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An experience we had just this week gave me cause for both a bit of hope and some despair too. A local Methodist church sponsored an extensive three-day workshop for choral directors and organists/pianists, and it apparently drew a few dozen participants from around the state. I was not able to attend the workshop sessions or classes, but my wife and I did attend the Friday night "hymn festival" which was free and open to the public. The workshop attendees themselves constituted a fairly large choir that performed some of the music of the evening, supplementing the rest of the service, which was hymn-based and sung by everyone present.
It was concerning when we walked into the church and saw that over half the pews had been "roped off," forcing attendees to all sit in the remaining portion of the nave. That turned out to be a good idea though, because the 40 or 50 people who showed up to be the "congregation" would have seemed mighty scattered had we been seated all across this rather large nave. But it's sad that they didn't even expect very many to attend...
It was also quite notable that the average age of both the choir members (the ones who had paid and were there for the classes) and the festival guests out in the pews had to be 60+. In fact, I'd almost guess that we were the youngest in the congregation, and we're 65 and 67. If there hadn't been one young man about 35 in the choir and a handful of others in their 50's, the average age up there might have been 70. It just seemed sad to me that a hymn festival apparently has no appeal to "young" people, though to be fair, there hadn't been much in the way of advertising of this event locally. You'd still think that the large church which sponsored the workshop and festival must surely have young adults and families with children, and that at least SOME of them might have been interested enough to turn up for this really fine service.
But the good news is that the service was WONDERFUL! The workshop facilitator/director was absolutely astounding in his range of musical abilities, having put together a service that interleaved magnificent readings of scripture, "reflections" on the texts from the pens of such notables as Fred Rogers, some of our finest hymns, some marvelous hymns that were new to me, some modern anthems with astonishingly moving texts set to traditional but innovative tunes, and even a lovely solo by one of the choristers. One of the anthems was accompanied by a gentleman playing a set of tuned drums of some sort, and it was amazingly effective, not at all "pop-ish" or commercial-sounding. One of the hymns was partly accompanied by a handbell group, and for most of the hymns he played the excellent pipe organ, using bold and creative registrations and some interesting improvised (I suspect) accompaniments. A time or two he sat at the grand piano and played lovely and lusciously gorgeous accompaniments as we sang the well known hymns with a Gospel flavor.
All in all it was a marvelous service with "something for everyone" and with so much creativity that I felt put to shame over the rather predictable and mundane ways in which I present hymns in our own services.
It's just SO SAD that so very few people were there to enjoy this and to be blessed by it, as I certainly was. At many points in the service I was moved to tears, both through the reading of scripture and through the powerful texts and tunes of the music. It made me want to commit myself to doing a much better job of presenting and using hymns in my own church, and I hope I'll be able to follow through with that.
It was concerning when we walked into the church and saw that over half the pews had been "roped off," forcing attendees to all sit in the remaining portion of the nave. That turned out to be a good idea though, because the 40 or 50 people who showed up to be the "congregation" would have seemed mighty scattered had we been seated all across this rather large nave. But it's sad that they didn't even expect very many to attend...
It was also quite notable that the average age of both the choir members (the ones who had paid and were there for the classes) and the festival guests out in the pews had to be 60+. In fact, I'd almost guess that we were the youngest in the congregation, and we're 65 and 67. If there hadn't been one young man about 35 in the choir and a handful of others in their 50's, the average age up there might have been 70. It just seemed sad to me that a hymn festival apparently has no appeal to "young" people, though to be fair, there hadn't been much in the way of advertising of this event locally. You'd still think that the large church which sponsored the workshop and festival must surely have young adults and families with children, and that at least SOME of them might have been interested enough to turn up for this really fine service.
But the good news is that the service was WONDERFUL! The workshop facilitator/director was absolutely astounding in his range of musical abilities, having put together a service that interleaved magnificent readings of scripture, "reflections" on the texts from the pens of such notables as Fred Rogers, some of our finest hymns, some marvelous hymns that were new to me, some modern anthems with astonishingly moving texts set to traditional but innovative tunes, and even a lovely solo by one of the choristers. One of the anthems was accompanied by a gentleman playing a set of tuned drums of some sort, and it was amazingly effective, not at all "pop-ish" or commercial-sounding. One of the hymns was partly accompanied by a handbell group, and for most of the hymns he played the excellent pipe organ, using bold and creative registrations and some interesting improvised (I suspect) accompaniments. A time or two he sat at the grand piano and played lovely and lusciously gorgeous accompaniments as we sang the well known hymns with a Gospel flavor.
All in all it was a marvelous service with "something for everyone" and with so much creativity that I felt put to shame over the rather predictable and mundane ways in which I present hymns in our own services.
It's just SO SAD that so very few people were there to enjoy this and to be blessed by it, as I certainly was. At many points in the service I was moved to tears, both through the reading of scripture and through the powerful texts and tunes of the music. It made me want to commit myself to doing a much better job of presenting and using hymns in my own church, and I hope I'll be able to follow through with that.
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