Level: Late Intermediate

Format: PDF Digital Download

The organ is known as the king of instruments. Unfortunately, it’s reign seems to be dwindling in today’s worship services. 

When I meet people, they frequently say one of three things to me.

• My grandma’s name was Leila

• My grandma played the organ

• OR…

• My grandma’s name was Leila and she played the organ!

At times I feel like I’m in a time warp and should head back to the 1930s!

With the decline of the organ in worship and a shortage of those who play the instrument, it makes me even more passionate about maintaining my skills and more importantly, finding music that’s fun to play with crowd appeal. 

That’s how this arrangement came to be back in 2008. “Mercy Me” is a Christian worship band that continually creates arrangements of Christmas tunes that rock! Their arrangement of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was just so unique that I felt compelled to create my own arrangement of it for the organ. This year, I dug it out of the archives, updated the score and am sharing it with you!

Our church is home to an Allen Renaissance Quantum organ. Along with the typical organ stops, each manual has 241 MIDI voices. This "department store" array of sounds inspires me to explore new stop combinations beyond the typical. Included with the score are all my registrations.

I encourage you to play this yourself or share the score with an organist or a young pianist interested in learning more about the organ. There’s nothing quite like the power of orchestrating the king of instruments!

Not an organist?

Feel free to give the sheet music to your favorite organist and say, "Merry Christmas!"

Or, turn the arrangement into a duet or trio with fellow keyboardists.

Or, assign parts to the bass guitar, synthesizer, guitar, piano, and even handbells and jam. Get creative and have fun!

IF you come up with a combo, please share your performance—I’d love to hear it!

Follow this link to watch the video of my interpretation.