25 Reasons to Buy the Trinity Psalter Hymnal App

Rev. Dr. Brian Lee

May 6

Written By Brian Lee

Android App

I never buy apps for my iPhone. I’ve probably purchased fewer than five total over the last ten years.

But it took me all of three seconds to open my virtual wallet and spend $9.99 on the app version of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal (TPH) app. Buy it now.

I didn’t have to run through reasons pro or con on whether to spend the ten bucks. But maybe you do. So here is a list of the reasons I’ve come up with since the app has resided on my phone. Hopefully one or more of them will nudge you to purchase the app if you haven’t already done so.

And in addition to buying the TPH app, you should also share it on social media, and encourage others in your church to buy it. And for those of you who are not on an Apple device, the Android version should be out this summer.

It fits in your pocket. A portable hymnal is awesome. Having a worship song handy when the mood or the need strikes you is a huge benefit. Ideally, you’d have some songs memorized, so you could sing at crucial moments without a crutch — like the Reformation martyrs who sang psalms as they were burned at the stake. Sadly, few today have more than one or two songs down by heart. Over my first two weeks owning the TPH app, I’ve probably sung a song from it every day or two at unplanned moments.
The app helps you sing more at home. We should sing more worship songs in the home, throughout the week. Modern worship has been professionalized, it has become performance-driven with worship leaders who overwhelm the congregation’s voices in gathered worship. Sadly, this can make singing at home seem even more awkward and lame. The TPH app is a great tool to encourage more singing outside of public worship.
The app includes musical accompaniment. We encourage every member of our church to keep a hymnal in the home. But most of us aren’t musical enough to enjoy the sound of our own voices singing a cappella, nor are we musical enough to play an instrument and sing. As a result, I’m willing to guess that the vast majority of print hymnals in the home are under-utilized. The TPH app solves that problem by providing professional piano accompaniment for every single song in the book.
You can also set the music to repeat, so it will play for all the stanzas in a song.
…and full sheet music. There are two views for each song, either lyrics only, or full sheet music. If you are viewing the lyrics and turn your phone to landscape, the app switches automatically to the sheet music, but you can toggle back and forth. I haven’t yet had a chance to view the app on an iPad, but if it scales well I should think you could use the sheet music for playing a keyboard.
Psalms. There, I said it. The Psalter is an inspired songbook that has been sung by believers for the last three thousand years. It is the definition of intergenerational worship. It is the most chronologically and geographically catholic songbook around. It is great to sing scripture as praise and prayer to the Lord. Yet the psalms are woefully neglected in worship today.
You don’t have to be a hymn hater to be a psalm singer. The TPH is proof that you don’t have to sing songs exclusively to sing psalms well. By owning a virtual hymnal that incorporates both psalms and hymns, and by reaching a broader audience, the TPH app can contribute to a revival of psalm-singing.
Search. The TPH has a search feature that provides a keyword search of every lyric, title, tune name, or composer or author. If you’ve ever struggled to remember the name of that familiar hymn, this search feature is a great way to quickly find the song you’re looking for, even if you can only remember a snippet of a line. And it is a far more comprehensive tool than the subject index in the back of the print hymnal for finding songs that address particular themes. Searching the word “prayer,” for instance, turns up scores of hits.
It helps worship leaders select songs. The TPH Hymn Tune page is the most trafficked page on our website, and I’m sure that much of that traffic is worship leaders trying to decide what songs to sing on any given Sunday. In recent weeks, I have found myself using my TPH app instead, and the combination of the search feature, the navigation, and the music has made it an indispensable tool for selecting songs for worship. Buy it for your pastor today, or share it with him.
Bookmarks. Every church sings a subset of its songbook. At Christ Reformed, we have a psalm of the month, which we sing repeatedly to learn and familiarize ourselves. The bookmark feature in the app makes it easy to keep track of the top 10 or 50 songs in your repertoire and pull them up in a moment.
The app is cheaper than a print hymnal. I love print hymnals, and print media in general (and I have about 80 boxes in storage to prove it). If your church uses a hymnal, you should own a home copy. But the print TPH costs $23.00 from Great Commission Publications (and it’s currently out of stock).
The app is much cheaper than six print hymnals. Because the TPH app supports “Family Sharing” on iOS, it can be used by up to six connected accounts with a single purchase. So even if you have a print hymnal in the home, the TPH app makes it easier and more cost-effective for your whole family to sing together. At $9.99, it is 93% cheaper than owning 6 hymnals.
Better yet, it’s FREE for URCNA pastors. OK, so this is kind of inside baseball, but if you are a pastor in the URCNA, a kind donor has offered to reimburse the $10 purchase price. If you want the details, contact us.
It’s also FREE to all members of OPC and URCNA churches. OK, technically, this isn’t true. But it can be if your deacons agree to subsidize the purchase price for anyone who wants to download it. If your people aren’t singing at home and don’t own hymnals, this might be a reasonable investment for a local church to make.
The TPH is ecumenical. The TPH is a joint publication of the United Reformed Churches of North America (URCNA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). Working with a sister church requires compromises, and a few were made. But there is always wisdom in many counselors, and this worship tool was greatly enriched by bringing together the strong psalm-singing tradition of the URCNA and the English language hymnody of the OPC. The print version is perhaps the first hymnal ever printed to include the confessions of both traditions in one volume, the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. The app makes the best music of these two traditions to a huge audience of folks who would never attend one of these churches.
The TPH is not just for the OPC and URCNA! I know of one local Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) congregation that uses the TPH in their worship (and since writing this post I’ve heard of a few more). It is the prayer of our songbook committee that this hymnal will be a resource to other churches as well, and by creating a lower-cost, virtual version, we increase the chances that the use of the TPH will spread.
Buy it for your children. By creating and promoting the TPH in our churches, we are building a shared tradition of reformed worship. The more the URC and OPC adopt and promote a shared songbook — and sing from it at home — the greater the odds are that our kids will find a familiar and faithful place of worship when they go off to college or move away to take their first job. The songs we sing in worship unify us and bind us together, and singing the songs of the TPH is a beneficial part of catechizing and raising our kids to be faithful church members in the future.
It’s evangelistic. Lex orandi, lex credendi — The law of prayer is the law of faith. It is our prayer that by exposing believers to a rich worshiping tradition, new believers will seek out and join biblical, confessional, Reformed churches such as the OPC and URCNA (and others). When members of OPC and URCNA churches invest in the TPH app, promote it, and share it with their friends, they help grow the brand of these faithful, confessional churches.
It’s green. Singing from an app reduces paper waste.
The app encourages singing in-home study groups. Every Wednesday night we close our weekly study by singing a psalm or a hymn, but to do so requires us to leave a bunch of hymnals at our elder’s house. This is far more convenient if members all have the apps on their phones.
It’s great for the mission field. If you are a part of a church plant or other mission work where folks have access to phones or iPads, it is an easy way to introduce the songs of the church to your group before it is feasible to purchase or store hymnals — or ship them around the world.
It’s available offline. While the music doesn’t currently play when your device is offline — perhaps in a future upgrade or premium edition, it will? — the lyrics and the sheet music are available offline.
The app bridges the gap to our virtual world. Let’s face it, hymn singing is passé. It’s even more passé if the only way you can do it is by holding a big fat print hardcover in your hands. The TPH app can introduce great church music to churches and individuals who are not inclined to use hymnals.
Be prepared for the next pandemic. Sadly, many of us have been locked out of our houses of worship over the last year. It may happen again. Having a songbook in your pocket is a great encouragement during times of isolation, and aid in maintaining family worship or streaming services.
TPH brings great worship music to a broader audience. Contemporary worship music is abysmal, with a few exceptions. And there are a lot of believers interested in being broadly reformed who will never pick up a hymnal. The TPH app is a way to expose this massive audience to 500 years of great worship music.
Paying for the app is better than getting it free. Ten bucks is a good investment in a lasting resource. The committee overseeing the hymnal invested significant resources in building a top-notch resource for both Apple and (in time) Android, and the proceeds from the sale will help maintain and improve the project over time. I have already submitted feedback to the creators of the app and received a reply indicating that work is underway on an update. Updates and maintenance that ensure the TPH remain a lasting resource are well worth the investment.
Redeem the time. Ever pull out your phone and look at social media to fill a few minutes while you’re standing in line or waiting for a bus? Maybe you play a quick game. Why not pull up the TPH app and sing a psalm or a hymn instead? No, you don’t have to sing out loud — that could be weird. But you can still worship by singing a song silently in your head.
You too can be shouted down for singing church music at your next party! We found out the TPH app was released during a recent church cigar night. We all quickly downloaded it and proceeded to sing a few boisterous songs. Perhaps it was a little too late for singing, and perhaps the singing was a little too boisterous. We were promptly shouted down by a neighbor in the apartment building, presumably the same neighbor who posted the note below the following day.
What could be more counter-cultural than singing hymns at your next gathering?