Thursday, May 24, 2012

Good Post: Ives on Retention of Youth

I like to read the West Port Experiment blog, written by Rev. Michael Ives of the Presbyterian Reformed Church of Rhode Island.  (My sister and her husband visited that PRC last summer, and enjoyed hearing Rev. Ives and getting to know him a little bit.)

I thought Mr. Ives' latest post was particularly interesting, on a topic my friends and family discuss often--retention of our youth.  Yes, Christian education is a big part of keeping our children in the church, but it's obviously not the only factor!  Click here to read more:

Building Multi-Generational Reformed Churches

Update: Mr. Ives has written a "Part II" on the subject.  While the first post focused on the duties of parents, this one focuses on the duties of ministers and elders.

Church Catechesis and the Retention of her Youth

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

a cappella: two words, two p's, two l's

On Friday we had a psalm sing, at Carl's place this time.  We were missing all of our bass singers, and one of our altos, but by switching Sam from tenor to bass (he's versatile like that) we had at least one person for each part.  We reviewed the short meter tune Golden Hill, then moved on to Wiltshire.  We've been singing Wiltshire for years and know it well, but half of us were singing the end one way and half the other, so we agreed to do it "by the book" from here on out.

A cappella singing is hard sometimes, especially when you're the only person singing your part.  Several people kindly pointed out that my timing was a bit off in the last line.  So, I tried to more closely follow Jeshurun's conducting.  My timing sounded fine to me, but the others said no, I still didn't have it quite right.  Supposedly my timing was clashing with that of the tenors, but I just couldn't hear what I was doing wrong, and listening to the recording, I still can't.  Can you? :)

Psalm 84:7-12 to Wiltshire


I'm so happy to finally have a decent recording of the second half of Psalm 84.  Now I just need a good recording of the first half, sung to University, of course!

We also worked on the tune Glenluce, but few of us knew it.  Perhaps next time we'll work on it again.