Team desires not only to make the memory texts easier to memorize, but to make the word of God more meaningful and beautiful.
For many of us, memorizing the weekly Adult Bible Study Guides (ABSG) memory texts can be quite a mental challenge. A small group of musically-minded folk from several churches in Canterbury, New Zealand, have been working to make this process easier by putting the ABSG memory texts to music.
This creative team desires not only to make the memory texts easier to memorise, but to make the word of God more meaningful and beautiful.
The group originally began with a choir and a recording studio, but this involved many practice sessions and hiring the studio was expensive. The team also found that when using a choir, the words were not clearly audible. They decided to combine the simplicity of a solo voice with a single instrument. Using a soloist removed the need to blend and hone several different voices.
With one or two instruments and a few soloists, the team can produce thirteen tunes each quarter with minimal effort. By recording at the Ilam Seventh-day Adventist Church and using the personal equipment and technical expertise of Craig Savage, it can be done at virtually no expense.
The words of each memory text are sung exactly as they appear in the ABSG. Sometimes the shorter texts are repeated, and the Scripture reference is always given, usually at the end of the tune.
The team plans to continue producing the memory texts set to music as an ongoing tool for everyone wanting to commit them to memory. The recordings, which begin with the first quarter of 2020, can be downloaded at https://adventist.org.nz/resources/ss-memory-texts/
The songwriters for this project are Sonja Whitehouse, Driekie Pheiffer, Trevor Brown and Gina Taggart. Accompanists are Pheiffer (piano), and Taggart (guitar). The singers are Whitehouse, Brown, Grace Sheffield and Grace Johnstone.
This article was originally published on the website of Adventist Record