The Vicar's Wife

We struggle with music in our church. We have a lovely and talented organist, but he only comes in the evening. We have a Ministry Trainee who plays the guitar, but not all songs suit the guitar, and Rocky often has other things to do of a Sunday morning. There’s another lady who plays sometimes but she often plays at other churches.

So mostly we have cds. And midi files. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to plan a service where you have to factor in ‘have we got a singable version of that on cd?’ but it complicates matters enormously.

Often the Vicar will come through humming a tune and I will mention how much I love that song and he’ll tell me how suitable it is for the theme of the service. And then he’ll have to choose something else because the version we have in our (now rather extensive) Christian music collection is utterly dire. Or it’s a version from a conference with far too much fancy twiddling in between the verses. *sigh*

We are continually praying that the Lord would send us some musicians, but since we’ve been here the best bet looks like training up the Vicarage kids into a band. But the Engineer, although the best pianist amongst them, is still only six. So in the meantime we keep on buying cds and smiling at anyone we meet who plays anything.

I was prompted to blog about our church music when Rachel tagged me in a meme. I’m not normally a memer (? is that a word?) and I notice that Rachel didn’t answer the question herself!

Please try to name ONE (I know, there are so many to choose from) CCM [Contemporary Christian Music – I know, I didn’t know what it was either] praise song that you find unbearable and at least 2-3 reasons why, pointing to specific lyrics if you must.

Since the Vicar mainly chooses the songs at church we don’t actually suffer from songs that we can’t bear very much at all. There are a few old faves of the congregation that wouldn’t make my top ten, but I’m glad to sing them for the encouragement they bring to others and the gusto with which they are belted out. So I’m struggling to think of a song that’s unbearable too. Apart from this, which isn’t actually unbearable either – it’s gone past unbearable and out the other side:

I know I posted this before. But it was ages ago. And sometimes I need to be reminded that having musicians who can play instruments isn’t everything. Although if you’re reading this and have musical gifts and think you could serve a small inner city church in easy commuting distance of Birmingham,  in a parish where 3 bedroomed terraced houses can be purchased for £90,000, we would be overjoyed to hear from you…

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