A newly compiled hymnal is now available to the Chinese Adventists worldwide. The new product is the fruit of the painstaking work of many over a course of seven years. Their efforts included, but not limited to, the careful selection of hymns, the re-translation of some lyrics, and the addition of the numbered music notation to the conventional staff notation.
A taskforce comprising nearly two dozens of extraordinary Chinese Adventists, who are gifted in music, language, ministry and theology, was organized by the Chinese Union Mission to undertake this massive project. Its objective was to update the old hymnal to make it more user-friendly and content-rich to the Chinese Adventists living in the 21st century.
The old hymnal was first published 48 years ago. It contains many hymns which are rarely sung by any congregation in recent years. At the mean time, there have been many popular, spiritually uplifting and lively new hymns that are loved by the Chinese Adventists but are not adopted officially. The CHUM taskforce decisively took out the unpopular ones from the old book and put in the new ones.
The translators made sure that the new translated lyrics rhyme, and that they are accurate and easy to understand. The discrepancies in the number of stanza in some songs between the old Chinese Hymnal and the English Hymnal were also reconciled, which makes easier for the bilingual Chinese congregations overseas to use both hymnals at the same time.
Chinese Union Mission hopes that the new hymnal would be a great blessing to the spiritual life of all the Chinese Adventists worldwide.
January 9, 2014, Chinese Union Mission