Sing praises all you people

The idea of compiling a selection of well-known songs in different languages from the hymnbooks of the respective churches originated in the heart of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. This book contains a limited selection of 100 hymns from various hymnals. This publication by no means takes the place of the existing hymnals congregations normally use in their day to day meetings within their own language communities. It, however, endeavours to add value to the praise and worship in our combined meetings, not only in official church gatherings, but also informal prayer meetings in the work place, in schools or wherever people from different language groups pray together. We may be pleasantly surprised to discover how much we have in common and be blessed by our singing together.

Under the different rubrics, we tried to include a variety of hymns equally representing most Southern African languages (groups): English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Tshivenḓa, Xitsonga, Mbundu, Herero, and even Latin. The title of the hymnbook is taken from Psalm 117:1 “Praise the Lord, all you nations, extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever” and from Psalm 47:1: “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy”.