We often hear that “singing, as a part of religious service, is as much an act of worship as is prayer” (Christian Education 62.4). How then can believers thrive when congregational singing is omitted, when services are abbreviated and/or held online due to global COVID-19 restrictions? I faced this challenge during our rural church's brief lockdown last spring. I want to share the online musical opportunity, available through May, which I am enjoying.
Late last spring, while sending links to our newly-adapted Youtube Sabbath services via Facebook, I caught my friend Ellen Ashton Francisco's invite to a Sabbath evening hymn sing via Zoom.
Dear friends,
We greatly enjoy singing hymns together, even virtually while miles apart. Please consider joining us each Sabbath evening....
We sing for about an hour, and we take requests. There's a core group on location, to give you the foundation to sing with.I've set up a Zoom meeting...Share it with anyone you think may be interested. It's open to all!
I was ecstatic. COVID-19 church lockdowns, followed by restrictive re-opening guidelines, had my music-loving heart quite frustrated and lonely. Finally, a group to sing with!
I remembered the Ashton family from my years at Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists (now Southern Adventist University). They were active in several college music groups. Ellen's father, Dr. Bruce Ashton, taught in the music department. Their hymn sing would be top-quality. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, in one hour I'd sing with a host of likeminded believers!
Making the Joyful Noise
The Zoom hymn sing format is simple: After a welcome and opening prayer, Ellen announces the hymns and they appear in the chat window. Dr. Bruce gives the starting pitch, and we all contribute a joyful noise, and a joyful face if we leave the video on. Come, Christians, Zoom to Sing!
The core group renders the first stanza in unison, the remainder in four-part harmony. Ellen's husband Jeremy, once my clarinet cohort in band and now a professional conductor, handles the technical side. He keeps the equipment running and answers the chat. We effect an a cappella choir, each singing along with the host site but muted from the group due to “latency,” Jeremy explains.
Hymn requests accumulate in the chat window. Faces appear and hymnals open, all across the screen. I request a hymn, and sing contentedly. After the 14th hymn, Dr. Bruce offers a lovely prayer to close our fellowship and commemorate another blessed Sabbath.
As we closed, I asked our hosts, “How long have you been doing this hymn sing? It’s fabulous—just what I needed to close the Sabbath!”
“We've been doing this since May,” Jeremy explained, “since they closed the churches, and we'll do it as long as we need to do it. God's people find creative ways to meet and worship. And we had close to 80 people in and out this evening. Yes, please share the link as you like.”
“We're sort of making a tradition of ending with #669, 'The Lord Bless You and Keep You,'” Ellen added. Good choice. The lyrics are encouraging; the closing amens feed my soul.
Another tradition of Ellen's is keeping a personal log of hymn selections across the evenings. “This is a new one for our list,” she might say when introducing a hymn. I flip through my hymnal in hopes of finding another “new one” for Ellen. I hear a responding rumble in her living room. “I wouldn't mind if we didn't keep a list,” says an older male voice. It's all in good fun and family harmony.
The Zoom venue was encouraging. I glimpsed many households praising God along with me. As the meeting closed, Ellen had us unmute ourselves and give a short introduction, including our location. Ashton family members and friends greeted each other, and too soon, we were offline.
During the next week I thought to ask Dr. Ashton for suggestions on sacred piano arrangements to use in my church work. I bought a set of three books he had arranged; I found them pleasantly full of useful and unique arrangements. Hindsight says I should have taken some music classes from Dr. Ashton while at Southern.
Handel's Messiah?
In mid-November I sent Ellen a message on Facebook: “Any ideas on a Zoom Sing-along Messiah? Our local group is not able to put it on this year due to COVID (What else is new?). If it were like your Sabbath hymn sings, with a core group plus strings, we could sing along from home.” On December 14, Ellen posted this:
Because Christmas just isn't Christmas without Handel's Messiah, my family and a few close friends are hosting an online Sing/Play-along! It's this Saturday, December 19, at 6:00 p.m. {EST}, and you can find everything you need, from Zoom registration (to get the correct link), to music to download, at this site: https://synchronous-hausmusik-fall-20.webnode.com/messia.../ Share and join us!
YES, YES, YES! My Christmas would now be complete. I registered and received confirmation and instructions. While counting the days, I logged onto Zoom one Thursday evening to take in Ellen's weekly Synchronous HausMusik string ensemble, also via Zoom. More lovely talent, beautiful selections. I continued practicing with my Robert Shaw Messiah CD in the car, and located my Messiah score. I cleared my schedule.
The Messiah event was well attended. Again I saw happy faces, a few familiar ones, and children joining exuberantly in this most majestic oratorio. The string players were talented. The soloists likewise, and when I sang the solos with them they didn't mind a bit, as I was muted. A bonus for me was the trumpeter on “The Trumpet Shall Sound”. He was outstanding. Imagine when Jesus raises the dead!
When we did Number 21, “His Yoke is Easy”, my year was complete. This chorus, with its difficult trills and high leaps, was a stretch for my voice, but consistent practice enabled me to sing it well in public a year ago, and the spiritual application was so plain I had chosen “His yoke is easy” (Matthew 11:30) as my motto for 2020, never imagining how tested yet true this motto would be.
Current Musical Opportunities
Ellen sent out a follow-up email after our Zoom Messiah:
Dear musical friends,
I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the absolutely incredible experience we had last night. While it's rewarding enough to sing and play Messiah on the small in-person scale we could, to have each of you choose to spend that time with us was such a gift!
Many of you are friends of friends, and we haven't the pleasure of knowing you personally. I hope that will change sometime! We enjoyed so much sharing this experience with you.
For those of you we do know, your presence online warmed our hearts all over again!
Through a technological glitch we lost all the entries you put into chat saying where you are from! If you don't mind, drop me a response to this email so we know?
Even without that information, I can tell you we had folks online from:
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Washington
West Virginia
Wyoming
and Tennessee, where we were broadcasting from the campus of Southern Adventist University. (I realized last night that I never thanked Southern for their hospitality!)
There were possibly as many as 150 connections through the evening, many with multiple people per connection.
That's a lot, folks! I guess it shows that so very many of us hunger for this kind of soul-filling.
Below are a couple of invitations for ways to continue the joy. I hope you'll read through them, and consider participating all through next semester....
Synchronous HausMusik (click for website)
If you are a string player, please consider joining us each Thursday at 7:00 p.m., beginning January 14, 2021, for Synchronous HausMusik. We explore as much chamber music repertoire as we can get away with, with a combination of standard masterworks and lesser-known, but very tonal, compositions by forgotten composers....
Zoom Hymn Sing
If you sing, and love hymns, we invite you to sing hymns with us every Saturday at 6:00 p.m. (during standard time) for a Hymn Sing from the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal. We will be singing every week till the end of May....
If you don't have an Adventist hymnal, here's where you can obtain one: https://adventistbookcenter.com/the-seventh-day-adventist-hymnal-blue-cover.html. The hymns in our hymnal are generally standards in most every denomination. You can find many of them in your own hymnal, though there will be some differences.
NOTE: We have just added a required Zoom registration for Hymn Sing. Register one time with Zoom (as you did for Messiah), and then you'll have access every week.
Here's the link to register: https://southern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUkcOyhpzstGNC0S7Lt14_Xr6F4NG-XgOfk
Donations
While we provide these opportunities absolutely for free, we do incur costs for equipment and time, as well as training and expertise. If you feel blessed by your involvement and can make a donation, we are grateful. Click here to support us financially.
The best thing you can do to encourage us is to spread the word!
Grab Your Hymnal!
Last week I joined the hymn sing again. The group was smallish, mostly Ashton family members, but the music was exceptional, and I relished this melodious Sabbath-closing hour.
So, from Arkansas (lost from Ellen's state list), I want to especially invite you to the weekly Sabbath evening hymn sing (and maybe a spring Messiah?). Click the link(s) above to get involved. What better way can we close God's holy day than to lift our hearts in vocal worship? Come, Christians, Zoom to sing!
“I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord” (Psalm 104:33-34).
Holly Joers makes a joyful noise with voice and piano from the Arkansas Ozarks, where local prayer meetings, Sabbath school and church services currently include plenty of congregational singing.