Unlock the full potential of “Doxology” in your worship service! My worship planning ideas toolkit offers the inspiring story behind Thomas Ken’s hymn, creative call-to-worship ideas, and thematic blending suggestions with contemporary songs.

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from arranger Don Chapman:

The Doxology Now Has Three Verses

Think about how a church traditionally uses the Doxology. The offering wraps up, or the service is winding down, everybody stands, and you sing four lines you’ve known since you were six years old. Sixty seconds, max.

Four lines. That’s the whole hymn!

My new Doxology arrangement is finished and I’m thrilled with it (you never really know if one of these things works until you get it out of your head and recorded.) It’s got a modern, vibey feel, but here’s the part I’m most excited about: I’ve taken that one-verse benediction and built it out into a full 3 verse worship song you can use to OPEN your service instead of close it.

More on those verses in a second. First you need to know about the guy who wrote them!

Thomas Ken and His Four Lines

Thomas Ken is remembered today for one stanza. That’s it: four short lines that Christians everywhere just call “The Doxology.”

Ken had ties to Winchester College, where he’d been a student and later served in ministry. He wanted the young men there to build a daily routine of prayer, so he wrote devotional hymns for different hours of the day: a Morning Hymn (“Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun”), an Evening Hymn (“Glory to Thee, My God, This Night”) and a Midnight Hymn (“My God, I now from Sleep Awake”).

At the close of each one he tacked on the same four lines:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Those four lines started a life of their own. Cut loose from the long poems nobody sings anymore, they became one of the most recognized praise texts in the Christian world!

Now here’s the funny part. Ken wrote this around 1674, back when those in charge believed only Scripture should be sung in church and that writing fresh lyrics was blasphemous. So he told the boys to keep these hymns private, in their rooms, for morning and evening devotions only.

Three hundred and fifty years later the whole planet sings them. The Lord’s got a sense of humor!

Where My Two New Verses Came From

I went back to those long, forgotten poems (mostly the Morning Hymn), pulled out my favorite lines, modernized the language a bit, wrote a few lines of my own and ended up with two stanzas that carry the same tone as the original.

Verse 2, my version:

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
I’ll praise the risen, holy One.
Shake off thy sleep and joyful rise
To bring a song of sacrifice.

Ken’s original:

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

Verse 3, my version:

Disperse my sin as morning dew,
My vows, O Lord, to Thee renew
Now fill my heart, my spirit raise,
And make my life a song of praise.

Ken’s original:

Lord, I my vows to Thee renew,
Disperse my sins as Morning dew,
Guard my first springs of Thought and Will,
And with Thy self my Spirit fill.

That last line of mine came straight out of Ken’s own vocabulary. Read his hymns and you’ll notice how often he comes back to praise and singing:

All Praise to Thee, my God, this night,
For all the Blessings of the Light;

and:

Thought to thought with my Soul converse,
Celestial Joys to me rehearse,
And in my stead all the night long,
Sing to my God a grateful Song.

So “make my life a song of praise” felt like the natural landing spot.

Why Bother?

I’m not replacing Thomas Ken’s Doxology. I’m dusting off words of his that got left behind. Those familiar four lines now roll straight into a call to wake up, renew our hearts and turn our whole lives into praise. Not a bad way to start a Sunday morning!

(P.S. Even if you don’t use my arrangement, help yourself to the new stanzas!)

Bottom Line: The Doxology has been a sixty second transition for 350 years, and now you can sing it as a real worship song.

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