About the Author: Julia Rendon

Pastor of Crossroads UCC since 2000. I also teach World Religions and Ethics at Des Moines Area Community College. MDiv Yale 1985.
  • By Published On: August 20, 2014

    St. Augustine said that the one who sings, prays twice. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words; we get closest to praying as we ought when we sing. But church singing has changed rapidly in the 30-some years I’ve been a pastor. The hip new hymnal that came out in the nineties contains far too many hymns that were written for an organ and a congregation in the hundreds, not a guitar, a piano, and a raggedy chorus of twenty-some.