One of the most common questions I’m asked is: ‘How are you doing congregational worship in these times? And what about Christmas?’
Here are some of the things I’ve been saying.
Recognise your limitations, but do not project them onto our Sovereign God. My mother was known for telling me to wear a pullover when she was cold! We may be under restrictions, but He is not restricted. He can come into every room, every mind and every heart. If we are to communicate the gospel this Christmas and adorn it with appropriate music, then let’s approach this season with faith and imagination. As a retired professor friend often says to me – every threat represents an opportunity!
Participation
A fundamental of congregational worship is participation, putting good words with the right melody on people’s lips so that the theology penetrates their hearts. In online church people can sing along at home. But other churches are doing hybrid church – what we call the Roomers and the Zoomers!
In this situation, where the congregation are not permitted to sing, try asking people to say the verse of one of the songs. Recently, I sang ‘By Faith’ and we all said the last chorus, before I repeated it in song. This Christmas, ask the congregation to say one verse of ‘Once in Royal ‘. ‘And our eyes at last shall see Him’ would work well before the last verse with its soaring descant.
Consider the location of your carol event. One vicar in Cheshire is hiring a drive-in cinema for his Children’s Service to encourage participation! How about singing carols outside church, socially distanced, as people come to your carol service? Participation helps us reconnect to the text in a powerful way. After all, when did you last simply read them?
Simplicity and focus
Choir singing may be with limited numbers, so something large scale will be difficult. Ed Welch has some helpful wisdom in a recent article on school education. He recognises the weariness felt by all educators, and his advice is to simplify what we try to do.
Try using a single singing voice. My highlight for Easter this year was Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Amazing Grace’ outside the Milan Duomo. Using a backing track, it was especially moving to hear this single blind tenor sing of the grace that made him see.
For variation, a duet or voice and single instrument would apply light and shade to what will probably be a shorter, simpler event.
I’m convinced there needs to be one moment in any carol event that especially opens the heart, and this is best placed close to the talk. A recent invitation to sing carols at Manchester Metropolitan’s business school used their open-plan atrium, reaching up four floors. Our soprano’s ‘O Holy Night’ brought everyone out of the classrooms and was the opportunity for me to share the good news.
God’s purposes are not to be thwarted, but there was one way He deliberately allowed himself to be confined. The pregnant Mary was indeed in ‘confinement’, and the poet John Donne touches on this paradox of confinement in The Annunciation.
Yea, thou art now thy Maker’s maker,
and thy Father’s mother,
Thou hast light in dark;
and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.
Confined for a season, Christ’s word has gone to the ends of the earth. We, who have the words of eternal life, have immensity cloistered in the womb of our churches. Find ways this Christmas for that word to come to light!
