Weekly briefing on hymns to be sung in the Sunday worship - a breakthrough in hymnody for May 3, 2020

Pastor Aline Russell selected the new lyric Emmaus bound on Easter Day for this particular Sunday, the second Sunday after the Resurrection Day, on April 16.

1. The concept of Easter as a season with many lessons to study repetitively, rather than a day. The Christian, especially the Protestants' concept of reviewing the old stories for new teachings continuously, implies that we need to sing the old songs with new imagination, theology, and strength for following Jesus. Old song with new spirits and old body with new life that is filled with new faith.  Faith renewal.
2. The melody of this song contains a simple but basic of song structure: a call followed by an echo. Every family can create own lyric for singing the calling and the echoing among the family members.
3. Is this an emotional lyric? an emotional singing? This is a lyric of narratives that retell a story, rather than an emotive outlet of something going on in the mind. Try to count the number of adjective and adverbs. Just found an error "a long the way" should be "along the way", But the emotion is displayed through the plain narratives by the assistance of the rhythm. half-beat followed by a long note. We select the melody with long note in a 4/4, instead of another one with shorter note in a 3/4 pattern. The 4/4 pattern is close to the pattern of walking steadily while the 3/4 is the pattern of walking with flair and emotion. The short hold make the singing more like rushing with steady pattern with unspoken motivation.
4. Having the lyrics in multiple languages help us comprehend the whole thing with extra insights. Comparing the different translation usually help relieving our limitation and bias. When translating the lyric the wording and even the placing of the words have to be sacrificed. Look at how the Mandarin and the Taiwanese versions express more than the English original at the end of the first verse. The upward melody at the end proves a sense of relief. Among the "crucified" in the English original, "in the stone cave" in Mandarin, and "in a tomb" in Taiwanese,  which one express the sense of relief better? While the directions of the melody have different kinds of implications and potential for expression, the composer-lyricists might have more complicate considerations than the pure literal-only lyricists. How could the lyrics be adjusted to go along or take advantages of the existing melody? Lyric-translators have the opportunity, by switching the locations of some words. Sometimes, in editing for hymnals, the lyrics might be adjusted by editorial boards, many years after the lyricist passed away and the copyrights expired.  
5.  2020/4/29 8:02  There are two major sectors in a hymn-brief before the selected hymn were sung in a worship service. The literal elaboration of the thoughts and senses around the hymn and the voice based demonstration of the singing and playing. The literal could be shared in a blog in details and discussion continuously. For a briefing the literal could be display on the screen as a slide image. Note, the slide image has different format than a paragraph in an article. Due to the special situation of a moving demonstration the slide image need to use large font with minimized information for short glances. I will try this in the first trial of the video briefing on May 3, 2020. (8:07)
6. For preparation, the points of briefing would be listed, in a slide-editor app, first before they are prioritized for the video. (This might help others who are willing to explore the methods for this particular ministry,) (8:09) Whatever listed above would be the beginning points for the slide making today.(8:10) (Keep documenting the timing of writing helps me minimize the distraction and sidetracking while working on this. I wish there be an easy time-stamping macro to use. 8:11)