Songs For the Church: the Music of CityAlight

I have had another “religious experience.” In a good way. In the days since I finally gave my life to The LORD in the 80s, I have enjoyed some encounters with him which have touched me deeply. For example, when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and was given the gift of tongues. There was a moment almost five years ago in an Orthodox Cathedral in St Petersburg, Russia, of all places, too. I couldn’t understand a word that was said but I felt that I was in the very Presence of the Ancient of Days (I wrote about that experience in a previous post). Yet one of the deepest, and sustained, experiences of having my heart “strangely warmed” by the presence and goodness of Jesus, however, has happened recently in my experience of the music of CityAlight—a team of young people who lead worship in song at St Paul’s Anglican in Castle Hill, Sydney, Australia. I thought it would have petered out by now. But it hasn’t so I thought I’d better file a report. 

I first encountered their music at a Church Renewal Conference hosted by Southland Church in Steinbach, Manitoba, in January 2018. The worship in song team led us in singing a song called I Want to Know You; one of the songs from CityAlight’s Only A Holy God album. Its lyric phrase “ever, only Jesus” nailed me. I wept. Understand. I am a guy. I was not feeling sad or emotional. And it wasn’t even that it was the CityAlight recording featuring the angelic voice of the young woman who sings it. It was the Southland worship band. But I wept and I wanted to know Jesus more. Soon after I brought the song home to my church, St Barnabas, Medicine Hat, where I was on the roster for worship in song leading from time to time. As I taught it to the congregation; in a very traditional Anglican setting with stained glass and all the trimmings; no band, just guitar, piano and a few voices; some wept as they were learning it and singing it for the first time. There is something about these young people and their music. 

Now, almost two years later, I have all three CityAlight albums in a playlist on my iPhone, and I still listen to them on shuffle almost every day as I walk our little dog. Tears are stirred up occasionally. I am not feeling sad or emotional, mind. I am in good health walking my dog in pleasant surroundings and yet the music sometimes makes me weep with—what? Joy, longing, regret. The presence of The LORD Himself in inspired music for the church. Anointed, as the charismatics say. All of the above?

On their excellent website, CityAlight describe themselves and their music as follows:

The sound of a church singing has preceded almost every great revival in church history. The church is God’s witness and representative on earth. Is there any wonder that a tremendous power comes about when the representative voice of God in the earth is singing.

We desire to get out of the way so the truth upon which all our songs are built can properly shine. We pray that the lyrics and melodies of these songs would fix eyes and hearts and minds on Jesus. We pray that our songs might join the many thousands of songs written through history to encourage the church, and when they have played their role, to make way for the next ones. And we rejoice that one day the only name left standing will be the name of Jesus, as it should be.

 Revival. Jesus: the only name left standing! Amen to that!

The website also includes videos of each song plus lyrics, chords and music. The notes for their 2016 album Only A Holy God say this:

These are songs for the church. Like you, we love to hear the church of Jesus sing his praises. And so these are biblical truths put to very simple melodies. We worked hard, we prayed over them. We sung them here at home and have been blessed by them. And now we are thrilled that you have them in your own hands. We pray that your heart would be encouraged, your church united, and our God glorified as you sing these songs to Him.

I don’t get the opportunity to lead worship in song very often these days. We’ve only been in Regina for a few months. But CityAlight music and the need to share it in worship is building up within me. When I do get the opportunity The LORD will be thoroughly worshipped using these biblical truths, simple melodies in songs for the Church as often as I can. 

Love in Jesus, 

Gene+

A Surprise Worship Encounter at St Nicholas Naval Cathedral in St Petersburg, Russia

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Is 55.4-5)

I think I had an experience of that on Saturday, August 22nd, in St Petersburg, Russia, of all places. Our Intourist guide, Tatyana, had started our day with a visit to the Naval Cathedral of St Nicholas. Our driver, Yuri, parked the car and we did the usual neck-craning, open-mouthed walk to the door while looking up at the gold-leafed spires gleaming in the Russian morning sun.

As we walked through the doors we were enveloped by the most beautiful music. The Divine Liturgy was being sung. What sounded to me like a sixty voice choir turned out to be a quartet in street clothes off to the side and around a corner. Every now and then the young conductor would move to the centre and conduct them and a woman came and went adding and removing sheets of music. They were an informal looking, but certainly not sounding, counterpoint to the liturgical choreography being performed in the sanctuary.

The priest and what I assume were deacons moved gracefully in and out of the sanctuary with and without thuribles. Blue incense floated through the gold-leafed Royal Gates. There were few worshippers—mostly women with their heads covered by scarves who would cross themselves reverently and bow every now and then. They came and went, bowing under the rope barrier that separated them from us tourists. The icon shops behind me did their business and tourists wandered about.

As has happened for thousands of years, the very God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was being worshipped in the Power of the Holy Spirit right in front of me. It was ancient, primeval, holy, and I couldn’t understand a word. Tears sprang to my eyes. I realize now that what was happening was my spirit was responding to the very presence of Jesus in that worship. It seemed very right in its "otherness" and sense of mystery.

Wikipedia says this about the orthodox Divine Liturgy:

In Eastern traditions, those of the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the Divine Liturgy is seen as transcending time, and the world. All believers are believed to be united in worship in the Kingdom of God along with departed Saints and the celestial Angels. To this end, everything in the Liturgy is seen as symbolic, yet also not just merely symbolic, but making the unseen reality manifest. According to Eastern tradition and belief, the Liturgy's roots go back to Jewish worship and the adaptation of Jewish worship by Early Christians. 

Time was transcended and the ancient Jewish Jerusalem temple did come to my mind as I witnessed that worship in St Petersburg.

In its day Temple worship had nothing to do with the people’s preferences and tastes, other than a few allowances to do with poverty and transporting animals over long distances. God was to be worshipped exactly how and where he decreed and that was it. David acknowledged that when he left the Ark with Obed-edom the Gittite because “the LORD our God broke out against us, because we did not seek him according to the rule” (1 Chr 15.13). I am not a scholar or a liturgical theologian, but I had a sense of a something temple-like going in St Nicholas—an ancient spiritual engine running there as people came and went, most of them oblivious to what was happening.

Contemporary liturgical revision has carried us a long way from that I believe I witnessed in St Petersburg. I wonder if it’s been in the wrong direction. So much of today’s worship is about what makes us feel good, or is couched in language that addresses some socio-political issue rather than simply and unconditionally giving glory to Almighty God himself. I wonder if, like Uzzah, we’ve put our hands out to take hold of the Ark of our worship (2 Sam 6.6) because we think it too out of step with our reasonable, postmodern tastes and sensibilities. Will the consequences of our equally well meaning intervention be as costly for us as they were for Uzzah?

Meanwhile, in St Petersburg, the Divine Liturgy continues to be sung just as it has through all the vagaries of history including schism in the church and communist oppression and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ continues to be worshipped in some style.

On the Merits of Liturgy and the Church Calendar

I've written about liturgy before. Here's another lovely take on it:

Liturgy, at its best, is more like the tracks of the train than the whistle. It’s silent and sturdy and, though almost unnoticed, it leads us to where our hearts long to go. In perhaps the most quoted address on liturgy, C.S. Lewis states, that liturgy is most useful “when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

…from Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, in a piece on her discovery and appreciation for the church calendar in Christianity Today's excellent "Her.meneutics" here.

Liturgy's trustworthy tracks, along with the church calendar, keep our worship and personal devotions on course as, year after year, they carry us along through the story of Jesus from Advent through Easter and a focus on discipleship for the rest of the year. The accompanying lectionary ensures that we are all, including preachers, at least exposed to themes with which we might not otherwise be inclined to engage.

One Side to the Other: New Beginnings and Thoughts on Worship

This morning the missal stand (which holds the big prayer book at a convenient angle from which to read on the altar) had been moved from one side of the altar to the other at StB. I noticed it as soon as I settled into my pew. 'Tis an outward and visible sign of the fact that we now have a new presider. This next stage of our journey to meet Jesus when he comes again has begun. Our new and very welcome priest, The Rev Dr Dustin Resch, now has the con. This morning he presided and preached (praught?) for the first time. It was grand. 

Keep Calm and Worship On

Here are some thoughts and discoveries about worshipping on the other side of the rood screen (supposing we had one) from that most peculiar and sometime irksome personage; the previous rector. These have been bubbling up and mouldering as Jude and I wandered at first without benefit of flock in the early months of retirement and more recently when it felt right to return to StB.

All Circumstances

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 ESV)

What we Anglicans (and Roman Catholics and most Lutherans, too) do most Sundays is celebrate Eucharist (more on that later). The word comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. As as lover, follower and worshipper of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ I ought to be able to give worshipful thanks for what God has done, is doing and will do, in all circumstances—especially on Sunday mornings at church no matter where I am, who is presiding, how loud the children are, whether or not I like the music, or denominational peculiarities, or style, or the people up front, or around me. This was impressed upon me especially during our wanderings. I was reminded that I have a job to do among God's people at worship wherever I go. My job is to apply myself to the task, or the work, in liturgical terms (the word liturgy means work of the people) allowing nothing to distract me. In all circumstances. It is my responsibility. If I let some real or imagined failing of a leader or anyone else deflect me, the devil wins. If something bothers me, I just have to work harder. Sure, my mind wanders. Less often than it used to, perhaps. If it does, I just catch myself and refocus on what's being said, sung and prayed. Over and over again, as necessary.

Bible Delight

I love the Bible. I love the way we hear three passages read aloud every Sunday. I believe God's written Word read out loud gradually salts us through and through so it will not return to Him empty. It will succeed in the thing for which He sent it (Isa 55.11). 

When I led worship from the other side of the rood screen, I used to encourage people to bring their Bibles to church so they could follow the readings. I thought that doing that helps us learn where things are in there. I used to feel a little impatient with people because most didn't. On this side of the screen I find myself repenting of that. I find that I don't want to read along as the passages are read, I'm enjoying listening to them. I have to concentrate. My monkey-mind can head off on tangents very easily. But I find watching the face of the reader helpful in listening deeply. I've seen some folk close their eyes to listen, but I find the watching helpful for some reason. 

I still have my Bible handy in some form in case I need to look at a phrase or a verse more closely and I think daily Bible reading in the context of The Daily Office (Morning and Evening Prayer) is important to help keep my faith and spiritual self alive, but Sunday listening has been the thing for me—somewhat to my surprise.

Worship in Song

Sometimes when I don't know a song I'm tempted to zone out and wait until it's over. But if All Circumstances above is valid, there are several ways I can be a part of the worship at all times. For example: 

1. I can silently pray the lyrics as those who know the song sing
2. I can harmonize by quietly singing or reciting appropriate Bible verses, for example, "How glorious you are, more majestic than the everlasting mountains!" (Ps 76.4) or "Be exalted O Lord above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth!" (Ps 57.11) or I can pray "Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end!" Watch for verses you can use in this way in your daily Bible reading. 
3. I can harmonize by singing in the Spirit as I pray in tongues (1 Cor 12.10) if I have that gift.

There is no reason why I should allow myself to be left out of the worship whether I know the song or not or how well it is led.

Making Eucharist

I love the drama of the Lord's Table. The story of our salvation is told Sunday after Sunday. The bread and the wine are presented, prepared and prayed over. The Lord is remembered until he comes again. I enjoyed presiding, but I also now love being a part of the parade of humanity that goes up to receive what Jesus has provided; old and young, male and female, all shapes and sizes, Sunday by Sunday; we approach, receive and return; a graceful altar call and response. I miss it whenever we're away, but I can still worship when I put my mind to it. 

The most important thing is that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is worshipped and enjoyed in the power of the Holy Spirit no matter what and in all circumstances. 

It is SO good to be home.

On Retirement and Things I Would or Would Not Do Differently

As retirement approaches I find myself wondering about what I think I’d do differently if I were starting out again.

One thing I wouldn’t change is being Anglican. I love the way we worship. I love the theatre of it, the drama, the colours, the visuals and the way the divine narrative is covered year after year whether we want to, or not. I love the amount of Bible in it; read out and set to prayer. I love the way it’s always all about Jesus. It picks me up and carries me along no matter how I’m feeling or how engaged I am.

As always, Matt Marino, Episcopal priest in Arizona, puts it well when he describes how Anglican worship works in one of his The Gospel Side blog pieces: To Donald Miller and anyone else considering dumping church: The church works best when you like it least, in which he quotes another Arizona Episcopal priest, Gil Stafford:

The liturgy is like a rock falling into a stream. It rubs the rough edges off of us week after week, year after year. It is an infinitely slow and quiet transformation that is about being with other rocks in the stream as the Spirit works through the years, the prayers, the Sacraments and the community of faith. 

I love it all; the daily offices, the church year, the chanting, the bread and the wine each Sunday. I love the traditional prayer book worship in Shakespearean language and the contemporary rites according to our rather gracelessly entitled Book of Alternative Services. I love the routine, having to resist ennui, the cycle of the church year, the politically incorrect Scripture passages that slip through on Sunday mornings despite attempts to protect our delicate Anglican sensibilities. I love the Englishness of it and having to abide by the pastoral direction of a bishop. I love the way the liturgical system draws me into something much bigger and older than me. I have to serve it. It is not there to serve me and meet my needs.

Marino describes it in a rather lovely Eugene Peterson-esque way, also in the aforementioned post:

It is a long obedience in the same direction. It is about consuming Jesus and being consumed by him. And, I am convinced, the church works specifically best when we do not like it! When we choose to engage and to cooperate with the prayers, and surrender to the Lord of the prayers, and come, kneel, reach out our hands and receive, and “taste and see that the Lord is good,” then we truly worship.

It works best when I don’t like it. It works best when it doesn’t feel as if it’s meeting my needs or feeding me. I like the awkwardness and real-ness of that.

I’m a soon to be retired Anglican priest and I’m okay.

Liturgy Works

Something from Arizona Episcopal Priest, Matt Marino, in his most excellent the gospel side blog and further to my previous post on church-going:

The liturgy isn’t mine or yours. It isn’t endlessly malleable by the church staff to do whatever they want in church. In short, it’s not about what we like or what we “prefer.” The shape of the liturgy was handed to us by the earliest Christians. They borrowed the pattern of Word and Sacrament from the Jewish synagogue and temple. We find hints of it in the New Testament and see it laid out in detail by 150 A.D. And don’t miss the significance of this – when we read what those writers describe, they describe it as already ancient, established practice. (You can read Ignatius from 110 CE, Justin Martyr from 150 CE, Clement from 200 CE, and Hippolytus from 225 CE.) Most of the church has followed that pattern since then, because, when your heart is surrendered to God, liturgy works.

Perhaps you have a sense of curiosity about the ancient ways of the faith. I would encourage you to go experience those ways at a church that is thoughtfully liturgical. I would be most surprised if you do not find it spirit-lifting, even though much of the symbolism is subtle and will probably be missed the first few times through.

So go old-school this year: Come worship with us!

…or someone like them :-)

Matt's full post here.

While you're there click around—he has some excellent material on ministry to youth.

Posted with Blogsy

Thoughts on Friday, the Good

I can't crank up sad feelings about what Jesus did. Sometimes they come, some times they don't. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going through the motions. Dry. And then, suddenly, they'll take me by surprise, Tears. Gratitude. I want to hide for fear he singles me out—little-faithed (Mt 17:20), comfort-loving me, and twisted (Mt 17:17).

What then? Make myself available in case he wants to touch me. Fast. It makes me off balance. I don't like it. Go to the Medicine Hat Evangelical Association citywide Good Friday service. Not my style for Good Friday. But who cares? I believe Jesus goes to meet with his people. And I believe I'm more available for his touch when I'm off balance. And then Stations of the Cross at StB. Simple. Quiet. The Good Shepherd is slain. The Bridegroom is taken away. The Celebration of the Lord's Passion and Meditation on the Cross of Jesus. BAS, straight up.

The LORD may meet me in a way that I can feel, or not. It's up to Him. Just because I don't feel Him doesn't mean He's absent.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad :-)

Her.meneutics: The Divine Grace of Diapers and Dirty Laundry

An excellent bit on the LORD being present in the ordinary and the routine. Quoting Kathleen Norris, to boot!!

As a liturgical guy, this resonated particularly for me:

Norris notes that liturgy, the habitual practice of prayer and Bible reading, sometimes feels as rote and unwelcome as another load of laundry. And yet just as doing the laundry keeps our household in order, daily conversation with God, no matter how routine it might feel, brings order to our spiritual house.

All here: Her.meneutics: The Divine Grace of Diapers and Dirty Laundry

A Post-Christmas, Epiphany Miscellany

It's been a while. During that while there's been such a rich diet of reading and music since Christmas. For example:

Being Seeker-Friendly
The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom by Alan Kreider (Wipf & Stock, 1999). It was recommended by our national indigenous bishop, Mark McDonald at our 2009 clergy retreat. Finally got to it. An interesting look at conversion and evangelism in the early church. They thought and taught extensively about how believers should live and how their churches’ common life should be ordered, but they had no “decades of evangelism.” Nor did churches grow because their worship was attractive. From the second century onward, nonbelievers were barred from the Christian assemblies. Too risky to have them there. Christian worship was designed to enable Christians to worship God. It was not designed to attract non-Christians; it was not “seeker-sensitive,” seekers were not allowed in. Hmmm.

Arcade Fire
And there I was, a (then) 63 year old, tooling around town to the sound of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. A bunch of multi-instrumentalist twenty-somethings with a unique voice and sound who have got under my skin. Refreshingly un-salacious in an over-sexualized industry. Rhythm and energy. I was happy to see they were upset winners of the best album Grammy.

My favourite lines:

You never trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount.

Our heads are just houses, without enough windows.

I don't know why I feel so drawn to the music. Youthful. Wall of sound. Insistent. Plaintive.

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes:
Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, Belden C Lane (Oxford University Press, 1998). Good thoughts on liturgy from a Presbyterian!

The liturgy is hard work, a matter of constant repetition, seemingly dull and boring. But the desert teachers have always said that if you give yourself to the recurrent ordinariness of prayer, if you don't fight it—letting all your scattered, anxious thoughts pull you this way and that—your mind will gradually be taken down into the heart. Distractions can be released. The ceaseless regularity of the liturgy works on those distractions with a stubborn indifference, so that the mind is silenced and the heart made able to love. p227

Fires of Faith:
Catholic England Under Mary Tudor, Eamon Duffy (Yale University Press, 2009). Wherein I found these gems: during worship churchwardens were to see that there was

no ryngynge of belles, playinge of children, cryenge or making lowed noyse, rydynge of horses, or otherwise. p19

The belles continue via celle phone these days. Bit short in the horse rydynge, however.

Revenge by Litany 
Duffy refers to a petition from the Edwardine litany—a blacklash to the excesses of Mary's Catholic reign:

From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us. 

We have our own detestable enormities from which to be delivered nowadays.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Reading Life Together: a Discussion of Christian Fellowship (Harper & Row, 1954) tr John W Doberstein with our deanery clergy group. This:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ. p29

One has to listen to a martyr. 

Mother Theresa on Smiling

A lovely bit last week in my A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection from Mother Theresa:

Some people came to Calcutta, and before leaving, they begged me: 'Tell us something that will help us to live our lives better.' And I said: 'Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other—it doesn't matter who it is—and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.'

She reminds me of something Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop Henry once said to a gathering of Anglicans: "If you're saved, inform your face!"

More from Mother Theresa:

And then one of them asked me: 'Are you married?' and I said: 'Yes, and I find it difficult sometimes to smile at Jesus.' And it is true, Jesus can be very demanding also, and it is at those times when he is so demanding that to give him a big smile is very beautiful. (from A Gift for God by Mother Theresa)

That reminds me of how lovely it is to see a smile on the face of someone who is worshiping the LORD in song. Smiling at Jesus.

St Eugene: Worship and Feelings

I read another of Eugene Peterson's delights recently, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (1980, InterVarsity). From the chapter on Psalm 122, a gem on worship and feelings:

...very often we don't feel like it, and so we say, "It would be dishonest for me to go to a place of worship and praise God when I don't feel like it. I would be a hypocrite." The psalm says, I don't care whether you feel like it or not: as was decreed, "Give thanks to the name of the Lord."

I have put great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But I have never said that we worship because we feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians only worshipped when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship that went on. Feelings are important in many areas, but completely unreliable in matters of faith....We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different, namely, that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act which develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God which is expressed in an act of worship.

And as it is with worship, so it would also be with relationships.

Evelyn Underhill: a Wise Anglican Woman on Worship

I’ve just discovered Evelyn Underhill. She was a devout Anglican scholar, retreat leader and spiritual director in the early twentieth century.

Here are some lovely things she wrote about worship:

By this door and this alone, humanity enters into that great life of the spiritual universe which consists in the ceaseless proclamation of the Glory of God.

God’s invitation to it and man’s response, however limited, crude or mistaken this response may be, are the appointed means whereby we move towards our true destiny…

Worship…is an avenue which leads the creature out from his inveterate self-occupation to a knowledge of God, and ultimately to that union with God which is the beatitude of the soul.

I love that. Our lumpy, idiosyncratic, Sunday morning attempts at worship can lead to the beatitude of the soul which is our true destiny. We can become part of the ceaseless proclamation of the Glory of God.

In order for that to happen, however, we must overcome

The tendency of all worship to decline from adoration to demand, and from the supernatural to the ethical…

New Anglican liturgies such as the Anglican Church of Canada’s supplementary Eucharistic texts reveal such a decline. The language and imagery of numbers one and two, in particular, is more about issues of political correctness and ethics than about unconditional adoration.

Selfless adoration is the goal of worship for Underhill. Such adoring, undemanding, worship

…advances that transfiguration of the whole universe which is the Coming of the kingdom of God. 

Your Kingdom come, indeed.

1 comments:

Anthony said...

Yes, sadly we seem to spend a lot more time just trying not to offend one another these days. Everything seems to be about tolerance. We tolerate everyone's rights to do what they decide they'd like to do. We do it so much that we seem to be sterilizing our response to God.

I believe God can see through it and can still see a genuine intent to worship when it exsists, but we seem to filter our response first through social filters that involve questions about what our response will cause other people to think or feel. In a way, we respond to God second and people first because they (society) govern the filter we apply to our responses to God.

It's a tough filter to just turn around and ignore though.

Thu Feb 16, 02:22:00 AM MST