April fools--church music style

Sunday was April Fools Day. One of my church music friends sent me this for amusement only:

Organist/Choir Director/Church Secretary/Bell Director/Sexton COMBO, Memorial
of the Memorial Church, 666 Insanity Lane, Styx, VA 22207 Church membership:
7,200 families. Ann. salary: $125,000 plus benefits, use of church Lexus, and housing
stipend of $10,000 per month. Play nine Sunday Services, three daily services, weddings
and funerals. Rehearse and accompany eight vocal and bell choirs. Organize, direct,
and publicize six-eight special music programs each year. Must be comfortable
with classical, traditional, contemporary, Gospel, Christian Rock, Taize, Jazz, Dixieland,
and high Anglican worship styles, with excellent sight-reading, improvisation,
organ, piano, janitorial, bulletin folding, and lawn mowing skills. Open score reading,
lead-sheet reading, and chair moving skills is a plus. One Sunday and two weekdays
of paid vacation annually. Under the ultra critical watchful eye of the Senior Pastor.
Please call Ricky Wrinkle at 703-555-1 OMG (church).

Communion tunes

Last Sunday (Feb. 5) we celebrated communion. I played several tunes softly as people moved to the stations and communed. Here are the titles I played: "How Can I Say Thanks" (Crouch); "Break Thou the Bread of Life" (#360); "Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore" (#229); "Open My Eyes That I May See" (#517).

Let me know if you have requests for next time.

early Christmas gift at office door

At work, I got my first gift of the season, along with each of the other staff members. The donor was an annonymous angel. Thanks for reusing nice Nescafe bottles, for a home-grown, hand-made treat. Here's how fast mine went in one day. Had a little help at home :)

Hymn sing Nov. 20

I'm leading a hymn sing 4:30 p.m., this Sunday, Nov. 20 at Neffsville. Here's the title page of the program:

Come out and “occupy the hymnal”
Hymn Sing
Sunday, November 20, 2011, 4:30 p.m.
at Neffsville Mennonite Church
An afternoon of classic and gospel hymns
led by Glenn Lehman, assisted by
Jessica Spieser-Landes and a vocal ensemble

To see the list of hymns click here: http://www.harmonies.org/11.20.song.list.harmonies.pdf. See you!

One minor feature will be the first hymn, "In Thy Holy Place We Bow," published in 1911 by my favorite Mennonite composer, J. D. Brunk.

hymns outside

After playing the service at Neffsville in the morning, I went to the orchard of the 1719 Herr House and led half of the outdoor hymn sing. There were perhaps 50 persons there, selecting songs from three old Mennonite hymnals: 1902 Church and Sunday School; 1927 Church Hymnal; and the 1938 Life Songs. I might have dropped a few notes, but the tree behind me was dropping black walnuts at about the same frequency. photo by Sarah Schrock