When my parents died back in the 80’s I stopped attending church services.  For a time I “shopped” for a church home where I could feel a sense of belonging and always found an excuse why this congregation or that congregation wasn’t right.  Finally I just stopped going.  To say I had a crisis of faith would be overstating the matter.  I don’t think I ever stopped “believing”, I just stopped attending services and rationalized it in that fashion.  The suffering that my mother endured for more than three years in her battle with ALS, and then my father’s sudden death 6 months later had me feeling shocked and not just a little bit angry.

At any rate, a few years after this time, I was working just outside of Red Deer Alberta for the summer months.  My Dad’s brother lived close by and I had been trying to connect with him with no success.  On one particular Sunday morning (20 June 1993 to be precise) I awoke and decided that I would surprise him (my uncle) by showing up at his church home for the worship service.  I remember that day vividly because I was in a pretty good mood and it was a beautiful day; warm and sunny.

I drove into town a little early and parked on the street outside the church.  Again, I felt pretty good that day and was unprepared for what was about to happen.  As I walked through the doors of the church it felt like a weight was literally lifted off of my shoulders.  It was the same sensation you get when you spend a day hiking up to a campsite in the mountains and your hiking partner lifts your 70 lb. pack off your back at the end of the day.

I had no backpack on that morning, and because of this, the sensation was so powerful and so “real” that I immediately had to stop moving to catch my breath.  I was so overwhelmed that I started to weep.  No one in the congregation had yet spoken to me (I was just crossing the threshold of the building).  The congregation was not one I was really familiar with and apart from my Uncle and his family, I didn’t really know anyone else.  I didn’t go searching for this feeling, and on that day, I didn’t even sense that something was amiss in my life.  Obviously God had another idea.

I believe that He saw what was needed at that moment and took advantage of the opportunity.  He could have done the same thing to me if I were walking in a beautiful park or working at my desk.  I have asked myself though, whether I would have “got the point” in any other setting.  To this day, I believe that I was meant to hear a very specific message.  A statement telling me that I was missing out on the most important part of what it means to be a Christian.  A statement saying that the fellowship and support that comes from membership in group of people of faith will enrich and add to your own faith.

I have said to many people over the years that I wish I knew what it feels like to experience a “call”.  Perhaps I do know after all.  Instead of a call to a vocation though, God just chose to say to me, “You need me… and I Love you”.

My resurrection story is in the form of this very personal and very powerful invitation to return to the fellowship and community of the church.  I am profoundly grateful for this gift; this invitation.

One of my mother’s favorite old gospel tunes had new meaning to me after this:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me;
see, on the portal’s he’s waiting and watching,
watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home;
ye who are weary, come home;
earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
calling, O sinner, come home!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Here is one of many versions of River in Judea that is on YouTube.  Lovely tune, but I don’t know how a river can stop on the sabbath day.

I have been concerned for some time now about the writers of contemporary christian anthems and songs.  I suppose that my attention has been turned to this topic far more now than in the past, with my wife, the soon to be Lutheran Pastor, and my close friends who are choirmasters at various churches discussing this topic more and more.  I see a proliferation of music that tends to make our worship more common… or worse… meaningless.   Although this has been going on for some time now, it seems that the production of music of a lesser quality is speeding up to meet the needs of music sellers.

I started to really think of this yesterday when I was channel surfing the religious shows that populate the airwaves every Sunday morning when people feel their most vulnerable.  I heard this great gospel quartet singing a song.  I am not being facetious when I say they were great.  I don’t know the title of the song they were singing but the chorus was, “I’m satisfied with Jesus”.  This was repeated over and over again.  All I could think of was, “I’ve settled on Jesus, because there was nothing better around.” I suppose if you know the piece you would tell me that I have taken this out of context, as is so often the case with everything in Christendom.  Out of context or not, I found myself annoyed by this music, and I wondered why?  What role does music play in a wordhip service and how do we approach evangelism in our churches?  Do we tell everyone (witness) to the impact that God’s love has on us?  I certainly think there is a right time and a right place to do this, but I wonder if a better method of evangelism is in the way we worship and in the words we choose in praising God.  When I joined the Lutheran church I was told that the way we practice evangelism is in living a good life and showing people – through our actions – that we are people of faith and that a life following Jesus is something to be admired or desired.  Once again this is out of context but I word it this way intentionally.  Mainly because I am coming to believe that both ways are off track, or at least do not fully “fit the bill”.  Constant witnessing to the world seems to make our faith more about us than about God.  Sitting back and showing people that we are “good” and hoping that they will ask the questions of what motivates us to be good, is not intentional enough.   Somewhere in the middle ground we might find the answers. 

When I was directing a church choir in Regina, I chose a song called River in Judea.  My wife and I sang it at an anniversary luncheon for the church and it was so popular that I later purchased it in an SATB setting for the choir.  Here are the lyrics:

Oftentimes I dream of music,
Of the river that freely flows.
And it sings a song sweeter than honey,
One everybody knows.
Late at night, I hear it singing.
Then again when I wake at dawn.
And it fills me up with hope and goodwill,
The will to go on,
Go on.

(Chorus)
   There is a river in Judea
   That I heard of long ago.
   And it’s a singing, ringing river
   That my soul cries out
   To know.

I believe it keeps on trav’lin’
But it rests on the Sabbath day.
And the time when it pauses in stillness,
I almost hear it pray.
When I’m weary and downhearted,
How I long for the song it sings,
For the calm within its gentle blue,
The peace that it brings, it brings.

 
(Chorus)

May the time not be too distant
When we meet by the river (meet by the) shore.
‘Til then dream of that wonderful day
As we sing once more, once more:
(Chorus)

Hallelujah!!!

It is honestly a beautiful song.  If you do a search on YouTube you can hear some very good choirs singing this song.  It’s obviously very popular.  I wonder though if anyone has every really looked at the words.  I certainly don’t mean to imply that there is something wrong with the words, just that the words really don’t say anything that would lend itself to enhance a worship service.  The words, “Judea”, “Sabbath”, and “pray” seem to imply that it is a sacred piece of music and I suppose that an argument could be made that it is a nice song that lends itself to our thoughts on our  stewardship of creation but that is a bit tenuous.  But I have to ask, why would this song be special to a congregation?  In retrospect, I am a little embarassed that I programmed this piece for services, which, with these words, just filled in some time in the worship service.  Is it any wonder that a growing number of pastors are putting less emphasis on the role of the choir in a service?

Our words in music should be another medium for people to “connect” with the Gospel. We have the capability to enhance worship and make music integral rather than “stand-alone” components.  In the same way that a soundtrack enhances a great movie we can make worship more full by the music we choose.  

This is not easy.  Music publishers choose writers who can write a great quantity of music quickly and ones who sell a lot of music.  Then the music retailers only carry the music that sells in good quantity.  This then puts the onus on us as music leaders to only purchase music that is of a high quality and that will enhance our worship services.  I think we also have an obligation to learn ways to verbalize why a piece of music is of a lower quality to members of our parish.  While our pastors’ main duty is to educate and equip the members of their parish to minister to God’s people outside the walls of the church building, the music ministers’ duty is to educate the members of our parishes about the role of music in worship and the careful selection of music for worship.

 

Peace to you.

Once again it has been quite some time since I decided that I would start posting to this blog and have still come up with new and unique ways to procrastinate. 

One of the Sunday evening rituals in our family as I was growing up was that while my brothers, sisters, and Iwere watching the “Wonderful World of Disney”, Dad would go to his den and write a letter to his mother on his IBM selectric typewriter.  After he wrote the letter, he would read it to my mom, seal it in an envelope and drive to the main post office so that he could get the letter into a bin that would be emptied at 10 pm that night (on some nights he would take me with him, “for the drive” and we would stop at the Novia Cafe for a piece of coconut cream pie).  In return Dad would get a letter from his mom (my grandmother), probably the same day that his letter arrived at his mom’s.  I assume that Sunday night was her night too and it was pretty neat thinking of both of them devoting an hour or so on their typewriters at the same time.  I’m sure the connection was palpable for my Dad…  to know that she was spending time with him as he was spending time with her even though they were separated by 800 kms.

When I got my first Macintosh computer in 1988 I encouraged Dad to sit down and try it out. Dad certainly wasn’t afraid of technology, but he had to be sure that it would be beneficial to him before he would use it.  My Mac SE came with a floppy disc that was entitled, “Tour Disc”.  It was a clever little bootable 800 K disc that had an interactive animation that gave you the basics of using a mouse (i.e. pointing, clicking, dragging).  The only problem with it was that it would take you 4 or 5 hours to complete the “tour” from start to finish.  I think this was the biggest obstacle for my father, who couldn’t sit still for any amount of time.  One day though, when I got home from classes, Dad was sitting at the little Mac and going through the tour disc.  That was the start.  You might say I created a monster.  He started doing his bulletins for worship services on my computer, and squirrelling away a whole bunch of MS Works files covering everything under the sun from insurance documents, household inventories, to his own funeral service outline.  I actually had to start booking time on my own computer to get my papers and things done… not to mention the games that I wanted play on the silly thing.

One of the major changes in his routines was that he started writing his letters to his mom on the computer.  I have heard the traditionalists bemoan the fact that a letter generated on a computer is so much more impersonal than a handwritten note.  I would agree to a point.  I have to say that getting a handwritten note is amazing and perks me up like very little else can.  Handwritten notes are so rare these days.  I think though that when someone sits at a writing desk, or an IBM selectric typewriter, or a  computer and thinks about you as they write the letter, that is what is special.  When it comes to some of my friends, I would prefer to get a computer generated letter because their handwriting is so unintelligible (but that is a topic for another post).

I have digressed a little bit though.  I have been thinking about Dad’s ritual and have always admired: his devotion to his mother; and his self discipline to actually carry out this practice.  My mother seldom wrote letters to her folks.  When she did, they were enormous tomes, handwritten with beautiful penmanship, but these were certainly not on any schedule.  I used to say that I got my letter writing skills from my mom, because I too, while I am capable of writing, always considered it a bit of a chore.  I always enjoy having written and mailed a letter, but the act of writing it has always been difficult for me.  When I first joined the “on-line” world and started sending e-mails, I wrongly assumed that I would start writing more to my friends and family (at least those that had on-line capability), ”just because it’s so easy”.  I still don’t do a great job of keeping in touch with the people that I love.  I hope they know that it is not because I don’t think of them or care about them, but because I lack the self discipline required to stay in touch.

At any rate, I think now that the time has come for me to establish a new routine.  Let’s see how long it will last.  I will sit down every Sunday evening and write something for this blog.  I hope that I will have something to say that people will want to read, but I imagine that most will be twaddle.  In the end it probably won’t be read much anyway.  If you do read my posts, please feel free to weigh in on any discussion points that I might raise.

Peace.

I have set up and deleted blogs for the last year and never seem to be able to sit down and start blogging. I wonder if I will ever be able to do this? Maybe posting this as my first entry will give me the impetus to begin. Then again, maybe not…