that have come up. And you’re a professor of music, a pastor, church planter, and a father, a husband. And yet you’re quite involved with Getty Music. And so this is really quite amazing to get this opportunity to pick your brain and to talk about this resource that’s been a labor of love from you and many other folks there.

At Getty Music, we’re at the end of October and October 31st is the anniversary date that we often remind or we often call the Reformation Day. It’s a remembrance of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses through the Wall. And there are many pastors that I’ve talked to that say we are in need of another reformation, maybe a revival, but even maybe a reformation of what’s going on. I’m rereading a book that a friend of mine wrote about consumerism in the church, and it was a book that was written quite a while ago, but it’s very true even today. And I’m wondering, do you see any ways in which maybe the Sing hymnal can help us pastors today in 2025 to maybe lead almost like a reformation, like a service of songs, a worship service in our churches nowadays? Matt?

Matt Boswell:

I do think hymnal can be a part of that good work. And I agree. I think there is a reformation needed within the church today. And if we think back even to the 16th century, it was a reformation needed in both doctrine and in worship. Both were vital to what the reformers were working toward. And of course, through the five Solas, you hear the heartbeat of it, and yet often what’s overlooked is what the reforming was meant to go toward. So there was a scholar named and a reformer named Johannes Alius is his last name. And he was first attributed to using the phrase, always reforming, but that’s not the whole phrase. It continues according to scripture.

Isaac Crockett:

It’s

Matt Boswell:

Always reforming according to scripture. So we’re not just after reformation for the sake of reformation, but we’re after. Is the purity of the church itself, the purity of our doctrine, the purity of our worship practices, the purity of our lives, and so do we need a reformation in our day like they did in the early 16th century? Certainly there’s doctrines that we need to recover and reclaim, and you see that also in our worship practices on the continent of Europe. In early 16th century, Christians would go into the chapel, they would sit there in a dark room while what happens at the front was lit. They would passively watch professionals worship God in a language they didn’t understand and then they would go home. And it’s not that different than today. Many places in the United States where Christians walk into a low lit room while what is magnified and illuminated is what happens on a stage where they passively watch professionals worship God and then go home. And I think any way we can let the word of God dwell, richly and the people where the word of God is open in their midst, where they’re engaged and participating in corporate worship from the call to worship to the benediction, if we can just be a small part of helping rebuild that and reestablish these traditions in our generation, I think we will have done well.

Isaac Crockett:

I love that. That is such a good picture of what’s going on, and we hear this from folks so often. And so if you’re listening, maybe you’re a church leader that has some say in these things, think about this and think about incorporating some of these doctrinal hymns and especially well-known hymns that many of your folks may be longing to sing. Incorporating that into your church services. Matt, we’re getting close to the end, but last year we had another map from getting music on. There’s quite a few mats actually involved in getting music, but Matt Papa was on our program actually the day, I think it was the day that you all were releasing. I think it might’ve been your third album. Our God Will Go Before us. Just curious, have you or you and Papa Together released any other songs or albums or are there some that are maybe close to coming out? Can you give us any insight on that?

Matt Boswell:

Yes. So last year we released a song called Christus Victor. We wrote that with our friends, Keith and Chris and Getty, and also another writer in our team called Brian Fowler. And so it’s been wonderful seeing how that song Christus Victor has made its way around the world and is being served in churches. And so that’s been very exciting. And then we’ve been working for months on a hymn about the Naim Creed, this being the 1700th anniversary. I was actually in Turkey last week at a conference called naia, and I was able to introduce this hymn that we’ve been working on for the first time, and that won’t release, I think until January. But we are excited about having it out in the world and just again, even back to our earlier conversation, being able to sing the rich doctrine that we see in the creed, but to be able to sing those truths together in song as well.

Isaac Crockett:

That’s great. If you are not familiar with Christus Victor, I would encourage you just to look it up like on YouTube and just especially the Sing Conference, just listen to it. And it is a very helpful, very God glorifying him an anthem, so to speak. And we’ll be looking forward to this new hymn that’s about to come out based on the ING Creed, which I’m really looking forward to that. Real quickly, Matt, I was just looking over the songs we’re going to sing at our little church, and a couple of them I picked out myself. I’m preaching expository through the book of Luke. Towards the end, we’re talking about Jesus on his way to Calvary, and we’re having communion or table on the Lord’s day this week. And so we are going to be singing a Getty song, behold the Lamb. It’s a communion hymn.

Also, I wanted to sing a Fannie Crosby’s song, Jesus Keep Me Near The Cross. We’re also the rest of the music team picked out some other things, A Watts song when I survey the Wonders Cross, oh four a thousand Tongues to Sing. Charles Wesley, do you have any hymns that you’re planning on seeing at your church you’d like to share with us? And maybe even something for someone listening, especially a pastor or someone who leads music at their church, maybe a hymn that’s in the sing hymnal that you would say, Hey, if you don’t know this, or if you haven’t introduced this to your congregation, you really ought to do that.

Matt Boswell:

Oh, that’s great. That’s a great question. And I love all those hymns that you’re singing. In fact, Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross. Kristen Getty and I worked through a couple of those verses and helped sort of rework ’em based on some things that Fannie Crosby had said in her life, trying to allow us to sing those truths as well. This Sunday at our church is a special day when we planted, they wouldn’t let us do baptisms inside the school that we planted. And so twice a year, we just saved all of our baptisms and did them outside, and even we moved into a permanent building just a year and a half ago. But we’ve kept that tradition. And so this Sunday, by God’s grace, we get to baptize, I think 18 people. And the songs we’re singing sort of all focused around baptism. We’re singing nothing but the Blood, which is in the hymnal, as well as there’s a fountain filled with blood. And then John Newton’s amazing Grace. And then one more hymn that isn’t in the hymnal, but just was written in our church called Jesus, fountain of Joy, eternal. And so yeah, we’re singing hymns from the hymnal very regularly. If we don’t, we let the church know. This one’s not in your hymnal, but here it is on the screen, and here it is in our bulletin. But if we can sing from the hymnal, we’re sure trying to,

Isaac Crockett:

There’s

Matt Boswell:

A few of the hymns that we’re singing this upcoming Sunday.

Isaac Crockett:

That’s incredible. I love that. And I love that your church, you have some of your own songs and things. What a neat opportunity. What a neat idea. Well, Matt, thank you so much for being on our program today, especially this came up last minute for you. Thank you for Standing in the Gap for Keith Getty. But thank you for just sharing some of your heart with us and this resource of the Sing Hymnal that has been such a blessing to me as a pastor, as a husband and father, as a Christian. And I hope it’ll bless those of you who are listening today, that you’ll go out and get a copy of this and use it in your home and in your church. Thank you so much for listening, for tuning in. I hope that you’ll listen to this again, that you’ll share it with others. And until next time, please stand in the gap for truth, wherever you are.