I always feel like summer is a fun, freeing season for church music. Sure, there are usually fewer resources with the choir on break and instrumentalists on vacation. But I like a creative challenge!
To mark the summer as its own season at the church where I minister, I’ve invited folks to tell me their favorite hymns so I can program one or two each Sunday. And I’ve teamed up with a vocalist to have a “Bach in the Summer” series with arias and organ works. Pretty easy-peasy and so enjoyable!
If you’d like more ideas on making the “Ordinary” season of summer a special time, check out my guest post on Ashley Danyew’s blog!
P.S. Ashley’s site is FULL of solid resources for church musicians—lots of ideas for running a church music program (from the basics of starting a handbell choir to building community in your choir) and useful downloads like a music budget excel sheet and a choir sign-out calendar.
P.P.S. While we’re on the subject of Ordinary Time—check out this post by my friend Nicole Roccas. It’s about the Eastern Orthodox Apostles’ Fast (which takes place in June), but it’s also a meditation on what living out the Resurrection can look like in the “ordinary” (read: boring) seasons of life. Nicole writes: “In taking these first steps into the new, ordinary season that stretches before us, we find that we…are also a kind of bridge, called to join the Holy Resurrection with all that is ordinary in this world, to whisper eternity into mere chronology. We are called to stand on this endless shore of Christian witness, with one foot in fixed time and the other in the journey of Pascha [Easter], and to keep on standing that way for as long as God gives us breath to live.”
