A long faithfulness

I had the pleasure this past weekend to attend the alumni-driven retirement dinner for an important person in my musical education. Mr. Gerald Edmonds has retired from a distinguished 41-year career at the Moody Bible Institute. For 33 of those years, he conducted the Moody Chorale - long considered the flagship musical 'face' of MBI. In 1970, as a young faculty member, he founded the Moody Concert Band. And it was primarily as my band director that I interacted with "Mr. Ed" during my matriculation at Moody, 1973-76.

He also taught choral arranging, and conducting, and some of the church music sequence. And orchestration. So, come to think of it, he really was my primary music professor for 3 years. And as the band director, he also headed up the instrumental division in those years. That meant taking the lead on weekly Repertoire & Ensemble classes, semester juries, and recitals. So, yeah, Mr. Ed was pretty much my music education.

But, really, you can't blame him for the results. He did what he could. And you may rightly pity him, since as a young and immature music student I was never easy. I came to the Institute woefully unprepared to be a music major, and as a trombonist, only marginally qualified. First testimony: I was in the program, and in the band, by grace - and that mediated through Gerald Edmonds. I know (really, honestly, truly, I know) there are days he regretted that. But I hope that there were also moments when he felt there was hope, and I trust he has come to appreciate that God somehow had some purposes in it. I'm writing today to say that I am thankful Mr. Ed was instrumental in those purposes. (yes, pun intended)

We have some stories, good and bad. Have I mentioned that I was young and immature? How about a supreme goof-off? This isn't about those stories. Saturday night was an evening of tribute for a man who loves God, loves his people, has a high standard for music-making and instilled that in generations of students. And through and over it all, knows all this comes from God and is genuinely a tribute to God's work in his life.

A generational connection was beautifully demonstrated. Mr and Mrs Edmonds, before they were Mr and Mrs, sang in the Moody Chorale, with Donald Hustad conducting. Dr. Hustad was present Saturday night to participate in the recognition. So, many in that room were able to see that they are "the grandchildren" in the tradition. An evening of appropriate recognition of a man's impact, in the context of God's greater work. Someone aptly said, "the kind of evening you don't want to come to an end." And as one of my band mates said, "the sort of thing you usually only hear at funerals." How nice to hear and participate in it with the honoree still able to enjoy (and correct) it!

Adding to all that I have noted above, Karen and I had the joy of hanging out with former band-mates and renewing those friendships and telling our own, non-Chorale, stories about Mr Ed. I said we were the "sullen minority" - because those of us who were in his bands felt "betrayed" when he took up the baton for the Chorale. Of course, it made perfect sense that he would, and wisdom is proved right by her children. Still, we made our presence and our preferences known. Rowdy is, I think, how the MC described us. And obvously, since he was our director before any Chorale alum's ... we were the oldest present.

A small group, our presence there was pretty much random. None of us made any special  effort to get band members to turn out for this. So it was especially fun, and remarkable, that the 5 couples associated with band - and that meant 7 former band members - had all been in band at the same time. 6 of the 7 had been on the one international tour the band took in Mr Ed's band career. 2 of the 5 couples are the the lifelong unions begun as band romances. My Karen, at least, was a band "groupie" since that was where nearly all my Moody friends were. So we were not just bound by a common experience but by that particular experience - a few brief years, under the direction of a fine musician doing remarkable things for an historic institution.

I leave most funerals and memorial services, (a) wishing that I had known that person, or known her/him better, and (b) feeling that my own life does not and will not match up. And such was the impact of this recognition as well. It hit especially when his daughters spoke. They grew up having to share their father with generations of students in a busy career including both the school and church. But he clearly managed it well, as heard in their testimony ... And as I have witnessed first hand, since one of the daughters is a key volunteer colleague in the music ministry of College Church; married to a chorale alum from the Edmonds years. Huge testimony, that.

We are all called to something, and equipped according to our calling. Comparisons are meaningless, at best, and dangerous at worst. But in one thing, we are held to the same standard: Faithfulness in our calling. And a long faithfulness, at that. What a privilege it has been to see Mr Ed's long faithfulness, up close and personal, from a distance, and then through his students and his family. It doesn't really matter, finally, what my children or my church will say of me at the end of my career or my life. What really matters is whether I am faithful to the end. This weekend I was privileged to see what that looks like - like the biblical examples, even if imperfectly. "So teach me to order my days!"

A privilege I don't covet

I have had occasion to preach. A sermon. In a church service. With people in attendance.

As opposed to "preaching to the choir."

It is a privilege I don't covet, and I am all too happy to be a partner to preachers, by planning and preparing music appropriate to the text of the day.

But I will spend the bulk of this week in the annual Workshop on Biblical Exposition at College Church. This is a gathering of several dozen preachers, for "spring training" in a particular approach to Christian preaching. As ours has been the host church for years, and my previous senior pastor was the host/co-headliner of the event, it has always been one of those "command performances" in my annual calendar. And (like men's retreats, and Sunday evening services) something I don't really look forward to, but am always glad I went.

I do not look to these weeks as a way of inching my way to what some consider 'real ministry' ... that is, to become a preacher. But I have found over the years that by going through the Workshop I become a better student of scripture, and thus a better partner to preachers and the preached part of our gathered worship. And yes, sure, on those random occasions when I do preach, it helps immensely!

The Workshop has 3 components:

1. Instruction: background, tools, and topics presented by mature, gifted pastor/preachers. (This year the focus is on Hebrew poetry and wisdom literature.)
2. Model exposition: the Workshop leaders (usually 2, sometimes 3) preach a recent sermon as a demonstration of this particular approach. A couple of comments here. First - "model" as in example, not as in "hey, look at me and try to top this!" My experience is that these are always offered very humbly. And (and this is a part of the humility, I think), the sermons are to be the preacher's most recent (or most recent of the genre), and not their "silver bullet" sermon.
3. Small group workshop: here's where everybody rolls up their sleeves and gets dirty. All participants prepare outlines and preaching points, and these are shared for peer review in groups of 5-8 fellow preachers, who often don't know each other before the week begins. Guided by a gifted or more advanced preacher - always an alumnus of the Workshop - the group helps one another fine tune their work in the passages at hand. That's humbling, and encouraging.

So, as a musician, where and how do I fit into this? Well, to be honest, some years I beg off the small group aspect. But most years, I do my homework and come to the small group as prepared (or not) as the other preachers. And I take my lumps, and I contribute to the conversation. And at the end of the week I have a little more in my toolbox, and have sharpened up some older ones, and I move ahead and say ...

"Preaching is a privilege I don't covet."

But I do enjoy the felllowship of this kind of ministry, and I have the very great privilege of preparing our daily time of singing together. Of introducing new songs and old hymns, and interacting with pastors who are eager to learn more about what they could be doing musically in their churches, and how to find resources, and how to interact with their musicians. These are conversations that I could not have if I did not engage in all the Workshop. They know I am not just dropping in to lead singing, then retreating to my office until the next morning.

I wish other music pastors came to these Workshops with their preachers. (And yes, I wish preachers would go to Music workshops with their musicians, too!) For one thing, I would like to become acquainted and spend time with more church musicians who see their work as Ministry of the Word. For another, I think a lot of really committed church musicians are more serious about this kind of ministry than their senior ministers are aware, and would eat it up and benefit from it. Also, preachers can and do inhabit their own little worlds, just as musicians can and do. It would be great if more of these partners spent this kind of time together and became "iron sharpening iron."

Of course, almost nothing in anyone's education for ministry suggests this kind of partnership, cross-pollenization, or camarderie. So, we should be creating it wherever we can. And that's what I look forward to in my "preaching week" this week.

Spring Gardening

Immediately following Easter, Karen and I had a small window of opportunity to get our gardens ready. The days were warm, and we finally had some daylight after office hours. Bulbs were pushing up but not yet in bloom, and the ornamental pear trees (the early glories of our small yard) were beginning to blossom.

When Karen and I moved into our house in Winfield, there was a back-yard deck/porch with some evergreens around it, and not another plant in the back lawn. Grass from fence to fence to fence, and a swing-set. It was pretty sparse, and for a couple of country kids who enjoy a garden, very unsatisfying. Our first summer in this home, this started to change, and now we have gardens rimming the back yard, and two maturing trees – one of them in glorious bloom the first week of Easter. This is our 14th year here, and if we didn’t have pictures of the early years, even we wouldn’t believe how much the place has changed.

That week following Easter, we got to work weeding, cleaning, and mulching the gardens. Much as wanted to sit and relax, those hours that week were given to work in the gardens. Cleaning, weeding, and mulching had to precede sitting and enjoying them. And we were in a race against nature’s clock – trying to stay ahead of the inexorable emergence of the succession of perennials. So we rushed home after office hours, to get the last couple of daylight hours in our garden. Dinner followed.

One just can’t take a garden for granted! They are a lot of work, and they operate on a time-table that we can’t control. As I spread a lot of mulch, I thought about the care, feeding, and protection of music ministry. We just can’t take it for granted, that our work will thrive, weed-free from season to season. We don’t control the time-table of ministry, and Sundays (like perennial plants) arrive whether we are prepared or not! So with our musicians we work at preparing the soil, clearing out the stubborn old weeds, and protecting against their reemergence. And cooperating with God in the results – for he gives the growth, and it is his beauty on display.

Unread

Senior Pastor Emeritus, Kent Hughes, College Church in Wheaton, had the most impressive pastor's library I have ever seen. He once related his response to the most common question he was asked in his study.
Parishioner: "Pastor, have you read all these books?"
Kent: "Some of them twice."

Here is a short list of my other books - those that have not been read, much less twice, but stand apart on a separate shelf. This is where I feel I must go when I need something else to read. Unless, that is, something else ininuates itself. It could be an invigorating summer!

PASTORAL MINISTRY

• Eugene Peterson, following on Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places - Eat This Book and The Jesus Way
• D.A.Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation
• Dever, Duncan, et al, Preaching the Cross
• John Piper, A Hunger for God

MUSIC & WORSHIP

• Paul S. Jones, Singing and Making Music
• Robin Leaver, Luther's Liturgical Music
• Hart and Muether, With Reverence and Awe
• Scott Hyslop, The Journey was Chosen: the life and work of Paul Manz
• John Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding
• John Tyson, Assist Me to Proclaim: the life and hymns of Charles Wesley

THEOLOGY/CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

• Jeffrey, Ovey & Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions
• Martin Luther, Three Treatises
• Timothy George, ed., God the Holy Trinity
• D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God
• Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do

There are many more to be read, the first time. These are not even all the titles on my "to be read next" shelf. And I can't begin to guess what might assert its priority over these. But now being a bit better organized, I think I can set myself to the glories and surprises at hand.

Spring Cleaning

It isn't always like this, but I find myself with a bit of margin here after Easter. Having sung Quasimodo Sunday, the Octave of Easter, we get this coming Sunday off before galloping on to our final Sunday of the season, June 6. Repertoire is all picked, and I'm caught up on my post-Easter service planning.

While the choir charges on, I have one more Sunday away myself. It is the actual end of a marathon season that began the day after Christmas. With one thing and another, I have a stretch of over a month of evening services that have not required my music planning. And the sun is shining, and I am trying to keep from day-dreaming about the mulch I'll be putting on the gardens over the next few evenings and early mornings.

And here in the the office, this (perhaps naively presumed) "down time" is taking the shape of a sort of spring cleaning. It is not escapist ... really, it isn't. It is a function of organizing and harnessing my resources for a pretty focused push that will drive me through the rest of spring and all of summer.

It began today by spending an hour re-organizing my bookshelves. As a fairly bookish person, this is no insignificant task. I began to realize that I knew I had certain books that I could not find. And the categories were becoming - well, soft. And I had to admit, finally, that there are some books here that I (a) won't read; or (b) won't re-read. My wife will laugh to see how few I have culled, but it is a start, and you book-lovers will understand how painful a start it is! (Karen is also a book-lover, so yes, she does understand.) Duplicates? Gone. Dated issues? Gone. Books inscribed 20 years ago by people from a previous life, with no ongoing relationship or reading value? Ouch, these too are gone. With an  hour's work, I now stand a fairly good chance of finding what I'm after in two or three categories. I don't know how many more hours I can take to do this, but if any are half as productive as today's they will be well spent indeed.

As I finished, I heard a friend's voice in the office. He came in to chat, and of course asked "what have you been doing today?" My first response: "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." It's an old metaphor, and a powerful one. It's only sort of apt today. But it's always a good joke. I guess more fitting would be "rearranging the ballast on a fresh-water sloop" (which totally lacks punch, doesn't it?). Reading has to be at the center of my work. Today's labors, and any follow-on I can get, should help me stay afloat, navigable, and smooth-sailing.

Here's to spring cleaning., Now, where is that ...

In mansions of glory

It was the most extraordinary time for a Christian funeral. Holy Saturday. The night before, the Chancel Choir sang two Good Friday services; the next morning, they would sing three Easter services. But here they were, at Noon on Easter Saturday, to sing in memorium, for a young woman lost to a fierce cancer. Anne sang in this choir for several years, met and courted Lee in this context, was wed in a ceremony officiated by their pastor/choir director. Four and a half years later, buried, age 34.

But those are just the sad facts. It was an extraordinary time for a Christian memorial service. The night before, the Choir had sung beautifully and powerfully, "this is earth's darkest hour, but You restore the light; then let all praise be given to you who live forevermore. Give us compassion, Lord, that as we share this hour, your cross may bring us joy - and resurrection power!" We lingered at the Cross reflected in the Table, where we sang of the Beautiful Savior, "none can be nearer, fairer or dearer, than Thou my Savior art to me." With the congregation we ended the night with a song unknown: "Here might I stay and sing of him my soul adores. Never was love, dear King, never was grief like yours. This is my friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend."

And on Saturday, we had the privilege of spending another day in his sweet praise. Sitting in full view of the breaved Lee, and his parents (also in this Choir) and her parents (former choristers with us), it was again our privilege to lead in the singing of hymns, and to offer up an anthem on behalf of all the assembled. The hymns, the scripture, the husband's remembrance, the beautiful and apt funeral homily - and then the requested choir anthem.

Lee and Anne have not sung with this choir for two years, being charter members and active leaders in a daughter church. They last visited a morning service at College Church this winter, when the Choir sang Paul Sjolund's "My Jesus, I Love Thee" with violin obligatto. Anne had said to Lee, "I'd like them to sing that at my funeral." It was not a long-range request. In January Anne had been finally told, after 3+ years of treatment for melanoma, that there were no more treatment options. She was already facing the end of her life on earth.

And so it was that the choir loft filled on Holy Saturday, between the Cross and the Resurrection, and sang:
My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine ...
I love thee because thou hast first loved me,
and purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree;
I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.
And then, for the first time all voices together, in unison, forte:
In mansions of glory and endless delight
I'll ever adore thee in heaven so bright;
I'll sing with the glittering crown on my brow:
"If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now."
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou,
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

It is a Holy Week we will not soon forget. Anne's death on Monday colored everything we did. Many choristers sang Good Friday with an extra layer of somberness, and a clearer sense of loss, than this service itself gives. (And I have to say, we have a powerful, evocative Good Friday service.) And the glorious truth and promise of Resurrection colored the singing in the memorial service on Saturday. And the reality of Anne's eternal life lifted our Alleluias on Sunday morning.

I have said many times over the past few days, "the choir does the heavy lifting during Passion Week to begin with. This weekend they were heroes." But they? They simply did that thing that church choirs do - they showed up when asked and needed, and sang their very best all weekend long, and pointed listeners to the source of their faithfulness and strength, and gave God glory.

It was the most extraordinary time for a Christian funeral. And a most extraordinary Easter.

They sang a hymn

I've been highlighting Lenten hymns in my weekly newsletter to College Church Musicians. "For the Living of These Days" is the title of that series. It's a blog I could keep up weekly while teaching in the first half of the spring semester. Could because I sort of had to, as that is a part of my regular communication with the people who make music for worship here.

Concurrently, I have been reading on a daily basis from Christ in the Psalms by Patrick Henry Reardon. Each morning I read a single psalm, followed by Reardon's brief commentary on the same. Commentary is the best word for these reflections. They are devotional, liturgical, historical, scholarly, pastoral; together and by turns. Writing from an Orthodox pulpit (so to speak), the pages are richly ecumenical in the best sense of the term. The biblical theology that informs his understanding of the Psalms would be right at home in the pulpit of College Church. But more than simply learning more about the psalms, I am slowly learning to pray in the vocabluary of the psalms, 2 small pages of devotion per day.

But to the point, last week my slow walk through the Psalms brought me through the Hallel psalms, certainly the psalms that Jesus and his disciples sang in the upper room at the Passover meal. And most likely the source of the "hymn" that they sang as they left that room on their way to the garden. Yes, I should return to these psalms again during Passion Week. But that they have fallen to me now during Lent, along with my own devotional highlighting of Lenten hymns, has been good for my spirit.

As Spring in Chicago slowly emerges, these psalms and hymns are doing some much needed work in me. Along with my pastor's preaching of "the cross," I could hardly have a more rich season if I were in a church that "observed" Lent!