Father's Day Repast

George E. Mims Music, Liturgy and Notes: Music in Worship: 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 ...


June 17, 2012, Monday morning

Writing again from home in Mobile, Alabama, I've decided to share how service planning happens in my corner of the Vineyard. Perhaps such activity is one of my favorite past times and not a job!!!

"Father’s Day Repast" … George Ellis Mims

Yesterday was Father’s Day. Such days including Mother’s Day and Grandparent’s Day do not appear in liturgical church calendars. Truthfully where family is revered, examined and supported through healthy spiritual nourishment parishioners can come to identify every day as a Family Day celebrating fathers, mothers, grandparents, and all who parent.

Yesterday's Revised Common Lectionary could be summed up with Brian Howard’s song, "The Kingdom of God is neither - lo here - nor - lo there - the Kingdom is among us!" Thinking how the Kingdom surely involves healthy families serving one another and the larger community in love and fellowship I set about planning our worship for St. Paul's, Mobile.

This basic theme stands tall: The Kingdom of God lives in and among us!

Each clergy person and I regularly meet to discuss the lectionary for the Sunday coming up when they are to be the preacher. Before we meet, I do my own homework. A medley of "I trust in God I know he cares for me" and "His eye is on the sparrow," immediately crossed my mind as did "Praise my soul the King of heaven," for its verse that says, "father-like he tends and spares us, well our feeble frame he knows." A suitable anthem text rummaging around in my head was Luigi Cherubini’s, "Like as a father filled with compassion pities all his children; so the Lord has mercy on those who fear him." Other songs that came to mind were John Polce's "O Lord you love is changing the world; day by day we are renewed," (arranged by Shirley Lewis Brown,) Daniel Iverson's "Spirit of the living God, fall a-fresh on me." and the standard Father’s Day hymn, "Faith of our fathers." to the tune, St. Catherine.

Fr. Marshall Craver, preacher of the day, requested for the hymn at the Sequence, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteous." This hymn was printed in the leaflet to correct The Hymnal 1982 version that says, "And it’s righteousness." Fr. Craver also requested "Praise to the Lord the Almighty," which has the verse, "borne as on eagle wings, safely his saints he sustaineth."

The Kingdom of God lives in and among us!…perhaps seems a little over done in the liturgy that ensued but can we really overstate the intervention of God in our lives and particularly the lives of those who parent?

The position of each composition in the liturgy and how it’s presented and led is just as important as the selection. Our litrugy design wound up as follows: Anthem, Medley on "I trust in God" and "His eye is on the sparrow" sung by soloist. + Hymn in Procession, "Praise my soul" + Hymn at the Sequence, "Seek ye first" + Offertory Anthem, "Like as a father" + Communion, "I come with joy to meet my Savior," "Spirit of the living God," "O Lord, your love is changing the world," and "Faith of our fathers." + Hymn in Procession, "Praise to the Lord the Almighty." + Organ Improvisation on St. Catherine

The Liturgist's prayer is that The Good News is experienced: praise, inspiration, encouragement, repentance, and a mission that is clearly identified: The Kingdom of God lives in and among us!

The Risen Christ....St. Vladmir's Orthodox Church, Ambridge, PA

Music in Worship

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.