You probably will read this posting during Lent with its familiar themes and moods. Lent also plunges us into complicated, intense pastoral realities. The forty days invite us to admit our private or public grief, anger at God, confusion at injustice and pain, need for reconciliation, and despair over sin. The pastoral use of music in these deep-toned times of confession and renewal can be a true challenge.

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Some directors dread doing musicals, and even avoid them. I direct both a Christmas and a spring musical every year, because I believe that the positive benefits of these performances are huge. I am well aware of the cons, the biggest of which is simply the work. A LOT of work! Depending on the musical, there’s dialogue, staging, costumes, sets, props, and choreography. I guarantee that there will be some aspect of undertaking a musical that will take you outside of your comfort zone. Here are some things to consider:

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There’s a kernel of wisdom which has been true for me more often than not: “The journey is more important than the destination.” Unfortunately, when it comes to worship planning, something eventually has to make its way into a bulletin for Sunday morning, so we can’t just bask in the glory of the journey forever. But when time is short and worship has to get planned, it’s easy to let the destination (the bulletin) control the journey instead of the other way around. With that in mind, I’ll let you in on my own planning process and hope that it may inspire you to let the planning inform the bulletin more often than not.

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In an ever-expanding world, Christ calls us to be unified and inclusive, compassionate and embracing. It is toward these ends that church musicians are often compelled to introduce new music, and particularly “global” music.

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I recently took a new full time call as Minister of Music and Worship in a large, thriving ELCA congregation. Before this I was a teacher in an Episcopal school and part time Minister of Music in a small town congregation, doing as many do in juggling responsibilities, commitments, and beyond. I left a music program that I had built over ten years, serving since my high school days. I had a choir of forty, a full handbell group, a volunteer directed children’s choir, numerous instrumentalist, really it was a music program that anyone would be satisfied to lead. But this awesome and secure position was not full time and I was ready for more. I am sure many of you have had this feeling and possibly even acted on it. So with a great leap of faith, prayer, and hope I took my first new call, ever.

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Our role as church musicians means that we, almost without exception, lead amateur singers. Thus, we are teachers first and foremost, and most of our work is in that important role.

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Amid the many questions we ask ourselves as church choir directors, one of the biggest is repertoire-related: What should we sing and why? While a single blog post can’t address that question thoroughly, I’d like to provide a few simple reasons why—as we continually choose between the myriad anthems, canticles, and cantatas that cross our desks—we shouldn’t neglect the category of the hymn concertato.

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Jesus died for the Church...you don’t have to!

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One church I served had an annual dinner and celebration for the feast of the Epiphany. It was my job to arrange for some kind of entertainment to take place at the party, but there was a year that Christmas came and went and I found myself completely unprepared for Epiphany. So I decided we’d have a sing-along. Before the event, I worried that it would float about as well as a lead balloon; people were used to REAL entertainment at these parties! I pulled out some caroling booklets from a dusty shelf in the office and loaded up a cart with hymnals, and prayed that no one would be too upset at my crazy, awful, boring idea. My trepidation continued as I started distributing hymnals at people’s tables after dinner to responses like “Oh, no!” and “What are we going to have to do?” But I soldiered ahead, announced my scheme, and waited for someone to call out a song. And wouldn’t you know… people loved it! Within a minute there were so many requests I couldn’t keep track of them all. We sang Christmas songs from the familiar (Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) to the long-forgotten (The Snow Lay on the Ground). Patriotic tunes were sung with gusto (Onward, Christian Soldiers and America the Beautiful) along with some of the secular Christmas songs (Frosty the Snowman)! Then there were those who asked, movingly, to sing songs that will be sung at their funerals (Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and Abide with Me). We sang for an hour and probably could have gone on an hour more. The next Sunday people were still talking about the fun they had. All in all, one of the more successful events we’d ever had!

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Part Two: Hymns

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