Exploring something new in worship can be challenging, even daunting; we need a friend to guide us through the richness of music available to us. Last year I started a project called Break into Song which aims to inspire church leaders to make friends with new music.
I listened to track six—“Morningside”—on the way to my home church Morningside Presbyterian for worship. While the whole album is evocative, rich in tones and textures, intricately constructed, this one song has stuck with me. Obviously, I was first attracted to it because it is about my church, but for the composer, Rev. Will Ingram, currently senior minister at St. Andrew’s, Toronto, Morningside is a community of friends.
With some regret, and some words of thanks, I take my leave, and take on a new challenge as a missionary for the United Methodist Church, U.S.A., to the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
In this living faith, unauthorized and not published by Wood Lake books, in the beginning Presbyterians started life in Canada as Settlers. Some say we’ve been settling ever since.
There are many talented people in the Presbyterian church. They could be, should be sharing their gifts as part of a national and denominational strategy for making our worship vibrant and joyful, and for effectively sharing our faith. Are they? And is there a strategy?
One thing is sure: one size no longer fits all. This variety in our worship and our music will require more from church musicians and more, not less, support, imagination and deep theology from our congregations.
There is an energy, a hungry spirit of enquiry at the Calvin Symposium on Worship, held each January in Grand Rapids. The Symposium shows a passionate commitment to exploring and supporting the arts of worship that we Presbyterians can learn from.
There’s a small book in my bookshelf called “Canadian Vibrations”. Actually, it’s called “Canadian Vibrations Canadiennes,” a unabashedly bilingual collection of traditional Canadian folksongs along with songs by Canadian singer-songwriters.
“Living Faith” presents as solid theology of the Bible. What about “beloving” as well as believing the scriptural text. Here are more ideas for authentic and faithful worship.
Worship is a temporal art which reflects the value we place on time. What kind of time are we as a denomination spending on strong congregational singing?
Here are some ideas about worship and congregational song that I’ve begged, borrowed, stolen and (what’s more important) used in past years that have made worship more vital and joyful.
“Tradition” is a word that’s as loaded as a Christmas stocking. These two CDs, each in their own way, shine their light on the traditions of Christmas – and deserve a spot in someone’s stocking.
The well-documented and sad state of community singing is thrown into sharp relief during this most musical of seasons. Building a singing culture is the same as building a hockey culture, but without the gaps in the front teeth.
These carols speak to our time in fresh ways, and bring needed balance whenever we fear nostalgia and greeting-card sentiments rule our Yule.
When all the restructuring is done and the reports are in, it still comes back to loving, worshipping and enjoying God. That still involves the simple and subversive act of singing together.
Today I suggest a few more psalm paraphrases that merit attention.
More how-to comments on some contemporary and global songs in the Presbyterian Book of Praise. Listening to songs and artists of the same genre is a key ingredient in presenting the music on its own terms.
How do you get the right style when leading worship songs rooted in popular and dance music? It comes down to rhythm. Here are some practical helps, with links to online videos.
I wonder if we suffer, not from a lack of faith, but from a poverty of imagination. Or do we accept what is dysfunctional because of our fierce loyalty to the church? Here are some more hymns to balance and shape us anew.
Hymns shape us in ways deeper than our expressed theology—sometimes for good, sometimes not. Here are some hymns that should be shaping us. Agree? Disagree?