Minister of Music’s Report

Minister of Music’s Report

During the spring of 2008, we continued our practice of “Global Vespers” on the third Sunday of the month.  It was fun, and a good learning experience for all involved, besides its validity as worship.  But low attendance made Rev. Bail and me decide that, maybe, we hadn’t found quite the right audience, or that this wasn’t quite the best time for the services.  We did decide to return to the “Global Vespers” format for the special service the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  It was a tremendously successful service, with good attendance, and active participation of many in teaching and leading the songs from the different traditions.

On a similar cultural bent, the “Posada” celebration we held for families in December was a rousing (i.e. noisy!) success, and formed the basis for part of the Christmas Pageant, recreated for the Congregation.  I’m looking forward to many more collaborations with our new Christian Ed Director, Kathy Noble.

With fewer families with high school age youth this year, we’ve lost the chance for a periodic youth choir that has been so successful in the last two or three seasons.  Some of the youth are being encouraged to participate in other ways, though, such as singing in the Senior Choir.  In addition, we have been able to enjoy the returning college-aged youth, who joined with the Senior Choir for Christmas Eve, swelling the ranks to 20.

We’ve been fortunate to have several fine members of the Senior Choir, as well as Williams students, and our own college students home for the summer to offer solo selections for the summer services.  Besides the solo voices, we rallied a men’s and a women’s choir for one summer Sunday each.  Look out for this opportunity again, as I’m eager to continue this tradition as a way to get more people to sing with us, especially those not quite yet ready for the regular Thursday commitment.  In fact, we’ve just added new anthologies of music for both men’s and women’s choir to our library, so there’ll be more interesting things to learn!

We’ve added new members to the Junior Choir, keeping open the idea of second graders joining that had been new for us last year.  The parents do a wonderful job of supervision at the rehearsal and providing a snack, as well as transporting the young singers to and from the rehearsals.   This sort of musical training is where nearly all of our most experienced church musicians got their starts.  The enthusiasm we see and hear bodes well for the future of church music!

Yours in Christ,

Edwin I. Lawrence, Minister of Music