Introduction

Welcome to the Concordance to the Moravian Book of Worship.

The hymnals of the Moravian Church are among the best indexed that I have ever seen. I know of no other denomination’s hymnal that index the opening line of each verse. Still, at times I have found myself thinking of a certain phrase buried within a verse, only to hum the tune over and over again until I can remember the opening words of that particular verse.

It is hoped that this concordance will be useful to pastors and other persons involved in worship planning, for aiding in the selection of hymns for worship, or for the occasional quoting of a hymn verse in sermons or other writings. It will be useful to people who are assembling lovefeast odes, who may not want to sing an entire hymn, but would extract a selected verse or verses for the ode. It will be useful for those who have been asked to assist with the Daily Texts and who are looking for specific hymn verses which reflect on Bible verses.

This concordance indexes every hymn in the Moravian Book of Worship, the official hymnal of the Moravian Church in America, published in 1995 by the Interprovincial Board of Publications and Communications.

While this concordance covers every hymn in the liturgies, communion services and the main hymns section, it does not cover many of the canticles. Since most of the canticles are biblical texts, it was decided that canticles are currently covered within Bible concordances; therefore, the Psalms, the Nunc Dimittis, the Hosanna are not indexed here. The canticles which have been indexed are non-biblical texts such as “Christ Our Passover,” “Te Deum,” “St. Patrick’s Hymn,” “This is the Feast,” and “Festal Doxology.”

This concordance is not exhaustive. It does not index every word in every hymn. In fact, some words may be indexed for some hymns but not for others. Such decisions may seem arbitrary, but were based on the compiler’s judgment of how important the word was to the hymn text, the word’s usage, or whether it indicated an important biblical word or image. If you’re looking for a certain hymn, and it doesn’t appear under the word for which you’re searching, select another important or unique word, and you will likely find the hymn you’re seeking. For words with many entries, use the find command in the drop-down menu under edit to enter a phrase.

Some words appear twice: once in lower case, and then in upper case. This is usually meant to separate words which are used as proper names for God as opposed to the more common meaning. An example of this is the word “lamb.” The hymn “I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb” will appear in the entries of the lower case lamb, while entries for hymns referring to Jesus’ appellation as “Lamb” will appear in the upper case entry.

In many cases, possessive nouns are given in phrase form. The possessive noun begins the phrase that ends with the noun it modifies. For example: “life’s alarms” and “life’s dark maze.”

Page numbers can be a tricky thing when you’re dealing with hymns in the liturgies, communion services, and canticles. In these sections pages are numbered, and hymns may start on one page and conclude on another. Effort has been made to give the correct page number, but the page number may be given for the page on which the hymn begins.

Common names for persons of the Trinity have been excluded because the quantity of those entries would be too large to be useful. Names such as “God,” “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Holy Spirit,” and “Holy Ghost,” were excluded. The word “lord” appears, but not as a name or title for God or Jesus. Other less common names, such as “Savior,” are included in the concordance.
 

Acknowledgments