Religion Chat thread number 1

[nickelbabyjesus]

I wanted to put some random thoughts and stuff regarding church, without it having to be a debate or a specific topic (and not prayers, either)

It's basically, a "what happened at church (or in my musical/spiritual life) this week" thread.
Please join me!

I'll start:

We had Midnight Mass (on Christmas Eve, would you believe!), and it was half past 11, everyone was sitting and ready for the service to start - I waved the organist to give me my notes: he was just about to plat them when:
" TAXI FOR suchandsuch " came blaring out of our speaker system.
There's a Wetherspoon's over the road and looks like the DJ's mike was on the same frequency as our radio mikes.
So, all the congregation started giggling and we had to wait 5 minutes until everyone was calm and collected enough to carry on.

ok - I've found the 1-4 index on the Kingsway website -when do you need it by? I can sit and have a look after dinner/this evening and find some for you.

HOw about The Lord's My shepherd as suggested above also, think it's in one of the earlier SOF, not sure which one (we also have the combined songs and hymns of fellowship) That's also a simple one but nice to learn and can be split into parts in the chorus. :)

It might sound a bit hollow, though, with only 2 of them.
especially as the descant part is so different from the chorus tune.

hmmm - thinking the worlds of that aren't the easiest for a non-English speaker though.

Maybe something like "father we adore" - can e done in a round and not too many English words to get their mouths around.

Thanks all, don't need it urgently - next few days. I have taught then The Lords My Shepherd but they struggled with some of the words. Might try 'Father we adore'. Off to bed now (2 hours ahead of you all!), back to check in tomorrow

The thing is, if there are only two of them, you really might be better to stick to one single tune for them both to sing.

I'm assuming they will be singing it on their own to "an audience" ?

Also, I wonder if it is that important for it to be easy English - they only need to learn the pronunciation

As the Deer Pants for the Water is lovely, and you could split it into harmony in the chorus, if you wanted to.

Breathe on me Breath of God is lovely too.

They're here at the moment! I wasn't really expecting them today but that's life here . We've done Father we adore you which they liked and they're now tinkering on the piano.

I think I did As the Dear Pants before with them but in Romanian (it's in our hymn book here). I often do that when we have English visitors who want to sing in church and I do it with them but do the chorus in both languages.

Will investigate Breathe on me - not sure I know it yet!

Quiet here today - well I suppose it is Sunday

We did an oldie today that sounded hideous on the organ - remember 'Let there be love shared among us'? Resonates of 70's fluffy christian women in calf length skirts, socks and sandals. Oh dear (sorry if that's a favourite of yours!!)

Was scanning the page in MP where the song was and there was this jolly little chorus the other page which goes something like this: 'Let's Just Praise God, Let's really Just praise him, Yes Let's Just praise him, Really Just Really Just Praise him, Oh yes really really just JUST praise him!' Ok slightly exag but you get the gist and yes it 'really' did contain the word 'Just'. Quite a lot

Having a and a rest now, and out to our monthly evening contemporary worship do thingy tonight, if I can summon the energy as still feeling pretty shite.

Hellloooooo

Ah well I'll talk to myself anyway. Just had a great time at our worship service, though difficult to get lost in contemplative worship with a 7 year old frantically playing an air guitar next to you (then singing 'God's flavour' instead of God's favour which made me pmsl in an innapropriately quiet bit

Was lovely though. Theme was 'waiting with purpose' and it was all quite contemplative, nickel you'd have been allright, there was no happiness or clappiness in sight and no Sir Graham either! We did that fab Stuart Townend song 'How Long'. was so poignant and all lovely and God's presenc-y and all that. You can tell I feel all cocooned and ermmm lovely

Back tomorrow. :)

I am here, MHD... popping in and out. Need to finish reading something for work, so turning the computer off now to avoid distractions.

at 'God's flavour'... Wonder what flavour that is?

DD2 said last night, when I kissed her goodnight. "I can't wait to go to church tomorrow." She loves it, bless her. We went for coffee afterwards today, too, though no-one actually spoke to us. They all do that very British thing of smiling and nodding and sort of looking friendly but not actually engaging you in conversation, and I am not great at starting conversations myself, so it was a bit weird. I think I got used to the very direct American way of pinning you in a corner and asking you three million questions. Can be a bit full-on, but quite good if you're shy as you don't have to think about what to say next. I also had DD1 with me in America, and she'll talk the hind legs off a donkey to anyone, but she is still refusing to come back here. Anyway, small but significant steps, I think.

Sunday was busy. Today will be busy. All week will be busy, as I have a sermon to write and a village newspaper article to write...

We had a family service yesterday, and I sang the priest's/cantor's parts, as the visiting priest was happier with me doing that. Then Evensnog in the evening, with me leading worship there too. I need a rest! LOL

oh I love How Long.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon sleeping

In the morning we had our family parade service......which was led by Leapfrog. So we combined the regular Family Parade service with leapfrog - was exhausting - but really really good.

Does that mean you were actually leapfrogging, Baroque? I've a strange image of people leapfrogging to church :o

mhd we've done Let there be love shared among us on the organ before and it sounded okay.
I think it depends how you do it - if you use the feet to do the bass line and do the guitar chords with the left hand, it's doable (can you tell i'm making it up now - i haven't got a lcue how they do it! but it sounds okay, so I'll just accept it! )

hahah Mary - no Leapfrog is our monthly (term time) after school service. (next one is actually Wednesday). It's 45 minutes of absolute mayhem with usually about 20-30 children from the infant school (fresh out of school as well) plus their younger siblings.

FROG - standing for "Fully Rely On God" (and the leap before it just to make it into a name).

We've got T-shirts printed up and all sorts for us leaders to wear for it. We were supposed to be wearing ours yesterday - but I've lost ine in my washing somewhere - frantically trying to get on top of the washing today to find it as we've got assembly tomorrow where I'm supposed to wear it and again on Wednesday oops

you know we were talking about hymns that make you cry the other day/

well, we did Jesus where'er thy people meet yesterday, and not a sad hymn, but cue the last verse:
"Lord, we are few, but Thou art near;
Nor short Thine arm, nor deaf Thine ear;
O rend the heavens, come quickly down,
And make a thousand hearts Thine own!"

and i looked out onto the congregation, and just welled up.
too right are we "few" :(

ahh nickel.

I'm doing dangerous stuff today talking of hymns. I've put a load of my CD's onto my laptop so I can have easy access to my music to play while I'm doing stuff...

I'm currently going through them in between other stuff and "rating" them (so I can make nice playlist).......except I'm only about 15 songs in and I'm already a wreck

sounds like everyone's had good weekends, then!

Mary, I love it when ladies do the cantor bit - makes it so much easier for me to pitch my note!

TUO - that sounds like my kind of church - no being dragged into conversation, but still making you feel part ofthe furniture!
i actually quite miss that at my church - I just used to be "andrea in the choir" and noone spoke to me except to say hello or say the choir sounded nice, which meant that i didn't have to make conversation.
Now it seems like everyone thinks they know me and talk to me about things i know nothing about. (and seem to think I have full control over my husband's actions )

Baroque - i love the LeapFrog name! It sounds like the kind of thing St Mary's would be interested in. (I have just realised that sounds derogotory, but i meant it in a positive way this time! )

Awww nickel :)

Hey Baroque!! I decided to download the trial version of Power Director 9 to give it a try before I buy (ugh sounds like a dreadful daytime TV prog) and it was only then that my computer told me that I already had PD on my computer, yes only PD7 but still, I have been sitting on this piece of software for 1.5 yrs since I bought this laptop while getting steadily more annoyed with PowerPoint and WMM. AAAAGGGHHHHH That'll teach me to actually explore the software on my puter.

So anyway, I had a play and I love it, problem is going to be trying to get anything else done now - this is only version 7 but already surpasses PP and WMM sooo much, just got to get my head round it all now and play til I can come up with something.

(Can you tell I'm excited about my new toy )

If I get to grips I might well upgrade to 9 - what extra things does it do?

(Thanks TUO - glad I wasn't just witttering to myself last night, and nickel I'm glad LLBL sounds OK when played properly, it just sounded dire on our organ but our organist though very competent doesn't always 'get' the whole worship chorus thing and the timing is often off and bizarre.)

haha madhairday - I discovered V7 on my laptop too by accident. PD9 has loads more stuff, transitions, effects etc.

It's also got a slideshow thing - can't remember if that was on the free V7 - but it's quite useful as it sticks all your stills together in a slide show with effects and stuff, and then you can customise.

I didn't actually use V7 that much so can't remember exactly what V9 has that it doesn't - but I know it's been easier to go the stuff I've done.

Oh, B, poor you!!
if it makes you feel better, i've got a head cold right now, so I was blubbing through the service at the most odd things yesterday.

I've got rachmaninov in my shop CD player.
very choral.
don't know what my customers will make of it....

Now i've got my power director, and Bare Bones is fitting me my new hard drive tomorrow, I'm trying to make a concerted effort to use our wedding present camcorder to make some proper videos.
I want to record some music from the organ and mess aroundwith visuals, like you have, and even make a CD of organ music to sell for church funds.

We're going to do Thorns in the Straw as a choir item in lent (Passion Sunday, i think), so DH and I have been learning it.
It's got a few tricky rhythms in it!
anyway, last night (after not badgering about music all afternoon...), we sat down at hte piano and bashed it through.
I said i wanted to record it, to see what it sounded like (both the song and the recorder)
We had to do it a couple of times, cos i kept getting the rhythm wrong, and coming in at the wrong tiem in the chorus.
But we did it - and i tried hard not to blub in, ooh, almost every verse... it wasn't perfect, but, I'll mess aroundwith the visuals this week and post it so yo ucan have a look.

this is following my new discovery that my singing voice actually sounds quite nice (i have long known that my speaking voice is hideous on a recording (so sorry to anyone who has to hear me speak regularly))
even though you can hear me choke through
"oh Joseph, here it comes again"
and "'Til against a darkening sky
The son she loved was lifted high
And with his dying breath
She heard him say 'Father forgive'
And to the criminal beside
"Today-with me in Paradise"
So bitter yet so sweet"

mhd yeay!
you can start playing around!

(sorry for my really long post)

I'll try to get DH to play LLBL on the organ and i'll record it so we can see if i'm lying....

LOL not to recording LLBL on organ but your last post re Thorns in the straw, pmsl