You may or may not have heard that the Army are planning a new Salvation Army songbook. I’m sick at the moment, so had time to respond to Stephen Courts request for suggested songs for deletion from the current songbook. I came up with around 250 songs that we probably wouldn’t miss from the current edition.

Just thought that since Stephen went ahead and published my whole list on his blog, that I’d give some clarification on them before I get stoned for heresy! LOL.

Most of them are ones which I’ve never sung in 14 years in the Army, so there is the popularity issue. Then there is the antiquated language, then there is the unsingablity of the tunes, then there is the issue of relevance.

Finally, most of them were from non-Salvo writers, so therefore can be found elsewhere so no great loss. In this digital day and age, there can be little real need for an SA songbook, unless of course its to promote salvo songs which don’t really have a wider platform like the other songs do. Most corps have easy access to alternative sources for songs from the wider church…no point re-inventing the wheel. I reckon you could EASILY find 250 good salvo songs to take their place, no problem. Thats my reasoning.

I could have gone further and suggested we take out the christmas carol section on the same premise as above, especially since we have another book for carols.

Bear in mind that this is the English speaking songbook we’re talking of, used in a whole lot of countries. Also, I re-iterate that there is absolutely no point in inserting the most popular current worship songs in our songbook…thats the way to go in making it irrelevant as soon as you’ve published it.

🙂