Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little break from the present to go exploring the past.

Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history. Let's get started.

Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

On this episode we're going to be looking at the middle stanzas.

Here's to the middle stanzas. You know it's the first lines of hymns that we tend to remember.

In fact, many hymns are simply titled by their first line, and the first lines of hymns are usually so majestic they catch us they lift us up they bring us right into that spirit of worship and

acknowledgement of who God is and then of course there's the final stanza

Good hymn writer will save that sort of final punch for that final stanza.

It's almost like the coffee at the end of the meal.

But what about the middle stanzas?

In fact, sometimes we exclude the middle

stanzas. We don't even sing them and even when we do sing them, we sometimes maybe just gloss over them or sort of lull over them as we sing.

Well let's correct that.

Don't you think it's time we should correct that?

Let's celebrate the middle stanzas.

I've pulled a few hymns that of course we're familiar with and appreciate and I just

want to focus our attention on the middle stanzas. The first hymn of course is Luther's

him, a mighty fortress is our God.

We all know this great hymn.

We sing it around the moment of the Reformation.

It's just such a powerful hymn.

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