I'd Rather Have Jesus

This excellent resource for Gospel titles features 449 songs including: Amazing Grace ? At the Cross ? Because He Lives ? Behold the Lamb ? Blessed Assurance ? Church in the Wildwood ? The Day HeWore My Crown ? Give Me That Old Time Religion ? He Looked Beyond My Fault ? He Touched Me ? Heavenly Sunlight ? His Eye Is on the Sparrow ? Holy Ground ? How Great Thou Art ? I Bowed on MyKnees and Cried Holy ? I Saw the Light ? I'd Rather Have Jesus ? In the Garden ? Joshua (Fit the Battle of Jericho) ? Just a Little Talk with Jesus ? Lord I'm Coming Home ? Midnight Cry ?Morning Has Broken ? My Tribute ? Near the Cross ? The Old Rugged Cross ? Precious Memories ? Rock of Ages ? Shall We Gather at the River? ? There Is Power in the Blood ? We Shall Wear aCrown ? What a Friend We Have in Jesus ? and hundreds more!

(with Give Me Jesus)-Uses:General Invitation Stewardship Scripture: Psalm 9:10 Song of Solomon 2:1 Matthew 19:16-30 Luke 10:20 Philippians 3:8 Here is a thoughtful arrangement of one of the most enduring sacred songs of all time. Choirs of every size and ability will sound their very best with this one. The refrain Give Me Jesus adds a lovely ambiance to the work making it the perfect offering for services of commitment or stewardship. Already a bestseller for SATB voices the new TTBB voicing is a must sing for your men's ensembles. Score and Parts (fl 1-2 ob cl 1-2 bn hn 1-2 tpt 1-3 tbn 1-2 btbn tba timp perc 1-2 hp pno vn 1-2 va vc db) available as a digital download.

Made popular by Billy Graham's evangelistic movement this tune was written by George Beverly Shea after reading the lyrics left by his mother on his piano. This medium easy arrangement will please the crowd.

Remember Bethlehem was conceived after a conversation on the works of the late story-telling songsmith Jake Thackray. Thackray’s sometimes bawdy sometimes satirical and often hilarious lyrics are delivered in a lugubrious baritone and underpinned by a strong Yorkshire accent that led him to be dubbed the “North Country Noel Coward”. In his Remember Bethlehem heshows a more tender side and tells a story devoid of expletives and cutting social commentary of a “shabby little country girl” completely broken by the ardours of her journey arriving in Bethlehem as a distrusted foreigner to give birth to baby boy called Jesus. Whatstruck and moved me most about Thackray’s telling of the Nativity Narrative is the way he normalizes Mary. Rather than retrospectively beatifying her - telling her story full in the knowledge of the extraordinary thing she did (as most nativity stories do) – Thackray’s portrayal of her as young afraid and cold makes her achievement all the more astonishing. Indeed so out-of-the-ordinary is the gift given by this apparently ordinary girl that no one and no thing can ever forget it: “Even the stony old hills […] your shaggy old trees […] the sulky old sun Remembers Bethlehem.” My carol of the same name adapts a similar approach to telling Mary’s story. Musically I have only thinly veiled my affection for Peter Warlock’s miniature masterpiece Bethlehem Down and evidence of this can be seen not only in the choice of key triple metre and strophic setting but also in the resemblance of some of the cadential figures. A final strand of influence comes once more from Yorkshire and specifically Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. My wife is a literature scholar and pointed out to me the parallels between Mary’s plight in Thackray’s story and a scene from the novel in which Jane is lost up on the moors. Through her distrust of man she feels outcast and