Room 217 is a series of CDs designed to offer musical comfort to people suffering illness or facing death, and to those who care for them. This project, initiated, developed and produced by pianist and composer, Bev Foster, has many facets.
Worship is a complicated thing. Jesus said we are to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. But what does that mean? Simply put: […]
Blame it on Aristotle. If you happen to miss church on Feb. 28 because you are watching the men’s gold medal hockey game, that is. […]
What can the Book of Praise tell us about our identity as Canadian Presbyterians? That was the challenge I took for my term paper in […]
Christian bands, such as Skillet, and As I Lay Dying, use music as an evangelistic tool, introducing audiences who are unfamiliar and even antagonistic toward […]
Judging by how much ink is being spilled these days on books about the divine, God is alive and well, at least in print. Visit […]
February 7: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11 Today’s gospel story is eerily similar to the post-Resurrection narrative in John 21. Luke makes it Peter’s call, the […]
The lady approached the minister after church and with a frown on her face declared that she didn’t like the first prayer in the service […]
It may be that the worship wars — and the contemporary vs. traditional, worship band vs. organ attitudes that went with them — are over. […]
The concept of church has changed in our secular ultra-individualistic society. Christians often don’t see it as a biblical imperative, rather as a voluntary organization […]
O sing to the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. — Psalm 96:1 If I have become convinced of one […]
Sometimes I wonder where Presbyterians are the most playful—and self-revealing. I’m not convinced that it’s when we worship… Was that a logical leap? Blame it on the New Year’s egg-nog. Or blame it on our Presbyterian thesaurus that doesn’t put “worship” and “play” together.
As I described in an earlier In Song entry, a church’s recording project can invite a wider public to listen to what is going on musically in a congregation, opening a window, and sometimes an inviting door, into its life.
Sunday, January 31 Epiphany 4 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Why does Paul pause in the middle of a really good argument about the use and abuse […]
The 2009 series Theology 101 offered two distinct views, one on Christian theology, the other on world religions. We follow this with a series presenting […]
O sing to the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. – Psalm 96:1 As we venture into a new year, […]
Mainline Canadian Christians were given a sackful of coal by the federal government just before Christmas when Stephen Harper’s Tories abruptly cut funding from Kairos, […]
Composer Ronald Beckett’s opera Ruth (1996) is the first in a trilogy of biblical musical dramas. It has been performed in a number of venues in Ontario, including Central, Brantford, where Beckett is music director. The CD of the opera lasts just over an hour, and is performed by a chorus of Israelites, a chorus of youths, and soloists who portray the characters Ruth, Naomi, Boaz and a Narrator.
Churches are always in need—and sometimes in desperate need—of renewal in their worship arts. Congregational song is one strand in the tapestry of our church life that is dangerously frayed. Part of the problem is that we are not a singing culture.
It’s complicated, love is. It’s what makes the world go round, yet we often feel it could slip away in an instant; it’s as fragile […]