A psalter is a book that takes all 150 Psalms from the book of Psalms in the Bible and sets them to meter and music, so that a congregation can sing the Word of God together in worship.
The Psalms are the songbook God placed in the middle of our Bibles. Scripture commands us again and again to sing to the Lord, and to help us, He gave us His own inspired hymnbook — 150 songs of praise, lament, thanksgiving, and hope. A psalter simply makes those songs singable: arranging each psalm into metrical verses and pairing it with a tune so the whole church, young and old, can lift them up with one voice.
A short history of psalm singing
Singing the Psalms is one of the oldest practices of the church, stretching back to the temple and the early Christians. At the Reformation it was recovered with fresh vigor — Calvin's Geneva and the Church of Scotland put metrical psalters into the hands of ordinary believers, and Psalm-singing became a hallmark of Reformed and Presbyterian worship for centuries.
The ARP Psalter
Covenant Church is a congregation of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and one of our directives for worship is that a psalm be sung in every service. We sing from the ARP Psalter — our own collection of the 150 Psalms set for congregational singing. Since the original Hebrew tunes are long lost, careful work has gone into setting the psalms to meter and matching them with singable melodies, so the words remain close to the text of Scripture.
Why we sing the Psalms
When we sing a psalm, we are singing God's Word back to Him in His own words. The Psalms give voice to every season of the soul — joy and grief, confidence and complaint — and they keep Christ at the center of our praise. You don't need to read music or know the tunes; come as you are, and let the congregation carry you along.