Month: August 2014

This is the final blog entry inspired by the 2014 tour of the Living Proof Youth Choir (LPYC) of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas.  It isn’t meant to be a summary of the tour, but a set of reflections prompted by events on the trip.

I wanted to blog and figured if choir tour didn’t give me enough material, then nothing could, so I challenged myself to write an entry per day.  OK, I fudged it a little by combining some days, but I had good reasons.  Here we come to the last entry for choir tour – but not for the blog!

Enough time has passed that any emotional high I got from the trip has been beaten back into submission by everyday life, which makes it a good time to add some final remarks.

The one-word sermon for this trip would have to be connections.  You can tell from the previous entries that the music provided a common ground for the choir to make connections with people who didn’t live in their everyday world.  If New Kingdom Church can feel like family, if you can share stories with the people at Breakthrough Ministries, if you can hold the shaking hand of an elderly woman and tell her about your school, you’ve made connections.

The final stop on tour is our own church.  The choir sings for the three worship services we have in the sanctuary.  The congregation is parents, siblings, and friends, but there’s still the challenge of connecting.

We did our final devotional while on the road back to Plano.  Our group’s discussion moved from the devotional to that very challenge.  How can we communicate to the people at home what kind of week we had?  I could tell a difference in their singing as the week passed.  Those songs had people and stories attached to them and singing was a way to reconnect with those people and those stories.  It’s the step beyond owning the message:  the message owns you.

This was not just the last stop on the tour.  Trey, the director, was leaving our church to move back to Alabama.  For the past three years Trey has been a director, example, mentor, friend, coach, resource, you-name-it for the youth in this choir.  Trey would do anything for these youth and they would do anything for him.  (He also writes a very good blog.)

So they sang the three services.  The congregation loved the music, as we knew they would.  The video told some of the stories from the tour.  For the third service, the chaperones made the congregation stand and clap for Praise His Holy Name, just to try to capture that feeling.

Then it came time for that last song at the last service and the last time Trey would lead the choir.  This was about more than the last week, it was about the last three years.  How do you get through a song that means goodbye?  You do it by connecting.  As Trey stepped up to direct, the singers on the front row joined hands, followed by the second row, then the next and the next.  Our connections make us stronger.  As we made those connections outside ourselves, it became easier to make those connections between ourselves.  It’s hard to wipe your eyes when you’re holding hands, but the choir managed to cry, sing, and hold hands all at once.

Trey thanked the congregation, stepped back to the choir and fell into the largest group hug I’ve ever seen.

I don’t think the choir could have shown the congregation everything they experienced that week, but that moment said a lot.

I began this series with a challenge to myself, so let me end it with a challenge to you.  There are really only two things God wants you to do:  to love and serve God and to love and serve your neighbor.  It’s a short and difficult list, but when you’re doing it, you realize that this is Reality.  I believe for a week this past July, the Living Proof Youth Choir did it as well as fallible humans can.  The challenge is to bring Reality into your everyday lives.  You start by connecting.

This is one of a set of blog entries inspired by the 2014 tour of the Living Proof Youth Choir (LPYC) of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas.  It isn’t meant to be a summary of the tour, but a set of reflections prompted by events on the trip.

Day Seven (Friday) was a play day and Day Eight (Saturday) a travel day.  We spent most of Friday at Six Flags St. Louis, then travelled to Springfield, MO.  We spent all of Saturday travelling from Springfield to Plano.  Saturday night was the night of the tour we could spend in our own beds.  The final day of tour was signing all three Sunday services in the CUMC sanctuary.  I’ll write about Sunday morning in the final post of this series.

We spent Friday night with our nighttime devotional, then our traditional tribute to the seniors.  Each senior chooses someone to speak to how much that senior has meant to the youth program.

Trey would allow them stay up all night if an adult stayed up all night with them.  I volunteered.  I learned a lot, but not anything what I’d want to share in a blog.  I spent much of Saturday asleep.

Other random thoughts:

• The theme of the tour was “My Life is in Your Hands”, but Order My Steps seemed to be the song of the tour.
• One of our group pictures was photo bombed in front of Chicago’s Field Museum.  Check the back row for an unfamiliar face.
• This quote kept coming to mind:  “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou.
• I can’t call these singing engagements concerts.  I’ve been calling them “experiences.”
• “Church” is a much bigger place than just your congregation.
• I haven’t done justice to the end of the day devotionals.  Within the bound of the devotional topic, it’s a free for all.  A lot of fundamental issues and a lot of great questions.  We might have even answered some of them.

I’m leaving the rest of the space for other people’s comments.  Feel free to add a comment.

(Image is “day 291_the big list” by Ana C. on Flickr.  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This is one of a set of blog entries inspired by the 2014 tour of the Living Proof Youth Choir (LPYC) of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas.  It isn’t meant to be a summary of the tour, but a set of reflections prompted by events on the trip.

Imagine you’re trying to rebuild your life from scratch.  You’re a guest (client) at Breakthrough Ministries in Chicago.  They’ve helped you find a job and provided room and board to help your transition to living on your own again.  It is hard work pulling yourself back together, but you carry a song with you.

Order my steps in your Word, dear Lord,

Lead me guide me every day

Send your anointing, Father, I pray

Order my steps in your word

Imagine you’ve just eaten a breakfast cooked by a youth choir from Texas and now they’re lining up to sing.  Their first song?  Order My Steps.  It is a word from God.

For Linda at Breakthrough Ministries in Chicago, there’s nothing to imagine.  It happened.

Breakthrough Ministries serves the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago.  It’s not far from the Austin neighborhood and New Kingdom Church.  Breakthrough has a variety of programs that provide men and women with the tools to make a new start.  They help them find jobs, provide transitional housing, medical and mental health services, assistance in finding housing, all with the goal of enabling their guests to become self-sufficient.  They also provide after school programs for youth, pre-K education, and a food pantry.  Be sure to watch the video on the Breakthrough Ministries web site.

The Seniors got up early on Wednesday and Thursday mornings to cook breakfast for the guests.  The rest of the choir joined them and we sang as the guests ate and got ready to start their days.  We visited the men’s facility on Wednesday and the women’s on Thursday.  We weren’t sure what to expect.  We were told that sometimes the guests in the women’s facility were coming out of abusive relationships and weren’t ready to open up to strangers.  Once we got there, I felt like we were back in New Kingdom Church.

We met Linda at the women’s facility.  I was recording a video of the singing and saw Linda singing along to every word of Order My Steps.  She would lift her hands, stop to wipe her eyes, then lift her hands again.  The choir had a chance to visit with her later and she shared her story.

We met Sylvester at the men’s facility.  He’s part of a musical trio made up of Breakthrough guests, The Breakthrough Trio.  The other two guys weren’t there, but he sang “To God Be the Glory” for us.  Another guest at the same table wasn’t about to be outdone and sang “He is My All in All”.

This choir is used to presenting music to people.  They’re used to people who appreciate the music’s beauty.  They’re used to people who enjoy their commitment to singing.

They’re not used to music as common ground.  They’re not used to meeting people who have been given something to hang onto, those times when there is no difference between music and prayer.

This is a link to a video of the entire tour.  You’ll see Sylvester standing and clapping at the men’s facility.  You’ll see Linda singing and wiping her eyes at the women’s facility.  You’ll see some in our choir stop to wipe their eyes.  One of the voiceover messages says it best:  “Sometimes all a person needs is the right words, at the right time, sung with the right amount of love.”  We are blessed so that we may be a blessing.

That was Chicago.  It formed the axis about which this tour turned.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal said, “What you seek, you will find.  What you summon, will find you.”  What we found and what found us were far more wonderful than anything we could have imagined.  We beckoned lovely and made the most of our time here.

(Image is “Breakfast is Ready at Miriam’s Kitchen” by GEOFFREY DUDGEON on FLICKR, CC-BY-NC 2.0)

This is one of a set of blog entries inspired by the 2014 tour of the Living Proof Youth Choir (LPYC) of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas.  It isn’t meant to be a summary of the tour, but a set of reflections prompted by events on the trip.

I thought we were in the wrong place.

I asked Connor, my navigator, where we were supposed to be.  He said New Kingdom Church.  That’s what the sign said.  I was driving the van, we got separated from the bus, and Connor used his phone to get us here.  We had obviously beaten the bus.  Two men were grilling and I knew the church was going to feed us, so this looked like the place.  It’s not like all our other engage­ments had been in cathedrals, but this place was small.  It was surrounded by a steel fence with an auto­matic gate, probably to prevent vandalism.  This was not our usual venue, not our usual neighbor­hood.  But it looked like the right place, so I got out to say hello.

I met Derrell, the youth pastor, and he looked confused, too.  I said we were from the choir that was singing tonight, which got rid of some confusion.  When I told him we had a bus with the rest of the choir, it got rid of the rest.  The bus pulled up and as choir got off the bus in their blacks and whites, the ties and dresses, I saw Derrell brighten up.  Trey and Jim, the director and accompanist, began talking to the men and I went inside to change into my dress up clothes.

We were at the right place.  New Kingdom Church is a nondenominational, African-American church on the in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.  It isn’t far from where we sang that morning, the By The Hand Club for Kids.  That organization “helps children who live in high-risk inner-city neighborhoods have abundant lives.”  Those children, elementary school aged, loved having the “big kids” come play with them.  I saw some chil­dren of that age at New Kingdom and wondered if some of them either went to By The Hand or knew someone who did.

Elvis Costello said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”  It’s hard to convey what hap­pened that night.  Everyone knows African-American worship carries an enthusiasm that Anglo worship doesn’t.  The effect on the choir was dramatic.  The first songs went well, but as time went by the choir and the congregation connected.  Shouts from the congregation became part of the song.  Lines from the songs demanded and received responses from the congregation.

The choir sang a while, then New Kingdom showed us their best.  We saw their dance team, heard a young lady sing who was headed to college on a music scholarship, and heard from another on how much God had done in her life through New Kingdom’s ministry.  Then the choir sang more.

There are a lot of songs I could write about, but I want to lift up two.

The song Order My Steps is a prayer, but on that night it was preaching.  The congregation added its voice to each request:  to order our steps and our tongues in Your Word, to guide our feet and wash our hearts in Your Word, to be shown how to walk and talk in Your Word.  Each line built on the next, with the choir stepping up to match the intensity of the congregation.  All the dynamics, all the phrasing, all those things choir directors have to pull out of their choirs, came naturally out of the choir as the congregation and the director shaped the music.

Trey moved the high energy Praise His Holy Name to the end of the program.  I’ve seen videos of other choirs doing this song, with their directors desperately trying to get them to loosen up.  That wasn’t our problem.  The choir was ready; the congregation was willing.  “Praise His Holy Name” was a com­mand to the congre­gation – and they followed.  I wrote about this already, but it became clear the song was going to end too soon, so Trey drew it out.  It was guys only, girls only, with and without piano, always with shouts every time the music changed.  Trey brought it to an end and the room exploded.

I can’t call this a performance or a concert.  Everybody did something to make it happen; everything came together.  We were in the right place.

New Kingdom’s kids took the choir downstairs to eat.  It was a replay of that morning, with the younger kids thrilled to have the attention of the older kids.  We later learned a man came in from the street, wondering what all the singing was about, and stayed to hear the rest of the music.  A lady from New Kingdom told us she was going to set up the food and leave, but decided to stay when she heard the singing.  I heard my favorite line of the week:  “When I closed my eyes, I forgot you were a white choir.”

This is another root of theology.  How is it that people that are so different are so alike?  What brings us to­gether?  How did this music become our common ground?  To find out, you have to leave the comfort zone of where you are, live in someone else’s world, and let them share with you.  When you close your eyes, you forget the differences.  You under-stand you’re in the right place.

Both my parents came from large families.  I remember family gatherings and summer nights in Arkansas, running around in someone’s front yard with my sister and cousins.  The adults would tell us it was time to go and eventually herded us into our cars, but I don’t think they wanted to leave any more than we did.  It was getting time to leave New Kingdom, so I left the building and stepped into a front yard in Arkansas.  Kids from the Austin neighborhood were running around with upper middle class suburban kids, in between groups of chap­er­ones and church members.  After talking for a while, and a while more, we herded ourselves onto the bus and the van.  I don’t think anyone wanted to leave, but tomorrow was going to be an early day.  We had to break up the family gathering.

When this evening started, we weren’t sure what to expect from each other, but when you close your eyes, there’s some things you forget – and some things you learn.  The opinion on the van was unanimous:  Best Choir Experience Ever.

That happens when you’re in the right place.