The hymn briefing is one of the new products out of the COVI-19 pandemic. It was suggested by Deacon Yu Hao as a way to enrich the online worship service due to the lockdown. It was initially suggested to be 30-minute long before the call to worship.
I was delighted to receive the suggestion and carry it ful-heartedly because I have been thinking about new ways of helping the congregations know and learn hymns beyond what we have in the hymnals. Actually, Pastor Aline, and I had started kicking around the idea without any concrete plan.
There are several boundaries we have to observe:
1. We use the hymns to be sung that same Sunday in the online worship service. So far, we only sing one hymn after the sermon.
2. The hymn of the day would be selected from a list provided by Pastor Aline, based on the availability of the existing slide set and the available time for making new presentation through youtube.com
3. The briefing has to cover the people using three major languages in the congregation: English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese. Therefore, the presentation is all visual without oral instruction except the demonstration of pronunciation and melody-singing.
4. I added that the briefing would cover the lyrics and the music, the understanding, the extending imagination regarding culture and theology, and the methods of singing.
So far, in every issue, we ran across a new ideas or a new techniques and keep exploring and improving. The video files are posted in Youtube.com for further study and learning perpetually.
Due to the limitation of every video editing software I choose to use slide-making software, e.g., Powerpoint of Microsoft to create graphic images that contain both the music transcription, the lyrics of 4 written languages, and the short sentences in two languages for instruction, questions, extended interpretation, etc. The images of each slide page are exported to jpg files. The jpg files would be overlaying the video or audio track in the video. This way the page-turning would be built to support the flow of music.
The latest addition to the methods is the pause between verses for resting of the singers and the time for reading and responding to the sentences on the screen. Recording the demonstration of reading and singing is a big challenge because it is very easy to make mistakes at different points in the flow every time the recording is tried. Fortunately, the recording is for demonstration rather than performance. The reading and singing in the demonstration focus on the enunciation rather than beauty nor perfection.
Video clips are selected to form the web to show various ways of singing and presentation reflecting different ways of interpretation. The briefing on #708, Great is Thy Faithfulness, is more like a praise song than a conventional hymn for congregational singing in a worship service. This song is not included in the PCT hymnal for good reasons. The lyrics tell God what we know about Him, like a laundry list.
This song helps me think about what a hymn should be. At this moment I have not studied the definition and the criteria of hymn yet.
The majority of the recordings I found is sung by choirs rather than ordinary congregations. They are more for performance than singing in a worship service.
“因此，我們不會灰心。即使我們的外在性質在浪費，我們的內在性質也在一天天更新。因為這種短暫的折磨正在使我們為永無止境的榮耀做好準備，因為我們不看可以看到的東西，而是看不能看到的東西。因為可以看到的是暫時的，但是看不到的是永恆的。”哥林多後書4：16-18（NRSV）
這首讚美詩寫於1986年，那年我畢業於哥倫比亞大學。它最初以國歌為生命，後來改編為讚美詩。據記載，《無盡讚美詩》的作曲家兼作家娜塔莉·史里斯的靈感來自詩人艾略特·T·S·艾略特（T. S. Eliot）的一句台詞：“我的結局是我的起點。”完成後不久，提交人的丈夫被診斷出患有癌症，並在葬禮上演唱了原版的國歌。直到1990年代初至中旬的某個時候，當我參加弗吉尼亞州長老會牧師的葬禮並第一次聽到這首歌時，我才意識到這首讚美詩。它的優美，簡單以及歌詞中包含的聲音神學立即讓我震驚。
“我們的終點是我們的起點；在我們的時代，無限；
在我們的懷疑中，有信仰；在我們的生活中，永恆。
在我們死中復活；最後是勝利
直到它的季節才露面，只有神才能看見。”
儘管它已成為許多喪葬或追悼會的首選讚美詩，但它已被放置在我們最新的讚美詩《榮耀歸給長老會讚美詩》的“耶穌基督：復活”一節中。這首讚美詩在長老會也很受歡迎，因為我經常將它作為我們明亮星期天慶祝活動的讚美詩。結果，它被包括在我們教會編纂的《珍寶讚美詩和信仰的新歌》中，以補充我們在皮尤口袋中發現的長老會讚美詩，讚美詩和靈歌。這首讚美詩被收錄在我們最新的專輯《上帝的榮耀》中。在復活節期間，在葬禮和追悼會上，甚至在任何時候我們想重申我們對基督從死裡復活的信念以及我們希望分享那個未來的任何時候，在“燈泡中有一朵花”都是一個不錯的選擇。一首讚美詩！
禱告
創作者和救贖者，我們感謝您從鱗莖中抽出的番紅花，水仙花，風信子，鳶尾花和郁金香。我們感謝您從種子中萌芽並結出果實的Ambrosia，Delicious，Gala，Honeycrisp和MacIntosh蘋果樹。我們感謝您，因為蝴蝶突破了繭的黑暗，飛進了明亮的陽光。我們感謝您從大自然獲得的這些視覺影像，使我們想起了那些在基督裡死的人的光榮復活和生命。我們奉他的名祈禱。阿們
----- 7:11 2020/7/11
This week I would try to insert some paragraphs of interpretation between the demonstrated verses of singing. This way we can increase the depth and the width of the learning.
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