Sightings & Soundings • April 2024

IResisting Resurrection?

cannot tell you why, but I love forming and re-forming things. I love discovering new ways of interpreting the seemingly ordinary. I love hacking the status quo, turning it upside down, and running full-speed-ahead toward new paradigms. But if I'm honest, I also have habits, routines, and quirks that are anything but cutting-edge, far from fresh, mostly mired in the muck of being an ordinary human! Perhaps that's where humanity finds itself in these days of Eastertide. While Easter has called us into an new Resurrection reality, the post-Resurrection stories in scripture remind us that we humans - wired for comfort, predictability, sameness - are quite unskilled at recognizing and ushering in new ways of being, even when they stand directly before us.

Modern-day mystic, psychotherapist, and Thomas Merton protégé, James Finley, explains it like this:

"...in the momentum of the day's demands, we're skimming over the depths of our own life. We're suffering from depth deprivation. What's regrettable is that God's unexplainable oneness with us is hidden in the depths over which we're skimming."

Moments of beauty and awe often shake us out of our complacency and propel us toward these depths that Finley describes. And as our program year continues - as the Chancel Choir sings Poulenc's Gloria and shares a program with the Piedmont Wind Symphony in late April, and as our children race this month toward completing a successful year of Creative Arts Experience (CAE) - we are reminded that music and art are often conduits for those depth-inducing experiences.

This Eastertide, may we, practitioners and lovers of music and art, move deeper into our own lives, finding the fullness of life into which we Easter people are called.

- Jonathan Emmons, Director of Music Ministries

To Invoke, To Thank, To Praise

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

~

Colossians 3:16

On nights like Saturday, April 6, a nondescript building in Greensboro is filled with people clad in black, holding black folders, and clutching waterbottles. Something powerful is happening. People are joyfully greeting one another, buzzing with anticipation. Having spent the last few days communing over a sacred musical masterpiece, new duets and trios of friends are spending time in fellowship as the group readies for the downbeat that will begin the night’s performance. We are a choir, unified in purpose and preparation. On April 6, voices from the Centenary Chancel Choir joined forces with the Greensboro Symphony Master Chorale and the Greensboro Symphony to perform Francis Poulenc’s Gloria at the Steven Tanger Center. This feat is both exciting and impressive on the surface level, but beneath that lies an important reason for such a collaboration: building community.

Help your child see their artistic potential: register them for . . .

CMA CAMP 2024

• July 15-18, 2024

• 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Infants - Rising 5th Graders

• Offerings include singing, handbells, handchimes, creative movement, art, Kindermusik, and more!

Centenary’s Music & Arts committee reviewed our purpose statement earlier this year. One of the pillars of our renewed mission is to “build faith and community through musical and artistic programming.” Projects like Poulenc’s Gloria work to do just that.

Choirs have long been acknowledged as second families for their members. If you search the words “choir” and “community” in Apple News, your feed at once is populated with hundreds of stories of worlds colliding, people gathering, and connections forming over the power of communal singing. It could be in the Oakland neighborhood of San Francisco, the suburbs of Philadelphia, or a small rural county in Missouri: the enriching experience of choir is universal. Futhermore, multiple studies have demonstrated that singing in a choir fosters trust, cooperation, and social cohesion. The “Sing With Us” study (which enrolled 193 individuals diagnosed with cancer) has shown it reduces stress hormones and increases cytokines, proteins that can boost the body’s ability to fight serious illness. More immediately, choral singing positively affects our mental health and mood. Singing in a choir is scientificaly proven to be good for the mind, body, and soul.

Church choir also has an empyreal element. These ensembles serve as a space for their members to grow deeper in their faith beside fellow congregants. Whether relishing a new setting of a favorite biblical text, sharing a thought-provoking devotion, or singing the eternal words of a masterpiece like the Poulenc, choir members find themselves readily reflecting on the tenants of our faith in a powerful way: powerful because we do so together. Moreover, it is powerful because our music not only helps us to see our faith in both novel and nostalgic ways, but because, through singing for our congregation or an audience at the Tanger Center, we share the experience with others, building community and fostering meaningful connections. Singing in a church choir combines stewardship, evangelism, and prayer into one act. The whole is greater than its parts.

In I Chronicles, David appoints 288 Levites from a pool of 4000 to lead the music

Snack is provided daily.

The week ends with a camper-led worship service on Thursday at 12:30 PM followed by refreshments.

Don’t miss out on this fun-filled week!

To register, scan this code:

ministry of the Temple. In the text, three verbs are used to describe the purpose of their ministry: to invoke, to thank, and to praise. From the beginning, the power of choral singing to proclaim the word of God was recognized. Community leadership through song was prioritized. It is with this knowledge that we humbly serve the Lord together

Please join us for an encore performance of Francis Poulenc’s Gloria in the sanctuary on April 21 at 3:00 PM to experience the joy of community through the arts.

- Virginia Sheffield

C HILDREN ’ S

M USIC & A RTS

Join us at 11:00 AM worship on May 5 as Centenary’s children and youth lead music alongside young people from accross the Triad!

25th Anniversary Concert

April 28 at 4:00 PM

Centenary United Methodist Church Reception to follow

WSCA is a tuition-based graded choral training program offering choirs for girls grades K-12 and for boys grades 3-6.