After the final song was sung the pastor spread his arms wide over the congregation and spoke a blessing. And they were blessed. And so was I. No one rushed off to Sunday lunch. Instead, they clustered together beneath the steeple, among the pews – four here, two there. A… Read More
Archive Tag: church
Unimpressive Miss Jones
The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people was that their liking or disliking me had absolutely nothing to do with any of the many useful things I had done until then. Since nobody could read books, they could not impress anyone, and since most of them never went to school, my twenty years at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard did not provide a significant introduction. View Post
The Three Songs We Sing
If your church is like mine you guys probably sing one kind of song. Everyone together. To God. Probably with instruments playing along. At our church a “solo” is rare. And a capella? Never. I started wondering why that is… So I did some learning. And now I have a… Read More
How To Replace A Music Minister
Not every church needs a full-time paid music minister. (Some reasons yours may not.) We don’t have one of those at our church. Instead, we have created an all-volunteer system that has served us well. Results may vary. Here’s the nitty gritty. Positions With Descriptions Leader of worship leaders: That’s… Read More
Does Your Church Need A Music Minister?
There was a time when the typical church music minister was overworked. That’s not as common today. In the olden days (aka my childhood) the music minister oversaw at least one choir, conducted midweek and Sunday morning rehearsals. There were elaborately produced programs every Christmas and Easter. As a teen… Read More
Love Does Not Read Minds
Just before our wedding an elderly woman who’d been married for many decades handed Becky a thin paperback: Men Read Newspapers Not Minds. Becky read it on the first flight of our honeymoon. The humor on its pages was a couple generations out of date but the wisdom of its… Read More