A Sunday Prayer Playlist of Bangers!
James Cathcart
November 13, 2025
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Hi everyone!
Recently at Sunday Prayer I asked for folks to tell me some of their favourite songs from any and all genres as we explored the power of music to move us. I asked: what songs do you always want to turn up on the radio? What songs to do you have to belt it out and sing along to? What moves you?
This month at Sanctuary First our theme Singing Redemption is all about the power of music not just to tell us about what it means to be redeemed but to show us how it feels. These flashes of insight are found with and without lyrics and across musical genres.
I got a bunch of comments and so here I have collected them together as an eclectic Sunday Prayer Playlist — a snapshot of our warm, passionate and prayerful community in November this year of our Lord 2025. I have also taken the liberty of asking my fellow leaders of Sunday Prayer Albert Bogle and Laura Digan to chip in a few more songs with me as well.
I make an apology if I don’t highlight the correct song for specific version below, some of these are new to me and generally titles were supplied as opposed to specific performers. Unless stated links below are to a version available on Spotify which might not be quite what you had in mind when you suggested them but hopefully give a sense of it!
But I make no apology for the sudden and abrupt changes of tone and genre — as that’s the point! The only thing that unites these songs is us! We stitch them together through our lives and in the myriad ways they move us.
Oh and one of the ‘songs’ is in fact a sequence of seven songs, but again, I make no apology! It’s a deep dive. Go with it.
So with no further ado:
Sunday Prayer Playlist of Bangers
- Highland Cathedral, composed by Ulrich Roever and Michael Korb
- You’ve Got a Friend, by Carole King performed here by James Taylor
- I am the church, you are the church, we are the church Richard Kinsey Avery and Donald Stuart Marsh (Link to Church of Scotland choir recording)
- You Got the Love, Anthony B. Stephens, Arnecia Michelle Harris, John Bellamy, sung here by Candy Staton
- Begin the beguine, Cole Porter, arranged by Artie Shaw and Jerry Gray
- Bridge over troubled water, Simon and Garfunkel
- Ae fond kiss, Robert Burns here sung by Eddi Reader
- How Great Thou Art, Carl Boberg (Stuart K. Hine, translator)
- Some Enchanted Evening, Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Titanium, David Guetta feat Sia
- The Old Rugged Cross, George Bennard, here sung by Johnny Cash
- Be Thou My Vision, traditional Irish hymn translated by Mary Elizabeth Byrne
- One, U2
- My Saviour’s Love (I Stand Amazed) Chas H. Gabriel
- Take My Whole Heart, Brian Houston
- Because he lives, Gloria Gaither, Bill Gaither
- The lover’s duet O soave fanciulla from the opera La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini
- Seven Psalms — Paul Simon* (* this is not one song but an album of seven tracks that are intended to be listened to as one uninterrupted piece, so it totally counts!)
- Morning has broken, lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon put to the traditional Scottish Gaelic tune ‘Bunessan’ and popularised by Cat Stevens’s version in 1971
- Spirit of God as Unseen as the Wind, Margaret V Old, to the tune of the Skye Boat Song
- Church Not made with Hands, Mike Scott, The Waterboys
- Lord, You Have Come to the Seashore (sometimes Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore) is a song by Cesáreo Gabaráin, translated by Gertrude C. Suppe, George Lockwood and Raquel Guitérrez-Achon
- Benedictus from The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, Karl Jenkins
- Shine Jesus Shine, Graham Kendrick
- Blackbird, Lennon-McCartney, The Beatles
- Jesus, be the Centre, Michael Frye
- Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, John Greenleaf Whittier
- Never Seen the Sea, Gavin Clark
- Caledonia, Dougie MacLean
- Faithful one, so unchanging, Brian Doerksen
- Listen to the Gospel, performed here by the Bogle Band (link to Sanctuary First Archive!)
Get stuck in and have a listen! Have fun discovering new music or rediscovering old music or even puzzling why someone would pick a song you just can’t hack! Then have a think if there’s anything missing? What must-have tracks would you include that move you, stir you, are impossible to ignore when they come on?
And as we listen we remember with bone-deep gratitude the warm sunshine of God’s redemption that sings to us through all beautiful music.
James Cathcart
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