Church musicians are prompt to assert that the musical practices of communal Christian worship shape us: What we sing and how we sing together forms us powerfully. Given the wealth of resources available on the topics of congregational worship and the music heard in our churches today, it is easy to be overwhelmed with new trends, new technologies, and new innovations.
Hope cannot be divorced from lament; our hope for tomorrow has a context in the suffering and sorrow that surround us today.
John MacInnis offers some historical perspective and practical ideas for how the power of music can foster cultural inclusivity in our church communities while keeping all our eyes where they belong—forever on Jesus.
The question is obviously complex, and it surely involves our heart as much as our musical skill.
If every human has been given some measure of imagination and creativeness, what keeps some people from living creatively?
When setting to music the Nicene Creed, a standard component in the Latin Mass, Renaissance composers often emphasized three words in sustained homophony: et incarnatus est, “and he became flesh.”
