My old friend Bob McAlister asked me to promote this on the blog, and I thought, “Why not?”
First Baptist Church of Columbia and Brookland Baptist Church will combine choirs, orchestras and congregations on Sunday, April 10, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. for Night of Joy, an inaugural event at the new Spirit Communications Park on Bull Street. Joining these churches will be Village Church and The New Laurel Street Missionary Baptist Church. The concert will also feature song selections from combined children’s choirs from all four churches, the Brookland Baptist Men’s Choir, the Capital City Chorale, and the Praise Band from Village Church.
From the tragedy at Mother Emmanuel to the October flood, South Carolina is on the path to recovery and being stronger than ever because we have leaned on our faith and learned to lean on each other, regardless of race. We invite all members of the Columbia community to join us for this free event as we celebrate on April 10, 2016, for a Night of Joy.
“Our churches have a habit of coming together to glorify our Lord and Savior and we are looking forward to lifting our voices up to celebrate Jesus at the stadium on Bull Street,” said Dr. Wendell Estep, Pastor of First Baptist Church Columbia.
“We are delighted to bring our churches together at Spirit Communications Park to praise the Lord and have the opportunity to fill the stadium with prayer before the Fireflies get their season started,” said Dr. Charles Jackson, Sr., Pastor of Brookland Baptist Church.
Night of Joy will be the inaugural event at Spirit Communications Park, truly showcasing the stadium’s mixed-use functionality. “We wanted to build a facility like Spirit Communications Park for this very reason. Our intent is for this facility to be utilized by the Columbia community far beyond playing baseball,” said Jason Freier, owner of the MiLB Franchise the Columbia Fireflies who will be playing at Spirit Communications Park. -###-
Bob’s interests in this are: He’s a member (I think) of First Baptist, and his firm does communications for the folks developing Bull Street….
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” the Praise Band from Village Church.”
That’s my church… the band is excellent but not for “old school” churchgoers. Some old ladies may be overcome with the vapors when they hear “How Great Thou Art” played on electric guitar. There was also a five week stretch back in September when they played U2, Boston, the Police, and a couple other rock band songs as lead in to the message. We had a standing room only crowd yesterday for three services.
I like upbeat modern worship songs at church- along with some hymns thrown in here and there too.
even as a younger person, I don’t go to church to hear U2 and Boston songs though. Not my style.
I like me some Bach and some Mendelssohn, with some good ol’ Wesley tunes thrown in. And what the old hymnals used to call “negro spirituals.” I think maybe they’re just called “spirituals” now. Somehow I got through Holy Week without hearing “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord),” and I’m the poorer for it.
I used to play guitar and sing in the church folk choir, but on the whole, I don’t see that music as sufficiently substantial.
Give me gravitas.
That doesn’t mean I want everything to sound like a dirge. I want beauty — beauty AND gravitas. Majesty, that’s what I want…
But I don’t like organ music. Give me a nice grand piano and some fine voices, with a trumpet now or then when it can add something special. Strings can be good, too.
On the whole, I don’t want artificial amplification. I’ve been in churches where someone with a piercing natural voice is unnecessarily amplified, and the effect is disastrous…
OK, confessional time.
I didn’t go to Holy Thursday Mass, or the Good Friday service. So that’s why I missed “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord).”
Missed the Vigil, too. Missed the whole Triduum. Made it to Passion Sunday and Easter Sunday, though — which still makes me a slacker Catholic. I mean, even Protestants , with their crosses that conveniently leave off the suffering Jesus, go to church on those days. As Carla said on “Cheers,” ours is not supposed to be a religion for wusses.
So I feel bad, but now I’ve confessed to you, my brothers and sisters. Got a penance for me? I’d say a Rosary but I don’t know how. They didn’t teach us converts that…
Agreed.
I know which side of the argument you’d be on in Footloose.
Have you given a contemporary service a try? I’ve spent many Sunday’s in Episcopal and old school Southern Baptist churches. We liked the music at FBC but we love the music at VillageChurch.
The message in the music is still the same.
Plus I guess having women singing with men might offend the sensibilities of some people.
Oh good gracious. Can anyone have an opinion different from yours? Is that okay?
Sure. But if you follow this back to where it started, I made a statement of my opinion and you and Brad responded with the different opinion. Your opinion was so important that you felt the desire to write a separate post on your own blog. All I asked was whether you had given other forms of religious musical expression a try before locking down your opinion. I have.
I don’t know about Bryan but, as I said above, I HAVE “given other forms of religious musical expression a try.” I mentioned I was part of the contemporary choir at my church back in the 80s. But on the whole, I don’t like that form as much as the more traditional stuff.
I’m reminded of when I was in the youth choir at the base chapel at MacDill AFB around 1970. We were always pushing to include “our” music among the traditional stuff, with some encouragement from the lady in charge.
At one point, I thought we were going to get to use what was then my very favorite song, “Let It Be” — which as you know is a very churchy-sounding song.
But two things stymied us. First, our adviser got wind that “Mother Mary” could be a reference to marijuana. She confronted us with that, and we said yeah, some people might read that into it, but you could read anything into anything. (She would have been horrified had she searched the cigarette pack my friend Jack, another choir member, always had in his shirt pocket — he usually had a joint or two tucked in among the conventional coffin nails.)
Then I heard about the really outrageous objection to our doing it. Our group performed at the Protestant services, not the Catholic ones that were also held in the same space, this being the military (the clear cross that hung over the altar was on an arrangement of wires so that it could be swung aside behind a curtain and replaced with a Catholic crucifix). It seems one of the Protestant chaplains, one of an Evangelical background, thought “Mother Mary” sounded too papist…
So after some rehearsals that I enjoyed, we never got to perform it before the congregation…
Yeah. I’ve gone to plenty of non-traditional services with non-traditional music. Not my cup of tea.
I’ll be there as part of the First Baptist choir. Looking forward to it!