I woke up Monday morning about 6 am, reached for my phone, and lay there for an hour. I read the news, checked all my messages, and scanned TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.
It is my normal practice, and I know well-meaning people of all professions wag their finger and tell us this is a bad habit. Too much time on the phone, they say, damages the brain and fiddles away the day. Perhaps. Which is why I keep my practice to myself.
But I confess: my phone is a gateway to the world: to books and authors, music and performers, sports and athletes, ideas and activists, friends, and family, and yes, preachers and prophets of all kinds.
For instance, this morning I stumbled upon a 60-second clip of a hundred plus voice choir and full orchestra performing—are you ready?—”Y.M.C.A.” Yes, that 1978 disco-style anthem recorded by the Village People. It caught my attention, and I went down the rabbit hole, as we say.
The song is a joyous invitation for young people to rent a room at the nearest YMCA. “Young man, there’s a place you can go, I said, Young man, when you’re short on your dough. You can stay there and I’m sure you will find many ways to have a good time.”
The local YMCA today is mostly a health and fitness center, but when it launched in 1844 in London, England, it was a Christian response to the industrial revolution and the hundreds of young men leaving the countryside and moving to the city.
Boston had the first YMCA in the United States, founded in 1851. Chicago opened theirs in 1858. Its first full-time employee was a custodian who, eight years later, became the president of the local chapter. His name: Dwight Lyman Moody, more popularly known as D. L. Moody.
A million people have asked me if we are related, and it is a shame that I have never researched that matter. But I have studied the life of the famous evangelist and organizer, visited his church and school in Chicago, even took students to his birthplace and burial place in Northfield, Massachusetts.
Before I knew all this and before the invention of the smart phone, I graduated from college (in 1972) and took at job at the local YMCA. On High Street, in Lexington, Kentucky, where I rented rooms to men, young and old, who needed an inexpensive place to live. Six years before the Village People made the song famous and its writers rich.
I learned most of this as I lay in bed on Monday morning searching for that choir. I found their YouTube channel and their joyous performances of popular music: “Mamma Mia” and “I Will Survive” and “Hit the Road Jack” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Y.M.C.A.”
It is the Grupo Concertante Talia of Madrid, Spain, founded in 1996 by their orchestra conductor Silvia Sanz Torre. Who knew?
This is the same way I discovered the Last Night of the Proms in Great Brittan, but don’t try to look up that because it might take you to Promstuck and Homestuck, which will be the biggest, baddest rabbit hole you can imagine!
And John Prine, in June of 2020. I had never even heard of him until two months after he died. I found him in a tribute video on Facebook. Sometime later, I wrote somebody, I don’t remember who, and ask, “Would you be interested in creating choral versions of the music of John Prine?” He wrote back some version of “I don’t have time for that.”
Too bad, because Prine was, at best, a mediocre singer but by all accounts a brilliant writer. Too bad, because what is better than a choir? I asked that question a number of years ago and included my answer in a column in the book On the Other Side of Oddville (2006, pp 40ff). My essay was inspired by the sanctuary choir of Calvary Baptist Church of Lexington, during the Christmas season of 2003.
I have discovered a great choir here in Greenville, at the Earle Street Baptist Church. I attended first because I know the interim pastor and he is a good preacher. But the choir—wow! You don’t see and hear church choirs much anymore. Praise bands are all the rage. So, you might have to get out your smart phone and surf for an hour or two to discover the glories of popular music reconfigured for a choir.
Like they do in Madrid, Spain, with 150 voices, a full orchestra, and an outpouring of energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration sorely needed in our churches today and also in our country.
Enough of this. Can somebody help me find my phone?
I woke up Monday morning about 6 am, reached for my phone, and lay there for an hour. I read the news, checked all my messages, and scanned TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.
It is my normal practice, and I know well-meaning people of all professions wag their finger and tell us this is a bad habit. Too much time on the phone, they say, damages the brain and fiddles away the day. Perhaps. Which is why I keep my practice to myself.
But I confess: my phone is a gateway to the world: to books and authors, music and performers, sports and athletes, ideas and activists, friends, and family, and yes, preachers and prophets of all kinds.
For instance, this morning I stumbled upon a 60-second clip of a hundred plus voice choir and full orchestra performing—are you ready?—”Y.M.C.A.” Yes, that 1978 disco-style anthem recorded by the Village People. It caught my attention, and I went down the rabbit hole, as we say.
The song is a joyous invitation for young people to rent a room at the nearest YMCA. “Young man, there’s a place you can go, I said, Young man, when you’re short on your dough. You can stay there and I’m sure you will find many ways to have a good time.”
The local YMCA today is mostly a health and fitness center, but when it launched in 1844 in London, England, it was a Christian response to the industrial revolution and the hundreds of young men leaving the countryside and moving to the city.
Boston had the first YMCA in the United States, founded in 1851. Chicago opened theirs in 1858. Its first full-time employee was a custodian who, eight years later, became the president of the local chapter. His name: Dwight Lyman Moody, more popularly known as D. L. Moody.
A million people have asked me if we are related, and it is a shame that I have never researched that matter. But I have studied the life of the famous evangelist and organizer, visited his church and school in Chicago, even took students to his birthplace and burial place in Northfield, Massachusetts.
Before I knew all this and before the invention of the smart phone, I graduated from college (in 1972) and took at job at the local YMCA. On High Street, in Lexington, Kentucky, where I rented rooms to men, young and old, who needed an inexpensive place to live. Six years before the Village People made the song famous and its writers rich.
I learned most of this as I lay in bed on Monday morning searching for that choir. I found their YouTube channel and their joyous performances of popular music: “Mamma Mia” and “I Will Survive” and “Hit the Road Jack” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Y.M.C.A.”
It is the Grupo Concertante Talia of Madrid, Spain, founded in 1996 by their orchestra conductor Silvia Sanz Torre. Who knew?
This is the same way I discovered the Last Night of the Proms in Great Brittan, but don’t try to look up that because it might take you to Promstuck and Homestuck, which will be the biggest, baddest rabbit hole you can imagine!
And John Prine, in June of 2020. I had never even heard of him until two months after he died. I found him in a tribute video on Facebook. Sometime later, I wrote somebody, I don’t remember who, and ask, “Would you be interested in creating choral versions of the music of John Prine?” He wrote back some version of “I don’t have time for that.”
Too bad, because Prine was, at best, a mediocre singer but by all accounts a brilliant writer. Too bad, because what is better than a choir? I asked that question a number of years ago and included my answer in a column in the book On the Other Side of Oddville (2006, pp 40ff). My essay was inspired by the sanctuary choir of Calvary Baptist Church of Lexington, during the Christmas season of 2003.
I have discovered a great choir here in Greenville, at the Earle Street Baptist Church. I attended first because I know the interim pastor and he is a good preacher. But the choir—wow! You don’t see and hear church choirs much anymore. Praise bands are all the rage. So, you might have to get out your smart phone and surf for an hour or two to discover the glories of popular music reconfigured for a choir.
Like they do in Madrid, Spain, with 150 voices, a full orchestra, and an outpouring of energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration sorely needed in our churches today and also in our country.
Enough of this. Can somebody help me find my phone?
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