2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Youth Praise hymn book which spawned songs including ‘Tell out my soul’ and ‘Christ triumphant’.
Michael Baughen, on his attempt to find a publisher for Youth Praise, said: ‘I trekked around evangelical publishers. They all told me it would be a failure, that there was no demand for such a book, that no song-book had sold more than 5,000 copies. Having lunch with Timothy Dudley-Smith one day (then assistant secretary of CPAS) he said: ‘We will publish it’. It sold out on the first night. The demand was like a flood. The printer could not keep pace.’
Together with its sequel Youth Praise 2 it went on to sell over 1 million copies and defined contemporary worship for a generation. A birthday celebration will be held in All Souls on 15 October.
