Pope Francis (!!!) on choir and congregational singing

A combination of travel and illness has sidelined this blog for a while. How nice of Pope Francis, of all people, to hand me a little boost to get the blog back on its feet and at least starting to recover with a little warmup entry.

Apparently the Vatican welcomed an event with the unprepossing title "International Meeting of Choirs" over the weekend. In giving welcome to the participants in the event the Pope said many fairly boilerplate-type things about the importance of choirs and the power of music and all that. Naturally, one particular, not very boilerplate-type thing (at least in the context of a gathering of choirs) that the Pope said is what caught my attention.

The money quote:

“You are the musical animators of the whole congregation. Don’t take its place, depriving the people of God of the chance to sing with you and bear witness to the Church’s communal prayer.”

Not bad, particularly considering he's speaking to a whole bunch of choir singers. (Not to mention speaking from a tradition that has only been practicing congregational singing for about half a century.)

Of course, choirs can be allowed or even encouraged to outshine the song participation of the congregation. To the degree that significant resources, i.e. dollars, are invested into the program - music, possibly paid soloists, etc. - the temptation to put the choir front and center more often is going to be pretty natural, responding to a perceived pressure to "show a return on that investment." Still, the choir's principal job is to encourage the song of the congregation, and to the degree that it becomes a substitute for the congregation rather than a support to it, the choir becomes a problem.

And let's be clear that choirs are not the only potential such impediments. There is supreme irony that in churches that go the "contemporary" route, the very bands/worship leaders ostensibly hired to lead or encourage the congregation's song can (and do, often enough) end up drowning it out. Heavy reliance on soloists can do it, as can an overzeaous organist.

At any rate, I wouldn't have expected the Pope to be quite so direct on the subject, but hey, when it comes to the encouragement of congregational singing, it's nice to have such an ally, even from outside the mainline.

That headline though:

"Help community sing, don't replace its voice"

A quickie: "Customer in training"???

OK, I'm back in Lawrence and needed to pick up a couple of things at the local supermarket.  I go back to the one we used most commonly when we lived here.  The remodeling that was just starting when we lived here is now complete, obviously, and the store is quite striking.

But I saw these as I was leaving after checking out:

My first thought was "ha, cute."

My second was that this is possibly the most disturbing thing I've seen in ages.  Disturbing because it just might be entirely too true.

Is it just me?  Am I being too over-the-top here?  Or does anybody else find it a troubling thing?

I'm not saying the store meant to be disturbing, but still.  Is that all our children are?

A quickie: Looking ahead -- a "Christmas devotional" guide?

Something that first started to vex me last year, and seems to be returning this year: do any of you six or seven readers out there know of anyone or any organization or church (considering that churches aren't always that organized ;-) ) that puts out a "Christmas devotional guide" in the manner of the Advent devotional guides that many such groups produce and/or use?  By this I mean something targeted to the twelve-day orbit that begins on Christmas Day and continues up to Epiphany (yes, the "twelve days of Christmas").

Follow-up: were one to design or plan such a guide, what scriptures would one recommend for inclusion in such a guide?  The Nativity narratives from Luke and Matthew would be obvious choices, and John 1:14 seems needful; are there other texts you think should be included in such an orbit of devotional reading and contemplation around the Nativity event?  In what order should texts be arranged?

I don't know if this is something I am about to try and do or not.  On the one hand, my health issues may well interfere; on the other hand, presuming surgery is forthcoming, I may have a lot of time on my hands where getting around is unadvisable, so maybe it would be something useful to do once exams are past.  At any rate, beyond a naked plea for comments, I do think there is something to the idea of developing a long view of the Christmas season, particularly when one has spent much time and energy recovering or emphasizing a full Advent season.  So maybe it is something I want to develop.  And yes, I do really want your suggestions, by whatever means you care to make them.

A quickie: "Not linking" followup...

About that post from last weekend...the ante has been upped.  Now some pastor in Kansas has apparently gone and preached that the government should round up and kill all homosexuals.  Of course Leviticus 20 is cited as justification for this.  Not linking this one either.  I suspect if you really want to see the story you wouldn't have a hard time finding it.  Or just wait for somebody on your Facebook feed to link to it.  The North Carolina pastor's electrified fence starts to sound tame by comparison.

Here's my quickie question; does this jackal preach this quite so readily, recorded and everything, if the jackal in North Carolina doesn't get all the free publicity he got?  Is it just possible that this is exactly what such people want?  Another thing I don't know: were we better off in prehistoric times (technologically speaking) with these obscure small people doing their petty bitter small thing in obscurity and the broader body of people never hearing about it, or are we better off now being reminded every other week or so that these people are out there?

A quickie: Order?

I am certain that smarter people than I have and will exegete the latest splinter group off of PC(USA) and its intentions.  Myself, I'm rather curious about their chosen name: the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.  (ECOP?)

Order?

I'm trying to think of what it means when a group like this calls itself an "order" instead of, say, I dunno, "church" or "convention" or what have you.

So, to rack my brain briefly: what other uses of "order" in such context, as the name of a group (not necessarily religious, I suppose, but certainly can be) come to me off the top of my head?

The Order of the Phoenix -- my first Harry Potter reference in the blog, I think, but maybe not.  Yet, as far as I can see, it's ECOP which is more obsessed with purity in this case, which would be the reverse of how things were in the Potter movies--it was the foes of the Order of the Phoenix who wanted to purge out humans, "mudbloods" and other impure types.

The Order of Kappa Alpha -- no mere fraternity, mind you, not like your mere Sigma Chi Omega or Delta Kappa Epsilon or whatever.  These are also the guys who get all excited about Robert E. Lee and such.  Hmm.

The Order of the Knights Templar -- one of many such orders in medieval Christianity.  A military order, heavily invested in the Crusades.  Also found in modern freemasonry, and was this term also tied up and appropriated in those goofy Dan Brown books, or was that something else?  Hmmmmm.

The Order of Lenin -- that was a medal, which I only remember from a line in The Hunt for Red October.  But I suppose it would have referred to the company of those who had received that honor, yes?

Order of the Eastern Star -- a fraternal organization, vaguely Mason-related as far as I can tell, but I do remember they once gave me a grant for college.

OK, so maybe not that much help.  But I have this stubborn idea that words mean things, and I cannot but insist that this particular choice of word for this group denotes something about it, that perhaps its members themselves may not even realize.

A quickie: What if the church really DID 'Twelve Days of Christmas'?

I am guessing that for many (at least in the Eastern time zone of the US), Christmas Day celebrations are either winding down or wound down quite a few hours ago, and the evening is turning into just another ordinary evening.  Here at the headquarters of the Fool's Errand, turkey has been consumed, dishes are in the process of being cleaned, presents were opened long ago, and if anything remains to mark the day it might be pulling out the DVD of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for viewing.  Then, for all practical purposes, Christmas will be "over" for 2011.

But what if that weren't so?  What if the church actually took its liturgical calendar seriously and continued to "be Christmas" until Epiphany?  Things would have to change, yes?  The typical one-day blowout wouldn't be sustainable over twelve days; we'd have to pace ourselves.  At the same time, opening up the full twelve days as a way to observe Christmas would be about as countercultural as you can get; when the secular world starts observing "Christmas" the day after Thanksgiving and ends at about noon on December 25, and the body of Christ is just getting started, unfolding the whole story of Christmas (massacres of children, strange prophecies in the Temple, all that), well, that's a witness.

Maybe I'm just feeling jealous of my Jewish friends for whom Hanukkah is a multi-night observance.  Or maybe I'm finding a certain level of dissatisfaction with The Way Things Are.  But for now, I can't help but wonder if this is the time to slow down and consider making Christmas a real live liturgical season in deed as well as word.

No answers here, just some things to chew on.

A quickie late-to-the-party thought on a Steve Jobs quote

A short thought--not even that, really, a question, a musing--well after most Steve Jobs mania has passed:

(Taken from Innoblog, October 7:)

One of our favorite Steve Jobs quotes came as his answer to the question: What market research did you do that led to the iPad? “None,” he replied. “It's not the customer’s job to know what they want.”

Hmm. Is this anything at all useful to church leaders of whatever stripe?

This is for the moment leaving aside the wisdom of equating church members with "customers." In my opinion, for good or ill, that ship sailed a long time ago for a lot of churches of whatever stripe. Even if one doesn't want to make that equation, is there still something of merit in the idea expressed by the late Mr. Jobs? Is it modifiable? Might the word "want" be swapped out for the word "need"? The quote seems to be cited typically as an example of Mr. Jobs's ability at innovation, or marketing, or design, or what have you; is it actually a form of leadership?

No answers here today: just questions to chew on.