Today we are going to be talking about music in worship and I am writing to you from my home in Mobile, Alabama.. There are so many facets to the subject of worship alone let alone music in worship so this initial post will be fairly long.
Worship surely involves the understanding of a person being present before a deity, which in my own case is the one and only true Deity, Jesus Christ, God's Messiah, and present at all times in all places through the Holy Spirit. Therefore most of what I will share will be within that context. At some point though I want to rehearse a few facts about worship in history and how I feel that has informed our views in many quarters today.
This past Easter I attended the 11 p.m. service on Saturday, April 14th, 2012, held at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church which is immediately across the street from my home in Mobile. Between 10:30 p.m. or so communicants were gathering in the pretty darkened church to pray and to hear chants in Greek played over the sound system. Then the service began with clergy, cantors and choir singing in dialogue sometimes in Greek and at other times in an English translation. The music is very eastern and involves melodies not akin almost in any way to western music. Eventually the lights came down and the clergy entered the nave through the Great Gate in front of the Altar bringing out the Paschal Candle. Acolytes and Choir then carried candles lit from the Paschal Candle into the congregation and a Procession led by Clergy and Choir was begun down the aisle and through the narthex onto the front portico and piazza of the church located on Ann Street here in Mobile. Basically, in Episcopalian terms you might say that we were doing the Liturgy of the Word including beginning with the historic Greek Chant to "Christ is risen," sung in Greek and then in English maybe twenty or thirty times over! Everyone seemed to try their hand at singing at least part of the time. Then after the Prayers of the People were completed, the priest knocked loudly on the closed doors to the church and shouted "Lift up ye heads, ye mighty gates and the King of Glory will come in!" From inside the church narthex, another priest shouted, "Who is the King of Glory," and the priest on the outside shouted "The Lord God of Hosts." This dialogue taken from the Psalm continued until the verses were finished. Then the Great Doors to the Church were opened revealing a lit up Church with candles aglow. A festive Procession followed and then the Divine Liturgy continued with the Offertory. I had some spine tingling moments during the hymn, "Christ is risen trampling death," even though the melody was foreign to me personally. But the great moment was when the Psalm verses were being shouted between the priest on the outside and the priest on the inside of the door. I thought, "That's something we all could do!!!"
The point of this story is that Liturgy/Worship/The Faith Community at Prayer and Music cannot and should not be separated when we enter into the sure knowledge that we are involved in the worship of Almighty God.
Next conversation, we'll be discussing Easter in several other traditions, the Charismatic, Evangelical and Catholic traditions. Hope you'll tune in as what is music and worship if we don't first know some specifics of what is actually occuring in the Christian Church around the USA
today?
Copyright May 14, 2012, George Ellis Mims, All Rights Reserved.
Worship surely involves the understanding of a person being present before a deity, which in my own case is the one and only true Deity, Jesus Christ, God's Messiah, and present at all times in all places through the Holy Spirit. Therefore most of what I will share will be within that context. At some point though I want to rehearse a few facts about worship in history and how I feel that has informed our views in many quarters today.
This past Easter I attended the 11 p.m. service on Saturday, April 14th, 2012, held at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church which is immediately across the street from my home in Mobile. Between 10:30 p.m. or so communicants were gathering in the pretty darkened church to pray and to hear chants in Greek played over the sound system. Then the service began with clergy, cantors and choir singing in dialogue sometimes in Greek and at other times in an English translation. The music is very eastern and involves melodies not akin almost in any way to western music. Eventually the lights came down and the clergy entered the nave through the Great Gate in front of the Altar bringing out the Paschal Candle. Acolytes and Choir then carried candles lit from the Paschal Candle into the congregation and a Procession led by Clergy and Choir was begun down the aisle and through the narthex onto the front portico and piazza of the church located on Ann Street here in Mobile. Basically, in Episcopalian terms you might say that we were doing the Liturgy of the Word including beginning with the historic Greek Chant to "Christ is risen," sung in Greek and then in English maybe twenty or thirty times over! Everyone seemed to try their hand at singing at least part of the time. Then after the Prayers of the People were completed, the priest knocked loudly on the closed doors to the church and shouted "Lift up ye heads, ye mighty gates and the King of Glory will come in!" From inside the church narthex, another priest shouted, "Who is the King of Glory," and the priest on the outside shouted "The Lord God of Hosts." This dialogue taken from the Psalm continued until the verses were finished. Then the Great Doors to the Church were opened revealing a lit up Church with candles aglow. A festive Procession followed and then the Divine Liturgy continued with the Offertory. I had some spine tingling moments during the hymn, "Christ is risen trampling death," even though the melody was foreign to me personally. But the great moment was when the Psalm verses were being shouted between the priest on the outside and the priest on the inside of the door. I thought, "That's something we all could do!!!"
The point of this story is that Liturgy/Worship/The Faith Community at Prayer and Music cannot and should not be separated when we enter into the sure knowledge that we are involved in the worship of Almighty God.
Next conversation, we'll be discussing Easter in several other traditions, the Charismatic, Evangelical and Catholic traditions. Hope you'll tune in as what is music and worship if we don't first know some specifics of what is actually occuring in the Christian Church around the USA
today?
Copyright May 14, 2012, George Ellis Mims, All Rights Reserved.
