Free resources for Christmas services - hymn backing tracks and a basic song sheet...

As I suggested in yesterday's post, Christmas services come with a great deal of pressure! There is such an expectation to do things well, the message, the music, and the fellowship of believers must be just perfect.

Well, yesterday I posted some tips that may be of use to some in preparing their Christmas sermon or message. Today, however, I want to post a few resources that may help you with your music.

This year I will be leading a Christmas service in a community chapel. That means two things.

• First, it means that the people who attend this service will NOT have the privilege of sharing in a common repertoire of contemporary (or even traditional) worship songs and hymns. So, I shall need to keep my hymn and song choices fairly familiar in order to allow everyone to participate fully and joyfully in the worship.
• Second, since the service is not in my regular congregation (where the service that I preach at most Sunday's has 3 gifted and skilled worship teams) I do not have access to my regular musicians and equipment.

So, what is one to do if you are leading a service, or a small group gathering of friends and family who are away together over Christmas? Well, here are some resources that my be of use to you.

All that you will need is to download and print the attached document. I shall be printing and copying it back to back so that I can fold the A4 page in half to make a little B5 booklet.

Download the Hymn sheet

Next, simply download the MIDI files below onto your computer and laptop and viola you have wonderful backing music, skillfully played, to aid you in your singing! I shall be hooking my laptop up to a sound system since I am anticipating about 250 - 300 people at the service I shall be leading. However, if you are simply leading a small family service in a family home, or in a camp site, you could simply plug your computer of laptop into slightly more powerful speakers and play the attached files in the Apple Quicktime media player for Windows or Mac (the reason they are in Quicktime is that I had to edit the files to add introductions and the correct number of verses - you can of course convert them to MP3).

Download 'O come all ye faithful'

Download 'Hark the herald angels sing'

Download 'Joy to the world'

I will probably also lead one or two contemporary songs with my guitar. But, the great news is that one could lead quite a good service without even the slighted musical ability with these little backing tracks.

I hope this will be of some help as you prepare to celebrate Christmas this year. Of course I would also encourage you to check out the free Christmas and Advent resources on John van de Laar's superb website www.sacredise.com.

LASTLY, I am not a great 'pamphlet' creator, neither do I have much skill (or time) to sharpen the backing tracks for the service. If there is anyone out there who downloads the tracks, or the service booklet, and you improve upon them would you mind sending me an email to let me know? Just drop me an email (see the link under my links on the right of this page). Let's share our gifts with one another to make our Christmas services special and significant!

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