Video of Paperless Singing

Here's a video taken at the All Saints Company conference "Music that Makes Community," St. Paul's Chapel, New York City, April 2008. It's an example of the style of "Paperless Music" that I've been thinking about. You can find a bunch more videos like this by going to You Tube and searching for "Paperless Music."


-t

Eucharist from Vital Church Planting Conference 2010

Liturgy wonks will appreciate this--the liturgy from the Vital Church Planting Conference Eucharist that Eric and I (and the rest of the committee) planned....

++CJ refers to Archbishop Johnson, of course. Everything was paperless, so only the leaders had these notes. The song titles are in all capitals and were led paperless by Eric, I refer to the page number for the ones found in the hymnal Music by Heart.

Thursday, Feb 4, 2010, 12:15 PM

SONG: COME ALL YOU PEOPLE

++CJ: The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
be with you all.
All: And also with you.

Collect
++CJ: O God of unchangeable power and eternal light,
look favourably on your whole Church,
that wonderful and sacred mystery.
By the effectual working of your providence,
carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation.
Let the whole world see and know
that things which were cast down are being raised up,
and things which had grown old are being made new,
and that all things are being brought to their perfection
by him through whom all things were made,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Amen.

Reading Hebrews 11:8-11, 17-19
Reader: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. ...
17 By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, 18of whom he had been told, ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named after you.’ 19He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
The Word of the Lord.
People: Thanks be to God


SONG: CREEK ALLELUIA - Eric

Reading Mark 4:26-29
Reader: The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according in Mark.
People: Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ

Reader: Jesus also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
The Gospel of Christ
People: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Sermon - John Bowen

SUNG INTERCESSIONS – Rachel

Eucharist

Prayer of Thanksgiving over gifts
++CJ: God of abundance and blessing,
accept the offerings of your people,
especially the time spent apart to listen to your Spirit,
and grant that we may be empowered to proclaim your
Gospel afresh, through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
All: Amen.

Eucharistic Prayer D (from Common Worship 2000)
++CJ: The Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
++CJ: Lift up your hearts
All: We lift them to the Lord
++CJ: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
All: It is right to give our thanks and praise.

++CJ: Almighty God, good Father to us all,
your face is turned towards your world.
In love you gave us Jesus your Son
to rescue us from sin and death.
Your Word goes out to call us home
to the city where angels sing your praise.

++CJ: Father of all, we give you thanks
for every gift that comes from heaven.

++CJ: To the darkness Jesus came as your light.
With signs of faith and words of hope
he touched untouchables with love and
washed the guilty clean.

++CJ: The crowds came out to see your Son,
yet at the end they turned on him.
On the night he was betrayed
he came to table with his friends
to celebrate the freedom of your people.

++CJ: Jesus blessed you, Father, for the food;
he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and said:
This is my body, given for you all.

++CJ: Jesus then gave thanks for the wine;
he took the cup, gave it and said:
This is my blood, shed for you all
for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in remembrance of me.

++CJ: Therefore, Father, with this bread and this cup
we celebrate the cross
on which he died to set us free.
Defying death he rose again
and is alive with you to plead for us
and all the world.

++CJ: Send your Spirit on us now
that by these gifts we may feed on Christ
with opened eyes and hearts on fire.

++CJ: May we and all who share this food
offer ourselves to live for you
and be welcomed at your feast in heaven
where all creation worships you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

++CJ: Blessing and honour and glory and power
be yours for ever and ever.
Amen.

SONG: SANCTUS (St. Bride) - Eric

++CJ: The Gifts of God for the people of God
All: Thanks be to God.

Communion

Eric and Laura do a few paperless pieces

Post Communion
LORD'S PRAYER (MBH 85)

Episcopal Blessing
++CJ: We give you thanks, God of All,
for nourishing us with your Holy Sacraments
and with each other. We pray that as we go forth
from this place, your Spirit of the living Christ would
abide in us, that we may show his light to the world, we ask this
in his Name,
All: Amen.
++CJ: The Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
sustain and embolden you,
to bring his Word the world.
All: Amen.

FROM THIS HOUSE (MBH 66)

Even with an 18 minute the sermon and communicating about 130 people the whole service only took 55 minutes!

-t

Thoughts from a Tuesday

A busy day that started with some e-mails and phone calls and then the Trad Com (BCP Communion) service at Messiah. I regretted not transferring the Feast of Holy Cross to a Sunday, but at least I was able to transfer it to today! Not surprisingly, I had plenty to preach about on the Patronal Feast of OHC! A pleasant lunch with some of my parishioners followed.

In the early afternoon I drove down to Diocesan HQ for a meeting related to the Back to Church Sunday initiative. Bishop Poole was leading the meeting, but Bishop Johnson did stop by briefly to share some thoughts about the project. I couldn't help noticing that he was wearing a really flattering suit. And I admit thinking, "I wonder how many suits he had to buy when he became bishop?" Lol. He also shared that a new grand child was to be born immanently. Good for him.

After the meeting it was back to Messiah for a staff meeting. It went longer than usual, which I should have anticipated given that Eric is new on staff and it's the beginning of the church's programme year. We prayed briefly, then we debriefed last Sunday and planned for the next. Much of our time ended up focusing on the Confirmation Service/Bishop's Visitation/Back-to-Church Sunday marathon that will be September 27th! Now we've added a bouncy castle. Because everybody loves the bouncy castle! We also beginning to talk about the Christmas Pageant (yeah, really!).

In November Eric is going to the "Music that Makes Community Conference" in Atlanta. I've talked about paperless singing on this blog from time-to-time, and these conferences put on by the All Saints Company (the people that gave the world St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco) are the place to go to learn about that. I'm thrilled that Eric is going. In fact, he wanted to go long before he was called to COTM. It's a three day conference/workshop teaching the techniques of so-called "paperless singing." It's a method of congregational worship that recovers much older methods of making music in community. It uses techniques like call-and-response, lining, rounds, etc. to get a congregation singing together. Inevitably it feels much more organic, free, and intimate than head-in-hymnal, everybody-follow-the-organ, style singing.

Needless to say, I'd love to go to this conference. The only problem is that the same week I'm going to this year's Preaching College at St. Clement's. This is an invitation-only intensive four-day workshop for preachers. I'm wondering whether I can miss the last half-day and take the red-eye to Atlanta? The other option is to attend the same conference a few months later in January in San Francisco. I love San Francisco--but at that point I'll have a new baby at home and (probably) no desire to travel! Besides, there is a nice synergy that will happen if Eric and I are BOTH at the same conference. I had such a blast the last time I went to an All Saints Company conference, I'd love to share that with one (or more) of my worship staff.

One of the things I love about Eric that we have a shared language for talking about liturgy. I have yet to come up with anything (a term, a hymn, a resource, anything) that he doesn't know about. I suspect he may have a better liturgical library than I do! Going to a conference like this will only take that shared language to the next level: shared experience!

So I'm trying to figure out how to make that trip work!

Lots of other challenges at work. Many of which I just can't talk about for obvious reasons. Suffice it to say, my plate is full.

Meanwhile, Betsy's belly is getting bigger. She's feeling great except for a little bit of joint soreness in her hips. She's been getting good advice via Facebook about that. We are both reading and studying pregnancy stuff like the nerds we are!

The weather in Ontario is starting to turn cool. It makes me think about the need to schedule a firewood delivery and do more canning. Maybe we'll get the farmer's market again this weekend...

-t

Paperless Alleluia Rough Cut

This is a rough cut of the paperless alleluia we did on Eric's first Sunday. when I get a chance I'll clean it up some, but I have to dash to another meeting in a few minutes...



-t

Musicians

I've had some great experiences working with various musicians to create liturgy in the last few weeks, but one of the learnings for me is that I cannot take for granted the people I'm working with share my language for liturgical music. For example, I was talking today with someone and realized that even though he is going to be leading worship at my church this upcoming Sunday, as far as I can tell he has little or no experience or interest in leading congregational hymn singing as we know it in the Anglican Church. He's happy to play beautiful, worshipful music and even lead pieces that involve the choir, but he really has no idea where to start when I say something like, "Can you pick a hymn to sing during the offertory"? This just isn't one of his gifts or part of his background. No problem, that's why I'm thankful that I have a choir capable of filling in gaps like this. For the offertory we'll simply do Ben Allaway's "Freedom Come" as a paperless piece--very apt for a Black History Month service.

Meanwhile, I met with another church musician who has a much stronger background in church music, but mostly in the genre of praise and contemporary music. Interestingly, she asked me about how our congregation does paperless music and we had a long conversation about that I showed her some clips on You Tube of some of my favourite examples. She has no trouble at all leading or picking hymns.

Two Sundays ago we had an incomparable accordion player who doesn't know much about liturgy, but is pretty much fearless about learning whatever he needs to know. He also has great love for God. If I had to choose between working with someone with great musical skill and no liturgical training or background versus someone familiar with church land but with poor musical sensibility, I would take the former every time. Of course the ideal is to have both.

This time is requiring me to dig deep into what I know not just about how about music, but about you form people to lead worship and those people form us. I'm pleased about how much I am having to learn to work with people from such different musical backgounds and traditions.

-t

Another Example of Paperless Singing

Here's another example of Paperless singing--this time it's Marilyn Haskel (from St. Paul's Chapel, NYC, and Church Publishing) teaching the conference group a Fraction Anthem she composed...

Between these two clips I think you can begin to hear what this is about. I especially like the way you can hear the energy of the group. Note how we self-corrected as went along. Neat...

-t

Extemporaneous Eucharistic Prayers

Of course I'm a liturgy nerd. I care a great deal about what we pray and how we pray. Like many Episcopal Priests, I was "raised" to think that great precision is required when praying the Eucharistic Prayer. God help you (literally) if you say it wrong. The magic won't happen! Jesus will flee your feast!

So I find it impressive when people can extemporaneously pray the Eucharistic prayers and hit all the right points. There is an ancient precedent for this: the Mozarabic Rite. It requires a deep understanding, in my humble opinion, of the Eucharistic prayers to do it well, but it is certainly within the capacity of most priests who put their mind to it. The so-called Rite III liturgy in the American Prayerbook (1979 BCP 402ff) gives the presiding priest great discretion in how the Eucharistic Prayer is to be said, but still specifies the words for the Institution Narrative and a few other parts. Of course, the Rite III rubrics insist that it should not be used during the principal Sunday service of the community.

Certainly doing a Eucharistic Prayer off-the-cuff is stretching the bounds of what is "Anglican"--but that's perhaps what interests me about it. I see great potential for relational liturgy in the immediacy of such a prayer. It's the same principle as what happens when one learns to preach without notes or improvise of the organ.

I happen to enjoy broad episcopal permission when it comes the Contemplative Eucharists that I do on Wednesday morning and Saturday afternoon. Further, the Archbishop has told us (priests) that we "have the keys to the family car--just don't wreck it." So in that spirit I've been trying my hand at extemporaneous eucharistic prayers at my Contemplative Eucharists. The group that comes appreciates it. I find that it requires even more concentration and preparation than what I used before, which is even more than what it required to a regular BCP/BAS Mass!

To prepare for it, I think you need a couple of years of saying the Eucharist out of the prayerbooks. To this end, saying the daily masses at St. Mary Magdalene's was great training. It's like the 10,000 hours concept of Malcome Gladwell--you need to spend about 10,000 hours saying the Mass to master it. Maybe I haven't wracked up that much time, perhaps I've got about 3 or 4 thousand hours, though? You should have a few of rites basically memorized from repetition.

Then, you need to have a real command over the different parts of the Eucharistic prayers. You need to know what they are and why they are there.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, you need to be right with your personal sacramental prayer life. I mean that you need to be really confident in your own skin as a priest doing the thing priests do. So... that's my advice about that.

Now, here is an example of Rick Fabian (best known from St. Gregory of Nyssa fame) presiding at the Eucharist that ended our Music That Makes Community Conference in Atlanta a few months ago. Note that both the words and the music were made-up on the spot. We sing a Sanctus at the end in a paperless-style, but it wasn't our first time hearing/singing that particular song.


Now, there is a lot of craft in doing this well. For one thing, notice that Rick has a particular pattern in mind for how is going to chant the text. He is basically going up and a down a scale. Also, he has an idea in his head of the shape of the eucharistic prayers. He knows where is beginning from and where he is ending. He also knows some of the points he wants to hit along the way: thanksgiving for creation, rehearsing salvation history, the institution narrative, the epiclesis, etc.

BTW, I like the way Rick says "whores." It's a nice, sharp moment in the flow of the prayer.

I was never taught how to pray this way. I wasn't ready for it in seminary, anyway. These are advanced teachings. But it's definitely worth sharing because the spiritual results can be breath taking!

-t

Tell It Like It Is

One of the books we had to read in advance for the Preacher's College last week was Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony by Lillian Daniel (our guest presenter at the College). This book is based on her D.Min. dissertation and focuses on reclaiming the tradition of Testimony for "mainline" churches (think Congregationalist, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, even Catholic). She developed a practice at her church in New Haven (and brought it with her to Chicago) of inviting lay members of the congregation to give testimony from the heart (usually only for about 7-8 minutes) about their life with God. The only real rule (besides the time limit and the fact that these folk were specifically invited by the pastor) was that Testimonies could not be "godless." What she didn't want to hear was, "What I learned about myself in psychotherapy," nor, "What civic minded people can accomplish when they work together." The point is to talk about how God is active in your life.

The practice was very successful and brought people closer together in the congregation. It also helped to spread out leadership and foster both discipleship and (yes) stewardship.

So she wanted to talk to us about how this practice can be helpful to congregations as well as how the use of personal testimony in preaching can be a powerful tool. To this end she had us read a book she co-wrote with Martin Copenhaven, This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers. This book reads as a series of essays reflecting on different aspects of the pastoral vocation. Many of them are amusing, thoughtful, and certainly familiar to those of us "in the cloth." It would be a great book for anyone considering ordained ministry, and was written to be a counterpoint to such books as Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor (which focused on the problems of life in pastoral leadership) and the You-Can-Make-Your-Mega-Church-Grow-with-Jesus'-Help kind of books. It provides some good examples of how personal narrative can be used to make theological arguments in a far more compelling way than the products of "illustration factories." You know, those cutesy generic sermon illustrations you can find on various sermon-writing websites.

The "College of Preachers" is run by St. Clement's Church here in Toronto but is really meant to be a National programme. They have a sermon number of slots for Toronto priests and then the other half are taken by priests from around the Anglican Church of Canada. You have to be nominated by your bishop to attend. The College happens every two-years.

About a week before the event I was told I would be preaching at Morning Prayer on the first day of the conference. I had no idea what the readings would be, so I prepared a sermon that made good use of personal narrative and was pleased that it did, in fact, go with the readings. Mine was the first sermon heard this year, so I was naturally more nervous than usual. But it went well.

As our days together went one we heard talks by Lillian and then broke up into groups hear each other preach and critique. We also had times of prayer and recreation.

It was wonderful to be with other clergy and talk about preaching, though not without some interesting disagreements on things like the usefulness of the lectionary. There was also a fruitful discussion about one should preach at wedding and funerals (seems like a great evangelism opportunity to me, but some pastors disagree). Lots of discussion of clergy role, boundaries, etc.

David Montgomery (one of the priest's at St. Clement's) did an excellent job with the Offices. He even did some "Paperless Music" using the Music by Heart Hymnal. He's the first person I've seen use it (besides Eric and I) in Toronto, so I was very excited to see how easily he was able to do it. Naturally I told him that I would meeting with the All Saint's Company folks that wrote that hymnal in a few days!

There is an interesting quality to praying together at these sorts of retreats. Something about having a roomful of clergy praying together makes for a very special atmosphere. Something about the shared ministry and collegiality makes for really rich prayer time together. Nor is it necessarily limited to ordained clergy, I experienced the same thing with the mostly lay-group in Atlanta.

I had to leave the College after the last full-day. I missed the banquet dinner and the last Plenary talk and Lillian's sermon, alas. But I had to catch my flight to Atlanta, which I will blog about soon....

-t

Music That Makes Community: Pugila - halleluia

This piece of paperless music is great for getting a congregation on their feet and moving. Scott Weidler and Emily Scott show how to teach the music as well as the movements. Note how Emily then adds another layer by introducing intercessions between refrains.



-t

Holy Cross Day 2010

Today was an amazing day at church. I love Sundays like today. We had decided to transfer Holy Cross day to today because, well, I have a special attachment that feast and it's a good one to celebrate in parish life. The propers (readings and prayers) are just so well aligned that it makes for a compelling liturgy even before you add in wonderful music (including variations on Pange Lingua as an organ prelude, "Lift High the Cross," and Ave Verum Corpus). I arrived early at church, but Eric, my Minister of Music, was already here practicing. Not only that, he had done many of the things I do to get the church ready on Sunday morning. That meant that I had a solid two hours to refine my sermon. I already knew what I wanted to do with it, but having the time to actually practice it in my head in the space really helped tighten it up.

An aside for all you Minister types out there: I have a special mix of music I listen to on Sunday mornings to help me prepare. It's a really grab-bag that includes Joan Baez, Mickey Avalon, U2, Enya, Leonard Cohen, Shaker music, Elton John, Gorillaz, Pink Floyd, and Eminem. How's that for eclectic! Actually, this morning it was the Eminem that really got my juices flowing. I listed to it on my earbuds as paced back and forth in the church feeling my way through the sermon.

The sermon itself came across really strongly, and I'm eager to post a copy of it here on my blog. I even managed to weave in some asides about Buddhist Bardo States! Bede would have loved it, and it's quite appropriate that there was a Holy Cross taste to a Holy Cross Day Sermon. Another nod to OHC was that I mentioned "Blessed James" during the Eucharistic Prayer.

We chose Prayer F from Common Worship 2000. As Eucharistic Prayers go, it has a nice rhythm and strikes me as well written and focused. We spoke the congregational responses, though Eric wants to sing them paperless-style next week.

After the service several people commented that they liked the sermon and the service overall. This included a retired priest that I respect, so I am very pleased about the compliments. Normally I don't solicit feedback about my preaching because I've discovered that I'm far better off not getting attached to praise about my preaching. The most important thing about a sermon is not whether it elicits praise and 'at-a-boy's, but whether it makes Christ present through the scriptures. I think it's tempting to get caught up in the trap of preaching to make people feel inspired or impressed or something, but that really isn't the point.

David Bartlett, one of my professors from Yale, tells the story of a plaque in the pulpits of his father's church. Where only the preacher can read it one reads, "Sir, we would see Jesus." It's actually one of the most helpful things anyone ever told me about the task of preaching. Seriously, if I just wanted to inspire and amuse, my sermons would include a lot more pithy anecdotes about pets, children, and other "cute" subjects. Sometimes those kinds of stories are helpful and good. I used a feel-good story about the birth of an infant last week. But they need to serve the text.

Anyway, I was feeling the Spirit this morning! I wished my Intern had been there, because there were several key learnings I think she could have gotten. I would have told her about the process of writing it. For example, on Saturday at the Contemplative Eucharist and then at the Healing Prayer service we had ended up having some long discussions about death from the Christian perspective, that obviously informed how and what I preached about today.

Also, the choreography of my movements during this sermon were deliberately crafted to emphasize the dramatic and thematic arch of the sermon. As the world spun around on the axis of the cross, so I spun around 180 degrees at a key moment. That's not particularly subtle. But what is subtle is that it was at that moment that I was least on-book. In other words, as the intensity of the sermon peaked, I completely ignored my notes about what I had planned to say and instead went with my gut and improv-ed my way through it. It has taken me years to learn how to do that kind of thing, and I can't wait to teach my intern! I really wished someone had taught me these kids of advanced techniques when I was a student.

My main preaching professor at YDS was Wes Avram. He taught me a lot of stuff. For example, understanding the role of emotion in persuasion is critical to good preaching. You need to rehearse, before the congregation, you're own process of being persuaded in order to bring them to the same place. Also, the emotional content of that process is more important than the intellectual content. I remember him correcting some of my bad habits, like "accidentally" introducing props into my sermons that would distract. If you are reading a quote from a book, don't show the congregation the book unless it actually is relevant that they think about the book. Otherwise you reduce the impact of the quote. But as much as Wes Avram and David Bartlett taught us, there is still SO much more to the craft of preaching.

Anyway, it was a good Sunday and I like to treasure these sorts of memories as a reserve against more difficult times!

-t

Improv

My friends are going through the rituals necessary to put their 3-year-old to bed, so I'll make some comments about the day.

Equipment I brought with me....

1. Video Camera
2. Digital Camera
3. Digital Audio Recorder
4. GPS
5. Cell Phone

I know--I'm a nerd. But I'm a nerd who is coming back to Toronto with lots of material to share. For example, I recorded a fascinating talk about how to lead "paperless" congregational singing. This stuff is amazing to experience, and recording it will make it much easier to share with others!

Morning Prayer this morning was neat. I found singing the Gospel improvisationally be as amazing as I hoped. I was able to find an emotional center in some sections, and that is very cool to convey with voice.

We spent some time in our conference sessions working on improv. At one point we were put into small groups with the task of acting out short snippets of assigned Gospel stories--and we couldn't use words at all, not even as we planned what to do. The idea was to convey the emontional content of these stories without relying on traditional narrative. The results were stunning. I ended up playing the Good Samaritan, and as I collapsed to the ground having been struck, I had moment of really inhabiting that role.

From there we ended up doing some work around how to "land" your communications. That is, there is a subtle way in which an actor or preacher can "land" his words on the people in the congregation. This is the opposite of the kind of preaching where eye contact is considered a good embelishment of a act which is still really about conveyance of the written word. This is advanced teaching, and yet totally intuitive. I think it's something people respond to in my preaching even when the "understandings" I convey are not particularly profound or remarkable.

there is much more to say--I'll be reflecting on this trip for a long time, I think. Good thing I brought plenty of equipment to capture some of it.

-t

Provoking the Liturgy

A rainy, cool day here in Toronto. Low attendance at church. I take encouragement, however, in the fact that more and more people feel like they need to tell me when they aren't going to be in church. It shows the level of commitment as well as their sensitivity to the fact that I care whether they are there or not.

It was an unusual Sunday. For one thing, we were recognizing Remembrance Day. We have a tradition at Church of The Messiah of reading the names of the parish war dead and ringing the church bell once for each name. We also sang "O Canada" and "God Save the Queen." A more emotional inclusion was a short, one verse hymn written by a parishioner's brother-in-law shortly before his death over the skies of Europe.

We changed service music, too. We are doing a new Gloria and very cool and funky paperless setting of the Nicene Creed written by Marilyn Haskel. It has a wicked syncopated rhythm in the melody that makes it very catchy--especially for a Creed. For the past few weeks we have been saying "Affirmations of Faith" instead of the historic creeds. There is nothing wrong with the Apostle's or Nicene Creed, but we think they can become pretty repetitive and rote when they are repeated Sunday after Sunday. What's the alternative? The alternates provided by Common Worship 2000 (the Modern-language liturgy collection authorized for use in the Church of England) is a place to start. Bishop Yu is okay with this, though he has warned people not to be making up their own Creeds of questionably theology. The Affirmations of Faith we use are paraphrases of scripture, so they are pretty orthodox, and help ground the faith in scripture.

Anyway, we've noticed that the spoken Creeds sometimes bring down the energy. Everything just kind of grinds to a halt for some reason at Messiah when we say the Nicene/Apostles Creed. So... having a nice music setting is a way to deal with this challenge. Today was encouraging.

The sermon was challenging. Luke 21:5-19 is about Jesus forewarning about the destruction of the Temple. As Richard Swanson points out in his Provoking the Gospel commentary, you really can't understand this passage from Luke without realizing that it was written only about 30 years after the fall of Jerusalem and the Destruction of the Temple in the Great Jewish Revolt. The Romans were trying to put down the Jews by striking as the spiritual and cultural heart of the Jews. It was a horrendous massacre. Josephus, who is generally apologetic for the Roman Empire, describes the fall of the Temple this way:

Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done), [Titus] Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as they were of the greatest eminence; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison [in the Upper City], as were the towers [the three forts] also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall [surrounding Jerusalem], it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it [Jerusalem] had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind. ....

And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it. (source)

The carnage was massive. Indeed, the commander of the Roman army (Titus) refused to accept a victory wreath because, he said, there was no honor in defeating a people abandoned by their own God. Yikes.

Swanson says that he you need play this scene as though the backdrop was the funeral of a child. Yeah, it's that bad. When I preached, I told the story of the Destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Bar Kokhba revolt had a pretty nasty ending. The Romans killed the last of the rebels at a fortress called Betar, and then, according to the Talmud tradition, used the blood to fertilize their vineyards for the next seven years. It would seventeen years before they would allow the dead of the fortress to be buried. What can we compare this to? I mentioned the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, and the Holocaust, and 9/11. "Not one stone will remain on another..."

So how to get this back to a place of hope? I re-read the Isaiah passage appointed for the day: Isaiah 65:17-25. It's a wonderful vision of the promise of the restoration of Jerusalem. Then I talked about resurrection and the meaning of resurrection. How Jesus didn't come to give us less death--He came to give us more life. That means that the wounds are still there. The stones will still fall. But the wounds will be transformed--made glorious.

A complicated sermon, to be sure. Difficult to pull off this kind of emotional turn, but worth it if you can do it. As I explained to Nancy (my student), on Remembrance Sunday... the week after we did Holocaust Education Week... with these texts.... you just can't ignore the bad stuff, all you can do is redeem it.

For the Eucharist we are using Common Worship 2000 Prayer F. Nothing wrong with the BAS prayers, but Prayer F is excellent. Beautiful and vibrant imagery. I'm singing the Preface (really nice music, too), and then speaking the prayers. The congregational responses after each paragraph are sung with a simple echo (I sing it, the congregation sings it back).

Anyway, those are a few of my reflections post-Sunday!

-t

A Rainy Friday

Got up Thursday morning to kind of blustery day here in Toronto. I started my day off with a trip to the Doctor. He doesn't want to give me anything for my cough until it's been around for a week or two.

I knew I had an appointment in the afternoon, but nothing else to do at the office, so I decided to spend the morning working from home. Techie that I am, I can do most of my office tasks using just my old laptop at home. We do our liturgical planning, for example, using a Google Docs spread sheet. Each Sunday (or major feast) gets a row. The columns contain notes about what the readings are, hymn selections, who is preaching, what we are doing with the kids that Sunday, and other details. All the COTM staff can log in with a username and password from any computer on the Internet and make notes and changes. No more passing around xeroxed planning documents or e-mail attachments back and forth. It makes coordinating multiple staff assignments on Sunday mornings MUCH easier. I also use Google Calendar to track my personal appointments and task lists, which I can also access from anywhere.

So I got a fire going in the fireplace and went to work answering e-mails and reading. The cats kept me company. Betsy worked upstairs. After lunch I went into the office to do some meetings and take care of other tasks. One of these meetings was with a student from Wycliffe Seminary that wants to be a Theological Intern with us this year. I'm very pleased to have him on board. I don't want to announce his name and so forth until I introduce him to the congregation a week for Sunday.

After meeting with him I spent some time with Eric talking music and plans. He continues to impress me with his knowledge and ideas about church music. When I was at Holy Cross I picked a book called The Emergent Psalter by Isaac Everett. The book's blurb will give you a sense what that's about:

Many alternative and emerging church communities have begun exploring ancient music and liturgical traditions despite a lack of high-quality, published liturgical music which does not require (or even desire) an organ and a four-part choir. The Emergent Psalter serves to provide that resource. Featuring music written for two emerging communities (Transmission in New York and Church of the Apostles in Seattle), this book is an excellent resource for anyone producing an alternative worship service or thinking of starting one. (source)

Not surprisingly, Isaac is friends with Emily Scott--who does the Paperless Singing stuff in NYC. Emily and I overlapped at Yale a few years ago. Anyway, Isaac does some really interesting things with these Psalms. On the one hand he is deeply invested in the tradition--Gregorian Chant and also the Hebrew approach to the Psalms. But then he let's the Word manifest in an new way in its new context. You can get a sense of what I mean by listening to his podcast. Every week he takes the Psalm appointed in the Lectionary and shows how to do it in his style.

So Eric and I had a nice talk about music and some of our ideas about how to develop liturgy at Messiah. Lots of good stuff in the works!

Today it was rainy and cold. I slept in hoping it would help the cough go away (it didn't) and read some of my childbirth/parenting books. Then I went on a pastoral visit. Now I'm home with Betsy with a nice fire and cats-on-laps. Life is good.

-t

An Example of Paperless Singing

People near me have been hearing me froth about the singing we did at the Conference, so here's a quick clip of what it sounds like in person. Keep in mind, we had never sung this piece before, and we didn't have any paper in front of us with the words or notes. Emily Scott (who overlapped Betsy and me at YDS/ISM), the Director of Worship at Riverside Church, simply stood up and taught one half of the room one part and the other half the second part and then put it together. Cool, heh?


-t

Home

What a week. I was at the College of Preachers Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then Wednesday night I flew to Atlanta. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I was at the Music that Makes Community Conference with my Minister of Music. It was an exhilarating, but exhausting. I flew back this evening and have church in the morning. Sunday afternoon and Monday I expect to be nearly useless.

Did I learn much? Of course! Spending three days working of preaching was very worthwhile. Really it was a "Master Class" in preaching. It was also neat to reconnect with Lillian Daniel, whom I met at Yale when I was there. She would come in and give guest lectures on preaching. The topic for the three days was the use of personal narrative in preaching. Of course, I already do a fair amount of this, but it was still worth working on with the group.

It Atlanta we studied "Paperless Music"--which is the recovery and use of methods to get congregations and groups singing without relying on the congregation having music-in-hand. In other words, using techniques like call-and-response, echo (lining hymns), and so forth. There are many advantages to using this kind of music in worship, which you'll hear about later!

So it was three days of working on how to lead (and compose) this kind of music. It was a lot of fun. Great to catch up with some friends from All Saint's Company like Donald, Rick, Marilyn, Emily, and Scott. I knew Emily at Yale, so that's other Yale Divinity School connection this week. We sang and sang and sang. Worthwhile, and I have more to say about it later.

Right now, time to go to bed!

-t

Last Epiphany

Yep, I'm definitely starting to get a handle on things, again. Slowly but surely I am catching up the pile of stuff that has been thrown my way--just in time for Ash Wednesday and Lent.

But first, a word about Sunday... Here is a link to the leaflet.

The musical group was "Infinitely More" (Allison Lynn and Gerald Flemming). They did a marvellous job--professional and beautiful. I love working with musicians that have the flexibility that comes from self-confidence merged with deep musicianship. Their style is quite a bit more contemporary than a lot of what we have done, recently, but it was very well done and offered a nice counterpoint to some of the more traditional liturgical music we have done at Messiah. I was particularly impressed with Allison's voice and Gerald's guitar skills. At one point I saw him tapping harmonics, which I believe is a fairly advanced skill. Allison was intrigued with our experience with Paperless Music, and led the congregation in a Gloria she had written using that technique.

Hymn-picking is an interesting phenomenon. Some of the musicians I've been working with can and want to pick the hymns we sing. Others have no idea how to do this. A few know how to do it, but want me to do it for them, which puzzles me. If I was a church musician and the priest asked whether I wanted to have some say about the hymns I would be leading on Sunday, I would be all over that! So I've spent a fair amount of time the last few weeks with Common Praise and other hymnals open.

The journey continues. This season of life at Messiah is definitely calling to be on my toes when it comes to church music!

-t

Music That Makes Community: To the Bath and the Table

This is a really nice piece of Paperless Music. The Cantor's part has a bunch of really neat verses, of which Emily sings only the first in this example.



-t

Thanksgiving Fragments

This morning I said Mass at Trinity Chapel, which is always a little liturgical treat. It's a pretty straight-forward BAS Modern-Rite Holy Eucharist. Interestingly, they have an organist so we can sing a hymn and some of the service music. This would be a great place to do some paperless singing sometime.

After that I've been running from one thing to the next. Not crushingly hectic, but busy. I assembled the second Ikea table that we'll be using for the Advent Liturgy configuration. I also showed some architecture students around the place (every year or so a group of students are tasked with writing a paper about the place for an Architecture course at George Brown). Meanwhile, our cleaners are stripping and waxing the Nave floor. The Yoga folks have been complaining about how dirty the floor has been lately, and this is apparently due to the need for a stripping and rewaxing of the floor--precisely the kind of detail one learns about in the exciting field of Parish Administration!

It's been a season for minor repairs and upgrades to the building. Yesterday Bell fixed a phone line and the roofers took a look at their project. The organ tuners also did their work. Next week the electrician will come by to install another exterior light for the playground. Soon the security camera people will come and install some interior cameras. And we have an appointment with the church handyman to install a new doorbell! Amazing how quickly these kinds of projects accumulate!

Yesterday we had an excellent meeting of the Christ-Centred Character Group. Our Resource Centre continues to take shape. Recently we've made the decision to change the name to "Centre for Excellence in Christian Education." Concerns were expressed about using "Anglican Resource Centre," you see. Right now we are still waiting on some grant requests we've submitted, but I remain optimistic that we'll get some money and be able to roll it out this winter. We've already been able to lend out a few materials here and there.
Behold: Turducken!

For Thanksgiving this year we'll going out with some friends to a restaurant that specializes in southern cuisine. I'm anxious to try Turducken for the first time. Imagine a Turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken! Some people even add a quail inside the chicken and possibly a hardboiled egg in the centre. They also advertised a gravy made with bourbon and Grand Marnier. Yumm!

This year I'm thankful most of all for Betsy and our soon-to-come son. Bringing new life into the world turns out to be fulfilling to the extreme. It's neat to see how it has shifted Betsy and my relationship in positive ways and how I'm already beginning to think differently about many things. I think I'm becoming a father....

-t