This weekend at my church New City Fellowship, (University City) we are celebrating the cultural worship expressions of Latinos in our congregation. Our church has had a more vibrant relationship to Latinos in the past. Mostly through some leadership changes about 8 years ago and subsequently neglecting to intentionally invest in these relationships as we put more attention into our ministry with Congolese refugees, we have lost ground on this particular work of reconciliation. However, we have recently re-booted the work through the addition of pastor Jim Ward (no-relation), a missionary to Peru (and killer musician) who has relocated to St. Louis. So this weekend, we are going to sing all Spanish songs.
So where do we get Spanish tunes for worship? We have a collection of “oldies” that were part of our repertoire in the 90′s which fell out of use. A lot of these are Vineyard, Integrity or Maranatha tunes that have been translated into Spanish. This week, we’re going to be singing several of these which include:
“Grande Y Fuerte Es El” aka “Great and Mighty Is He” by Todd Pettygrove
“El Espíritu Del Santo Dios” aka “Spirit of the Sovereign Lord” by Andy Park (an excellent setting of Isaiah 61)
“Cambia Mi Corazón” aka “Change My Heart Oh God” by Eddie Espinosa
“Es Tu Sangre” aka “It’s Your Blood” by Michael Christ
We’re also singing some songs that have come from less familiar sources (to “gringos”):
Tú Nos Creaste by Jesús Adrián Romero
Te Alabaré Mi Buen Jesús by Espinosa, Emmanuel
Alegría by Steve Coronado (as preformed by Salvador. I can honestly say without exaggeration that this is one of my most favorite worship songs ever!)
That’s what we’re doing this weekend, but there are a couple of other resources you can check out if you need more ideas:
Libro de Liturgía y Cántico – is an excellent hymnal for Spanish worship done by the ELCA.
A few artists you should check out on Spotify: Jesús Adrián Romero, Marcos Witt, Salvador, and Danilo Montero. (I made a playlist you can check out.)
Sovereign Grace Music has recorded several Spanish worship CDs. We use a tune from Allí en la Cruz called Somos Tus Hijos.
If you already have a subscription to CCLI’s resource website, SongSelect, you have acess to a TON of Spanish songs with lyrics, chords, and lead sheets! What they lack is an easy way to filter the songs so that you can get only the Spanish tunes. I had to use a publisher filter like for CanZion or a composers name, like Emmanuel Espinosa to see what was there. However, I recently discoved that you can find a lot of the top 100 tunes like say, Mighty To Save, translated into Spanish (Sólo Dios Puede Salvar) with lead sheets there as well! This is really important because Spanish songs often have syllables that get slurred together. Here are some more top 100 tunes to check out (try to guess the English titles!): Bendito Seas Tú, Cuán Grande Es Dios, Eterno Dios, Sólo En Jesús, Días De Elías, Eres Fiel
Dios es bueno