Worship and Music

Come home to All Saints'...

Worship and Music

Ask most people who come to All Saints' to describe our liturgical style and you are likely to hear the same four words: "middle of the road." We treasure the beauty and reverence of traditional Anglican worship and yet we seek ways to make it easy for newcomers to participate in the liturgy. We are thankful for sermons that acknowledge our adult intelligence, we love the English hymnal, and we also enjoy singing gospel music. (Thanks to generous donations from parishioners, we now have in our pews Lift Every Voice, the African-American hymnal of the Episcopal church, along with the 1978 hymnal.)

We welcome children in a variety of ways -- at the start of the service, during the Eucharist, and for special holiday events. Once a month is our Saturday evening children's service, for families with nursery and elementary age children, featuring a children's sermon, simple Eucharist, and opportunities for children to actively experience and participate in the beauty and reverence of the Anglican liturgy. This service is followed by a very informal pizza dinner.

The choir sings at the 10 o'clock service nine months a year. During the summers, individual choir members often serve as soloists. New members are always welcome, and if you would like to rehearse and sing with the choir regularly -- or at Christmas or Easter -- please call the church office at 941-6955 or speak to Kinny Landrum.

We are delighted to have as our organist and choirmaster Kinny Landrum. Kinny is a member of All Saints' whose wide-ranging professional career has included touring with Harry Belafonte and working with Carly Simon, Herbie Mann, Jimmy Cliff, Natalie Cole, and Leonard Bernstein, among others. Kinny has played in the pit on Broadway and composed music for television, including Saturday Night Live and many commercials. He was the instrumentalist on the musical theme from Twin Peaks, which won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and he performed on the soundtracks of Wild at Heart and the new Jane Campion movie Holy Smoke. (During worship here at All Saints', of course, you'll hear Kinny playing Bach, Purcell, and the classical organ repertoire along with gospel favorites!) Janice Landrum, who is Kinny's wife and a teacher at Mamaroneck High School, sings with the choir and serves as a cantor and soloist.

Why Worship Outside?
Besides the fact that we are blessed with a beautiful courtyard in which to hold an outdoor liturgy, I see several theological justifications for outdoor worship. First, by holding Sunday worship somewhere other than the safe and sacred confines of the parish church we can broaden our understanding of a God who can never be contained within four walls. Ritual and sacred space are key spiritual components of our faith. By moving them outside our churches, on occasion, we expand our experience of God. The parish church is rightly known as God's house but it is not God's exclusive dwelling place. Christ is present at all times and in all places. We know this intellectually, of course, but worshipping in other milieus allows us to experience this profound reality in new and life-giving ways.

Some of the most memorable liturgical moments happen outside the traditional bounds of the parish. Many have experienced profound spiritual moments at off-site parish retreats, camp sites, or house blessings. One of the beauties of a house blessing, for example, is that it indelibly turns a home into sacred space. It is a place of daily routine and the very essence of everyday life but it is also a place of prayer, a place where humanity continually reaches out for relationship with the divine. A service in a church courtyard or in a city square or on a lakefront or in a forest preserve does much the same thing. It shatters the false barrier that exists between the sacred and the secular, reminding us again that there is no secular world. It is all sacred because it is all created at God's hand.

When we share the bread and wine of the Eucharist in unfamiliar or surprising locales, the sanctity of our lives is extended in new ways. We may see an azalea bush as a Christian symbol, a town thoroughfare as a path of righteousness, or a giant boulder as a liturgical object. We may even gain a new appreciation for our own weekly worship space, which is indeed so special. Worshipping Christ outdoors reminds us that the Church must keep its feet firmly planted in this world and in the world to come. And we remember that there is both a world beyond the Church and a Church that exists beyond the world.

Father Tim+

"In This Place of God Eternal"

Words: The Rev. Timothy E. Schenck
Music: Mr. Kinny Landrum


				Come home to All Saints'... *Worship and Music*



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