Thursday, June 20, 2013

Singing Together in Corporate Worship


Worship is a serious, joyful, frightening, rejuvenating, restful, humbling, sober, celebration that in some odd way also happens to be the focus of my vocation. As the Chief Musician and liturgical planner for our church, my focus and concentration from week to week is the Service of Worship and the assisting of the saints in their response to God’s Call to come into His presence. I am blessed and humbled to be able to serve in this way.

Our service of worship is such that the sung elements as well as the passages from the Word and the responsive readings all convey a single theme—the main points from the sermon. This integrated whole serves to reinforce, encourage, and exhort the congregation from the very first Call to the final Benediction along a particular concept, doctrine, or teaching.

Music choices, song presentation and arrangements, sung ranges, printing of vocal parts, singability, suitability of text to music, instrumental selection, philosophy of sound and audio, etc. all figure in to the process of making decisions about the multiple pieces we sing each week. The corporate worship of God is the goal and this necessitates making different aesthetic choices for that purpose. Read more

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