Staying Alive All through Eastertide
Author – Ginny Chilton Maxwell is Music Minister at Church of the Ascension in Norfolk, Virginia, where she serves as organist, choirmaster, and elementary music teacher. On Easter Day we celebrate that Jesus came back to life, but starting the day after Easter most of us in ministry, and music ministry specifically, feel anything but […]
2nd of April 2018
“The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting”
Author – Adam Perez is a doctoral student in liturgical studies at Duke Divinity School. Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia! This past holy week, I was reminded of a song from Mumford & Sons’ triple-Platinum,[1] break out album Sigh No More (Glassnote Records, 2009). This folk/rock/bluegrass-inspired album is packed with religious material […]
22nd of March 2018
Bilingual Worship: Lessons I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Author – Rosa Cándida Ramírez is the Worship Pastor of La Fuente Ministries, an intercultural, intergenerational bilingual ministry in Pasadena, California. The following are lessons that I have learned while leading bilingual worship. 1. Give up the idea of comfort. Leading worship bilingually is hard. It takes a LOT of work to […]
8th of March 2018
Sing in the Face of Death
Author – Adam Perez is a doctoral student in liturgical studies at Duke Divinity School. When I finally ascended to leadership in my college campus music ministry, one of my first tasks was to purge our music files. We’d been using a 3-inch, 3-ring binder system for organization. Over the previous decade+ our binders bloated to […]
14th of February 2018
Atonement Theology, Our Actions, Our Song
We’d like to welcome our latest guest blogger, David Bjorlin. David is a worship pastor at Resurrection Covenant Church in Chicago, seminary faculty member at North Park Theological Seminary, and a published hymn writer. David has found a wide range of outlets for his passion for worship and the church. His interests include hymnody, connections […]
22nd of January 2018
Appropriation or Activism? Reflections on “Global Song”
For this blog, it’s an honor to have our friend Marissa Glynias Moore as a guest writer. You may recognize Marissa’s name as the 2016 winner of The Hymn Society’s Emerging Scholars Forum. Marissa is now in the last months of her doctoral dissertation in ethnomusicology at Yale University, and her work looks at what […]
18th of December 2017
A Balancing Act: Advent and Christmas
Author – Ginny Chilton is Music Minister at Church of the Ascension in Norfolk, Virginia, where she serves as organist, choirmaster, and elementary music teacher. It’s a struggle every year: how can I balance the quiet expectation of the Advent season with the rush and excitement of Christmas? You would think that as a church musician […]
6th of December 2017
“Traditional”(?) Music for Advent and Christmas: A Recommendation
Author – Adam Perez is a doctoral student in liturgical studies at Duke Divinity School. I am going to be upfront with you that, for some, this post may contain an unwelcomed or unpopular suggestion. And I know that I kind of “missed the boat” on the timing of this post—it probably would have been more […]
21st of November 2017
I Openly Wept
Author – Rosa Cándida Ramírez is the Worship Pastor of La Fuente Ministries, an intercultural, intergenerational bilingual ministry in Pasadena, California. On Monday, October 16, 2017, at 12:00 pm I openly wept while leading worship. At the steps of Fuller Theological Seminary’s Payton Hall, I was crying in front of a group of approximately forty […]
7th of November 2017
“The Once and Future Hymnal” Event
Author – Ginny Chilton is Music Minister at Church of the Ascension in Norfolk, Virginia, where she serves as organist, choirmaster, and elementary music teacher. Welcome to the fourth entry in the Center for Congregational Song blog: Centered in Song. I’m Ginny, a 30-something organist and music minister living in Tidewater, Virginia. I’ve worked mostly for […]
