Singing Redemption - Week Four
November 23, 2025
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Vagabond hymns — A concept album of the hymns of a wandering, wondering people
We close our theme on songwriting and redemption with a kind of concept album. An art form pioneered by the likes of the Beatles and the Beach Boys in the 1960s and carried on to this day where songs are linked not just sonically but thematically and perhaps even narratively. This week we are lacing up our vagabond shoes and singing some vagabond hymns as we follow Christ on the open road.
SEEDS TO SOW: What are that catchiest songs that just stay in your head?
Read Luke 1: 68-79
A hymn of redemption.
Guest vocals from Zechariah as our album sets out its stall: It’s all about redemption!
Q: How can we encourage one another to write our own hymns of praise about our shared knowledge of God that is rooted in our communal experience?
Q: What would it mean for more of our worshipping communities to write their own songs? Think about the local impact of songs that really reflect local experience, struggle and triumph.
Q: Who could write songs in and for your local community?
Read Colossians 1: 11-20
A hymn of reconciliation.
The heart of our album, right in the middle, a song that tells us Christ is reconciling all things. Our personal redemption is part of an entire cosmic process of redemption!
Q: What words and phrases leap out to you in this reading?
Q: How can our shared worship connect us to the feeling of cosmic redemption described here? To not just learn about it, but to feel it. Music is a powerful, transcendent force. It’s not just about what songs we sing, but also how we sing them.
Q: And how can our shared songs link our personal individual experiences of redemption to a wider picture of redemption for humanity?
Read Matthew 8: 18-20
A hymn to a Vagabond Christ.
Christ is God among us, willing to walk the open roads in search of us, who left the security of heaven to breathe our air and walk our steps! Emmanuel!
Songs are redemption you can carry in your pocket! Regardless of our circumstances songs have a way of sticking with us, suddenly emerging after years when we thought they were long forgotten. A snatch of melody, a short phrase, brings it all flooding back. Even when other memories fade the songs that have been sung to us hold on a long time.
As it says in this reading Christ is not fixed in one place at one time, he is our vagabond saviour, always around, always ready to meet us.
Q: Discuss how songs can faithfully hold the message of redemption over the years even as our faith goes through storms and droughts. A time capsule to eternity!
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