Category Archives: Engaging worship

General Assembly update #6

I manage to break away from my volunteer job at General Assembly long enough to go to the closing worship service, where Ysaye Maria Barnwell sang a couple of her songs. Dr. Barnwell is one of my favorite songwriters (and do I have to remind you that she is also a Unitarian Universalist and member of All Souls Church in Washington, DC?). (48 sec.)

I have to admit that I skipped out of the worship service soon after Ysaye Maria Barnwell sang, so I didn’t have to hear my least favorite Unitarian Universalist hymn, “Spirit of Life.”

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Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Too many books…

Between reading for sermons and reading for pleasure, the pile of books next to my writing table has gotten pretty high. To help me remember what I’ve read in the past two weeks, here are short takes on a few of those books:

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and other Hangouts at the Heart of Community, Ray Oldenburg.

Oldenburg claims to be a sociologist, but this book is filled with undocumented assertions that smack of nostalgia for a time that never existed. Worse, the book is rooted in prejudices of which Oldenburg doesn’t seem to be aware. Like this sentence telling why wine bars are driving pubs out of business:

The wine bars are more comfortable [than pubs], cosmopolitan, and favored among working women and the softer male that one finds everywhere throughout the modern world these days….

Based on that statement, I guess I’m glad that Oldenburg’s favorite “great good places” are fast disappearing.

Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, June Jordan.

Jordan claims the poetic tradition of Walt Whitman, and claims Whitman as a poet of liberation, which works for me. Her poems are certainly poems of liberation. Yet she isn’t Puritanical in her liberative message. Take, for example, the poem “Alla Tha’s All Right, but,” which Sweet Honey in the Rock made into a song:

Somebody come and carry me into a seven-day kiss
I can’ use no historic no national no family bliss
I need an absolutely one to one a seven-day kiss…

Amen. I’m already figuring out how to use this poem (and others of her poems) in a worship service….

A Man without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut’s last book is short, uneven, and slight. But it’s got some kickin prose epigrams buried in the meandering text…

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

…and for good measure Vonnegut throws in some delightfully vicious offhand ad hominem attacks on U.S. political leadership:

…She wrote, “I’d love to know your thoughts for a woman of 43 who is finally going to have a child but is wary of bringing a new life into such a frightening world.”

Don’t do it! I wanted to tell her. It could be another George W. Bush or Lucrezia Borgia….

…and you’re quite sure Vonnegut feels he has listed the most violent man first. Slight as it is, I’ve already read this book twice.

Drawing the Line, poems by Lawson Fusao Inada.

Not just poems, but some good clear prose too, mostly telling quiet stories with lots of depth. The prose poem “Ringing the Bell” tells about a Japanese-American boy in a multi-racial neighborhood, making friends with a Mexican-American boy and his family. “Picking Up Stones” tells about a Zen teacher in an internment camp during World War II who wrote words on stones and scattered them outdoors. Some of the poems aren’t stories; “Just As I Thought” begins…

Just as I thought: One blue jay
shakes
a whole morning.

Just as I thought: The streetsweeper
is related
to the preacher….

…and goes one for six rhythmic pages, a collection of images and sounds and feelings that makes most sense when read (or chanted) aloud.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot, Erle Stanley Gardner.

A millionaire is found dead in his mountain cabin, with a parrot watching over his body. Perry Mason is called in, and he discovers that the parrot swears like a trooper and says things like, “Drop that gun, Helen…. Don’t shoot…. My God, you’ve shot me.” By the time the novel is done, there are three parrots (one of whom is brutally and bloodily murdered), a man who may or may not be dead, and a murder case that’s solved in the middle of the coroner’s trial.

In this crazy world, if I can’t get a seven-day kiss, at least I can read a Perry Mason novel.

Hymn resource

While I was working on creating hymn accompaniments for our summer worship services (when we won’t have a live musician for several Sundays), I discovered a very useful online resource. The Christian Classics Ethereal Hymnary has hundreds of classic, copyright-free hymn tunes in a variety of formats. Not all formats are available for all hymns, but the hymns I looked at generally had the following:

MIDI files with four-part harmony (which allows you to listen to the hymn)
a score in PDF format
a score in one or more of the common music-authoring formats (Noteworthy, Finale, etc.)

Some hymn tunes also had partial scores, and scores in more than one key. The one canon/round I looked at (Tallis’s Canon) also had MIDI files of the melody sung as a round.

(This could be a useful resource for worship leaders who don’t read music, but who want to know what a tune sounds like. All you have to do is find the name of the tune — in the hymnal I use, Singing the Living Tradition, the tune name is in small type at the lower right of the hymn — and play the MIDI file on your computer. The only downside is that the Christian Classics Ethereal Hymnary does not include newer, copyright-protected, hymn tunes. So forget tunes written after 1922.)

What I wanted from the hymnary were the MIDI files, to use as a starting point for making less mechanical hymn accompaniments. Straight out of the box, the MIDI files sound as tacky as they usually do. But you can easily modify a MIDI file to make it sound much better. I downloaded the MIDI file to my Mac and dragged it into GarageBand. From there, I altered the type of instrument (e.g., changing it from the crummy default electronic organ sound to a less offensive “cathedral” organ sound), and played with the note durations and note velocities where necessary to make it sound less mechanical. I also checked the harmony parts, and corrected them to correspond with what’s in our hymnal. Since I’m a perfectionist, I added about half a beat at the end of each verse so the congregation can take a big breath before going on to the next verse; and I altered the last verse so that the final notes are held for an extra measure or so. Of course I looped the hymn to wind up with the correct number of repetitions of the melody (whatever the number of verses, plus once through at the beginning).

The final result of an afternoon’s work is a CD with inoffensive accompaniments for eight hymns, plus Old Hundredth for the doxology. That will be enough to get us through the summer. And if I can free up another afternoon, I might just produce another eight hymn accompaniments.

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Summer hymns

Small congregations often face the problem of small budgets for music. Here at First Unitarian, we have enough money to pay a 3/8 time music director at American Guild of Organist rates for ten months a year, with enough money left over to provide guest musicians on most Sundays when the music director is off. But we have no money in the budget to pay for musicians in July and August.

We’re slowly moving towards becoming a year-round congregation (both because it’s the right thing to do, and because newcomers often drift away during the summer months if there’s a reduced worship schedule). This summer, we’re moving the summer worship services from the chapel, where we sit in plastic lawn chairs, back into the main church. I managed to come up with money to pay for a musician on one Sunday in July and one Sunday in August, and we have our annual jazz concert on the first Sunday in July. But on the five other summer Sundays, the summer worship coordinator will bring in recorded music to play following the prayer, and during the offering.

Even then, on those five weeks we also need music to accompany hymns. Here’s our latest scheme for summer hymn accompaniment:–

The worship committee has picked out a dozen of our congregation’s favorite hymns. I’m no musician, but with a cheap MIDI keyboard and audio editing software, even I (with my minimal keyboard skills) can piece together hymn accompaniments — I play each vocal line separately and at a very slow tempo, fix the timing, mix the parts together in the editing software, and then bring everything up to speed. The recordings I produce are kind of mechanical, but they’re good enough to accompany hymns. (Just to be on the safe side, we are not using any copyrighted melodies or harmonies.)

If I manage to get a dozen hymns done this year, and another dozen next year, we’ll have a decent little collection of recorded hymn accompaniments to use. Sure, we’d rather have live music, but this is something we can afford — and it’s easier than trying to sing a capella all summer long.

Thinking out loud about sermons…

The cover story for the latest issue of Christian Century, “Stolen goods: Tempted to plagiarize,” turns out to be an excellent article by Thomas G. Long on plagiarism in the pulpit — stolen sermons. I was planning to write something about this topic anyway, and then this afternoon our church music director told me that the Providence Journal printed a story this week alleging that the minister of First Unitarian in Providence has been engaging in plagiarism in his sermons over the past year. So here are some thoughts on plagiarized sermons.

Thomas Long’s Christian Century article notes that some prominent evangelical Christian preachers, like Rick Warren, market their sermons online. Long quotes Steve Sjogren, pastor as Cincinnati’s Vineyard community Church, as saying, “Don’t be original — be effective!” Long also quotes none other than Augustine as saying,

There are, indeed, some people who have a good delivery, but cannot compose anything to deliver. Now, if such people take what has been written with wisdom and eloquence by others, and commit it to memory, and deliver it to the people, they cannot be blamed, supposing them to do it without deception. [emphasis mine]

That last phrase is crucial: if you’re going to use someone else’s sermon — if you’re even going to reuse one of your own old sermons — you need to tell that to your congregation right up front. Long is careful to point out that “gray areas remain, of course, and judgment calls must be made.” Personally, I often worry about how should a preacher make attributions. Full footnotes just don’t work in a spoken sermon, but I think it’s usually OK for the preacher to refer to “Biblical scholars,” or to say something like “as Theodore Parker once said,” without having to give a full bibliographical citation.

Aside from the ethics of the matter, I feel Long’s most important point is that a good sermon should be written for a specific congregation. Using Christian language, Long writes:

In addition to the standard of truthfulness, the second factor to keep in mind is immediacy. While there is surely room in the pulpit for the “set piece” sermon and the oft-repeated illustration, finally preaching is a word from God for these people in this place at this moment. [emphasis in original]

I like to think about preaching as a conversation that takes place between the preacher and the congregation and the universe. The preacher is not really speaking for him- or herself:– the preacher has to try to give voice to those who have no voice; the preacher has to listen very closely to what people in the congregation say, and feed that back to the congregation; the preacher has to try to discern how the sacred lives and moves within the congregation, and draw the congregation’s attention to it. Those things are difficult enough as it is; using a sermon intended for another congregation will not make them any easier.

One important matter that Long does not cover in his otherwise excellent article is how congregations can become complicit in leading their ministers to plagiarize. If a congregations want their preacher to write high-quality, original sermons every week, are they willing to allow him or her a minimum of ten hours of study and writing time each week? — that’s at least one full day a week of uninterrupted study and writing time; and some preachers need more time than that. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many congregations that allow their preacher no more than an hour or two for study and writing. If a congregation is not insisting that their preacher spend ten hours a week on sermon preparation, and yet insists on an original sermon every week, that congregation is only leading that preacher into the temptation to plagiarize a sermon or two.

In the end, I’m less interested in reflecting on sermon plagiarism per se, and I’m more interested in what it is we expect from our sermons, and from our preachers. Some congregations will agree with Steve Sjogren, that we should worry less about being original or whether a particular sermon fits a particular congregation; and instead we should worry more about how effective a sermon is. Such a congregation may not even need a professional preacher — there are plenty of sermons on the Web, and anyone with a good voice could be drafted into reading sermons on Sunday morning, which would free up the paid minister for other roles in the congregation. On the other hand, there will be congregations who feel that sermons should be written for them, addressing their specific concerns and giving voice to their collective thoughts and yearnings. If that’s the case, those congregations will be sure their preacher carves out a substantial amount of time for sermon preparation — in which case the congregation will take care to hold that preacher accountable to create original sermons, written specifically for them and articulating both what they say and what they need to hear, each and every week.

More songs

Four new songs/chants added to the main Web site — Link.

The songs:

“Alleluia Round” attributed to Mozart
“Listen, Listen, Listen,” a chant by Paramahansa Yogananda
“May the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You,” an anonymous contemporary chant (in 7/4 time, how cool is that?)
“The Ocean Refuses No River,” a chant supposedly of Sufi origin.

As far as I know, these are copyright-free songs. I’ve included lyrics, along with abc notation which allows you to hear the melody and the chords by using the “abc Convertamatic” Web site [link].

Another microphone rant

Just finished talking to my dad, and we wound up talking about one of our favorite subjects — the best way to use a microphone. Back in November, I posted a list of microphone tips and techniques, but tonight dad and I came up with a couple of new ones that I thought I’d share with you:

When you are using a clip-on or “Lavelier” microphone, do not bump the microphone, and it would be best not to clap (or at least clap with your hands well away from the mic, like over your head) — for if you bump or clap, you will deafen your audience.
If the sound tech tells you where and how to stand so that the microphone can pick up your voice, stand there — for if you do not, chances are no one will hear you.
One way to improve sound quality in your congregation is to train all those use a microphone during the worship service at least once a year. (We ministers can set an example here by agreeing to participate in such training — after all, every one of us, no matter how experienced, can continually improve her/his microphone technique.)

I’ll add one last little item. Please remember that the sound tech is probably your friend. S/he wants to make sure you are heard as much as you do (because s/he knows that if you are not heard most people will blame her/him, not you). Many sound techs are geeks and may not have the smoothly polished manners that you have, but it is wise to listen to them with an open mind because they really want the same thing you do — they want you to be heard. And if you believe that the sound tech in your congregation is not your friend, you have two viable choices: (a) get a new sound tech that you can trust, or (b) take voice lessons so that you don’t really need a microphone to begin with.

Earlier post on microphone tips: Link.

Possibilities for post-Christian worship, appendix

Reading — words and language — are central to post-Christian being. A course of readings could be used to tie together common worship, small group work, and private devotions; as well as provide a link between common worship and curriculum for young people’s religious education. Call this course of readings a “lectionary.”

Overview:

The “lectionary” year is divided roughly into four seasons: December-February, March-May, June-August, September-November. Assuming not all post-Christians live in the northern hemisphere, or in locations with four defined meteorological seasons, these “seasons” are not assigned names. A post-Christian perspective does not assume one set of readings will fit all post-Christian congregations in all locations, no matter what the surrounding culture might be, so there must always be some flexibility in which readings are used by a given congregation.

The “lectionary” year starts in December: Christmas season as the time when post-Christians tend to remember their Christian past with the most fondness. Readings for December-February explore Christian scriptures, and Hebrew scriptures as filtered through the Christian tradition (i.e., not from a strictly Jewish perspective which would require some familiarity with the Talmud). In March-May, the readings are drawn from non-Western religious traditions.

June-August has two options: more Bible readings for congregations which value their Christian heritage; and readings in social justice. September-November covers readings from the immediate heritage of the congregation (denominational or otherwise), as well as material pertaining to indigenous religious traditions connected to the congregation’s location. Note that for June-November, a special effort can be made to find readings by women.

Rough outline for a three-year cycle: