What My Choir Did in 2019
So, as you can tell, I have not kept up with the “Follow My Choir” section of this blog. But it is not because the choir wasn’t doing things! It was because I’m not great at updating the blog. Also, I realized a weekly update is not super necessary for getting other churches to have sweet children’s choirs as a part of the children’s ministry, which is the goal of this blog. I did want to do a year-end round up for posterity, though. And maybe it will inspire the other Simple, Joyful, and Noisy choirs out there.
Call To Worship – June 2019 – Psalm 100
One of my standard tips for new choirs is to utilize your choir time to help your children become active participants in corporate worship. That looks different for every church. For example, the VERY FIRST song I ever taught the children back in 2017 when I started this was “The Doxology” because my church sings it every single week when the offering has been collected. Not every church does that, but most churches have something that they do that is a fairly regular part of their worship. It is a great place to start as you build your choir program.
So, in the first half of 2019, my church hung some banners that had the words to Psalm 100, and the congregation used that as our Call To Worship every single week for many months. Boom. You can bet your booty I incorporated that into my choir.
So in June, we memorized all of Psalm 100 and also learned the classic hymn based on Psalm 100, “All People That On Earth Do Dwell”.
Normally I have asked for the children to sing our “offertory” song. However, this week, as it was our Call To Worship, I asked for us to call our congregants to worship. The pastor basically just announced that the children would be calling us to worship that morning and to please just listen instead of joining in. Simple as that.
Orphan Sunday – November 10
On November 10, 2019, we helped our church recognize Orphan Sunday.
Truthfully, it is because of my prodding that my church did anything related to orphans on that day. It isn’t typically a commonly recognized day in my church or denomination yet. Adoption and orphan care is close to my heart, so I’ve tried to raise awareness of this special date for a few years. This was the biggest way that we’ve recognized it. Baby steps.
So, I worked for a couple of months on a “medley” related to the concept of ADOPTION as foundational to the Christian faith.
Here is what we did:
- First song — “I’m Adopted” by Slugs and Bugs
- Recite Galatians 4:4-5
- Second Song — “I’m So Glad I’m A Part Of The Family Of God”.
The special part of it all was that at the end, the children sang through “I’m So Glad I’m A Part Of The Family Of God” one time, and then I stood and turned around and signaled for the congregation to stand and join us in one more round of this sweet song.
That is the message of adoption found in the Bible. Christians are all adopted into God’s family.
Also, if you haven’t checked out all the material by Randall Goodgame and Slugs and Bugs, you simply must.
I purchased the chord chart from the Slugs and Bugs store and asked one of my friends in the church to be our accompanist. This was the first time we had been backed up by a guitar instead of a piano. Thankfully I brought her in on several rehearsals because we needed it. She had to transpose some of the chords because the chords are written for a grown man singing in a tenor range. We ladies and children couldn’t really take it up a full octave. Point is, if you need to switch modes of accompaniment, give yourself extra time.
December 2019
In December, I was asked to pull something together to add to the church Christmas program in mid-December. Truthfully, I initially thought I was going to just skip any thing major at Christmas, but I guess one tip I have is that if you do start a small children’c choir, you should probably EXPECT to do something for Christmas time, whether in your regular Sunday service or as a part of a special Christmas service. Just stay ahead of the game and expect it versus hoping to dodge it, like I was this year.
So what did we do? Well, we just did the songs we learned in 2017 for the Christmas Musical I wrote. I reviewed 2 verses from the following songs. Then I selected some children who could read to read a few verses from Luke 2 between the songs.
We sang
- Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
- O Little Town Of Bethlehem
- Go Tell It On The Mountain
Well, that was what we did for the second half of 2019. You can see the earlier posts when I was posting more regularly for what happened between Jan and June 2019.
Please join the Simply Joyful Noises Facebook group and help us build a community of choir directors supporting one another.