Long before PowerPoint, big screens, expensive sound systems, and stadium worship events, in an era that is almost all but forgotten, the primary worship book of choice was . . . THE HYMNAL.

In most circles, this would have been the only book appropriate for what was then thought of as congregational worship.

Just about the time that I started selling books as a profession, The Christian and Missionary Alliance authorized the publishing of a new hymnal?Hymns of the Christian Life?a beautifully bound, maroon coloured collection of over 600 songs. This was meant to be a groundbreaker in the world of sacred songs . . . and books for worship.

Anyone who has been around long enough to have used a hymnal knows that up until the mid-1970's, all hymnals on the market were compilations of songs from the distant or near distant past.

But people wanted to sing new songs?how, after all, could one really be worshipping if they weren't singing at least one song written by the Gaithers? So, all the new hymnals, including the newly minted Alliance hymnal, included some of these new songs.

Now, at last, we could sing and worship with a book that contained something ?contemporary.' I can still remember the receiving room in our store filled to the rafters with boxes of this new worship tome?eight to a carton, most of which had to be engraved with a church name before we could ship them out to a newly constructed church, or to a church that wanted something new.

Imagine how pleased everyone would be when they could crack open a new worship book complete with the church name emblazoned on the front right-hand corner. Sales of hymnals were booming.

Providing the appropriate worship book in those days was not an inexpensive matter. We even had a separate key on our cash registers to track the sales of this category. It's amazing that we were willing to spend so much on a book to help us worship.

But alas, even with the advent of this new and improved worship book, the dark clouds of conflict were on the horizon. No sooner had we invested in this latest edition, when another kind of worship book began appearing.

This book carried an innocent moniker? ?Praise and Worship Songbook'?but with its coil binding and hundreds of short songs designed to be played on more than a piano and organ, the impact would be more than a small shift.

As the hue and cry of ?less hymns, more choruses' came from the crowd, what was a church supposed to do?

No one could afford to stock a church with these books, so the clandestine world of ?buy a few books and photocopy the music' began and was eventually replaced by complicated ways of paying royalties when a ?chorus' was sung.

How could the simple act of worship have become such a big deal?

Soon, even those books were replaced by projected words onto screens. With this new technology, we didn't even need worship books anymore. We simply expected people to know the tunes and read the words on the screen.

The age of the hymnal was over. In many ways, the age of the worship book was over.

Oh, there is still the ongoing debate about these old songs. They have stood the test of time after all, and we still sing some of them. But no one really buys ?worship books' anymore?at least not the kind that you can sing from.

Which leads us to the topic of books on worship. So far, all we have talked about are songbooks. But worship is more than singing, isn't it?  

Worship was about more than singing and true worship needed to be restored into the fabric of a congregation's life. We needed to learn about worship and so, as the styles of worship music have been changing, there has been more material written in an effort to help people get to the heart of the matter.

Continued...