An Anniversary missed etc, etc - the second part.

I continue to reflect on my best known song, not because I want to blow my own trumpet (though no one can blow your trumpet quite the way you do), but because there maybe genuine interest out there and I want to set some stuff straight. Goodness knows though, I may not have it all so straight, history being the thing it is.

The copyright for "Brother, Sister let Me Serve You' was never held by The St Paul's Outreach Trust. The Trust (as we most associated with it would call it) held the copyrights on everything else written by the members of the St Paul's Singers, and may have wished they had the copyright on this song too.

Shortly after it was completed some of us in the Singers (yes we abbreviated that name too) were visiting David and Dale Garrett of Scripture in Song, at their home. We had points of similarity with the Garretts. They too led worship at home, made albums, toured other churches, led worship at Christian conventions and published song books. They had been doing it longer than we had and so had knowledge and advise we novices needed. And they were nice people - and still are!

As our evening together wore on I sang them my new song. David said something like, "that song fits the theme of an album we are about to record," to which I responded, "You can have it, then!" It was a spontaneous gesture on my part. There was no forethought given by me maybe offering it first to St Paul's Outreach Trust, or any thought about the future implications of my offer, god, bad or otherwise. They obviously said "Thank you very much!" and the rest, as they say is history.

It soon appeared as "The Servant Song" on the Scripture in Song album "Father Make Us One" the theme of which was Christian unity and the principles under-girding relationships in the Christian family. John Olding, Graham Kelly and Brent Chambers sang on this, the first ever recording of the song. And so it was presented to a wider audience, and an international one.

Since then there have been other recordings. The Fisherfolk who were the primary inspiration and influence for the St Paul's Singers did a lovely version and eventually a later incarnation of the St Paul's Singers recorded a version too on I got to sing.

It also found it's way into many hymnals and garnered much popularity in so many places. In 2002, in a poll conducted by the BBC's "Songs of Praise" television programme I was voted in as the 33rd most popular hymn in Great Britain. A book was published in conjuction with the programme called "The Nations Favorite Hymns"where the accompanying text recalled that it had been sung in York Minster on Rememberance Day.

I had, independantly of the BBC been sent a video copy of this service as it had gone to air. The cathedral was full of service men and woman from the Army, the Navy and the Airforce - many of them young active members, but a lot of retired men and women who would have served during the Second World War. I found it all a bit surreal. I had been brought up by my Dad to see war as a great futility, a strident symbol of man's estrangement from a Loving God and from Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Dad would take me and my brother to war movies here in Whangarei so we could see how awful and futile and wasteful war was.

For me it was always a song intended to point all who heard it toward a way of living peacably with other human beings. I am quoted in the BBC's book as saying I prefered "the down to earth groundedness of a guitar accompaniment and a simple folk treatment" to the version I heard on "York Minster's grand organ" It was my down to earth performance that sold it to David and Dale, and their recorded version was as down to earth as they sold it to a much wider audience than we at St Paul's could then lay claim to.

Tune this way for Part Three, when I will talk about the changes, both lyrical and melodic, to this song over the years. In the meantime jump over to YouTube and see and hear my video version of the song. While you are there check out some of the other versions too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL3vStmoMDw

Richard

An Anniversary Missed, a Good Man and Some Good Times Remembered

I realised this morning, as I walked my dog Jazz in this morning's spring sunshine, that I let the 30th anniversary of my song presently known as "Brother, Sister Let Me Serve You" go by without comment or acknowledgment. I finished writing it in either December 1976 or January 1977, so the 3o years would have rolled by in December 2006 or January 2007. Sue and I had not been long in Whangarei then, having moved up here in October 2006.

The original St Paul's Singers were given a perfect excuse to come together on the weekend just gone. The life and ministry of the man who was our Vicar in the early 1970s was being remembered and celebrated in a memorial service at St Mary's, Parnell, in Auckland. Father Kenneth Prebble had passed away, at a grand age of 93 on June the 18th of this year. We, the original St Paul's Singers, sang "Brother Sister..." at that service. It was with some pride that he claimed to be the Vicar of St Paul's when I wrote it. Now that he is gone I would like to set the record straight. He was not the Vicar of St Paul's then. He had ceased to be the Vicar of St Paul's in 1974. It was to my wife Sue's and my chagrin that he arrived back from his sabbatical in 1974 to announce his resignation from the post of Vicar of St Paul's. This meant (hence our chagrin), that he would not conduct our wedding scheduled for December of that year.

I hate to be the destroyer of this myth, but to soften the blow for those who would have liked it left intact, the writing of this song drew much inspiration from Fr. Prebble's tenure at St Paul's. It was in that time that that the St Paul's singers were formed and did much to influence the worship of many churches in the mainline denominations mainly through their commitment to the worship at their home parish, St Pauls, Symonds St, their record albums, their touring and visiting churches in New Zealand and their appearances at the Christian Advance Ministries Summer Schools (charismatic conventions) on the Massey University campus in Palmerston North. It was at this time that the Singers began to explore the possibilities of writing our own material, much of which ended up on their record albums and in the St Paul's Outreach Trust's songbooks, chief of which was "New Harvest.

It was those evening services on Wednesdays and Sundays under Father Prebble's leadership that were a source of much inspiration for the songs I wrote back then. A great sense of family and of community was engendered in these services and then celebrated with a great sense of occasion in the Sunday morning Eucharists. We heard many inspiring testimonies from our parishioners for whom God had become startlingly real as they learned to open up to the leading and inspiration of the Holy Spirit in and through those services. And we had some very good teaching and theology in those services, along with spontaneous reflections on Christian life and faith from many in the congregation.

Father Prebble shared the teaching spots with people like Pentecostal pastor John Childers, who hailed from Las Vegas and was very much a part of our 'family', and the reflections of Colin Cole, Auckland talented dress designer and father of 8 daughters, were always worth our close attention.

It was out of this spiritual gumbo that the song, that has been sung around the world for more that thirty years now, originally emerged.

Tune this way again soon as I give you more reflections on this song and the times in which arose. And do add in your own thoughts and corrections. I hang out desperately for them.

Love to all who sang on Saturday 20th September at St Mary's. Love too to all who wanted to be there and couldn't - we missed you! Thanks, God for the good life, the Spirit-led ministry and the inspiration of Father Kenneth Prebble who gave us so much. Our love to his tribe, may they ever increase.

Richard

Not so rapt in the Rapture

Not so rapt in the Rapture? You are not alone - neither am I, and nor is Tom Wright. The whole Premillenial dispensationalist position which spawned the 'Left Behind ' series of novels is an anathema to me. Its God is a scary bastard that you wouldn't want to call Abba and Jesus a chip of the old block.

This End Times stuff is like one of those 'join the dots' pictures except the dots aren't numbered so you choose a dot, join it to another, and another, and when you have joined all the dots you have a picture of what the End will look like. And Pastor Joe Bloggs from the Calathumpian Sainted Chosen to be Blessed church down the street will start from a different dot and get another picture entirely. And it's rumoured, though it may be a lie, that choose a particular starting dot and go a particular way around the rest and the picture reveals that God is the Antichrist. Don't laugh, I'm serious! And Lucifer turns out to be the uncle you never had.

It looks like Jenkins and La Haye are milking their Left Behind series for all they are worth. Or they are milking their readership with the story so thin it's required 9 titles to get any plot development happening. I wonder how they spend the money?

I like Tom Wright's questions:

What view of the world is sustained, even legitimized by, the Left Behind ideology? How might it be confronted and subverted by genuine biblical thinking? For a start, is not the Left Behind mentality in thrall to a dualistic view of reality that allows people to pollute God's world on the grounds that it is all going to be destroyed soon? Wouldn't this be overturned if we recaptured Paul's wholistic vision of Gods whole creation?
(see http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_BR_Farewell_Rapture.htm)

If you want fantasy read Tolkien. Or Harry Potter. That series can't be any more evil that the twisted view of reality that Jenkins and La Haye propose. What was it Jesus said about even the very elect being deceived? Does that include those who have merely elected themselves?

Oo, you are awful, Richard!

Bon Nuit, mes amis!

A reflection on life, death and this season of hope and joy

I wrote this a little over 4 years ago and rediscovered it on my computer today. Thought I'd publish it for all those who don't receive the Birkdale/Beachhaven parish's Ripples magazine (and maybe never will).

I don’t want to read more into it than is actually there, but as you know, my daughter Miriam (Hebrew for Mary) has given birth to a son – and so close to Christmas! As with Miriam of old, (she who was betrothed to Joseph) my Miriam knew from early on that she was to have a son – though she had an ultra-sound scan, not an angelic visitation. Weeks before he was born we all knew he would be called Liam, just as that other Miriam knew, well in advance, that her boy was to be called Jesus.

I had an epiphanal moment; an inner flash of lightning that lit my soul from one horizon to the other, one evening moment prior to Liam’s birth. Sue and I were in a crush of bodies in the aisle of the Bridgeway Theatre, at the end of a movie. We were standing behind a young family, waiting to move toward the door. The mother had her daughter on her hip, a girl of not more that 3 or 4 years old, and looking at them together, the significance of Liam’s impending birth and all that it promised quite overwhelmed me with a wonderful sense of joy and hope. My family know what a ‘softie’ I can be and so won’t be surprised to hear that my eyes watered up at that moment.

The week of Liam’s birth (he was born Friday 15^th, November) was an emotional roller coaster ride. On Friday 8 November Sue took a phone call from a friend in Hamilton. He was so overcome with grief he could barely speak. His eldest son’s young wife had died in a car accident the previous night. Sue and I had been at their wedding about two years ago.

We went to Hamilton to the funeral the following Wednesday all the while wondering if our daughter might go into labour while we were away from Auckland. I could scarcely begin to imagine how it must have been for our friends and for their son. While my life was filled with a new hope and joy, all their hopes and dreams had been shattered in a single instant.

I don’t expect anyone to be able to adequately explain to me where God is at times like this. It is a very old question asked often. Where was God when Herod ordered the slaying of all male children younger than two years old in Bethlehem, 2000 years ago? Where was he when Jesus cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” from the cross?

We all know how hard Christmas is for those who have recently lost loved ones. It will be especially hard for our friends coming so soon after their daughter-in-law’s death. Where do they look for hope and for new meaning for their future? Right now they are having trouble seeing past their pain and desolation. We can only pray that, as they remember and celebrate the Child of Bethlehem, they can draw from the deeper well of that hope his coming and his abiding presence with us, brings.

Christmas, like a birth, is a festival of hope and of joy, and the child in the manger the sign, the reminder, that, in God, all darknesses end in dawns of hope, joy and promise – just as the pain of labour ends with the joy of a new life in this world, a baby to have and to hold. For my friends too, in God’s good time, will come a moment, perhaps like mine in that cinema, when it will dawn on them that hope and joy are coming anew into their lives, and even though it might be the middle of June, it will suddenly feel like Christmas.

I hope Christmas feels like Christmas for you too, and that you catch hold of that sense of joy and hope that Jesus’ coming brings, and swing into the dawn of the New Year firmly clutching its coat-tails.

Richard Gillard

Heaven on Earth - the only home I've ever known

I was going to say something about pagans in this blog but I'm not sure if I've got my thinking straight on the subject. I am thinking of modern 21st century pagans, particularly the resurgence of paganism recently among British and Celtic people, my people, but I'm sure I'd end up saying something dumb, out of ignorance. So, pagans all, breath a sigh of relief!

As I walk my dog on these chilly late autumn evenings I mull over many things. The vista from the upper stretch of Birkdale Road, looking out toward Greenhithe, Hobsonville and the hills beyond is gorgeous. The immediate suburbs of Birdale and Beachhaven are full of trees, and at sunset, through the haze, take on the appearance of a very homely heaven-on-earth - and never more so than last night. As always I was stirred by the beauty before me and then the lines of a song we had sung only last Sunday in church came back to me: "and oh, we will look on His face and we will go to a much better place" I couldn't sing the 'much better place' phrase then, and last night looking on the beauty of the earth as I did, I thought "let those who believe the "much better place" doctrine go there and Jesus, heal and restore the earth for those like me and I'll stay here. And You can come visit me now and then.

There's few things that breaks my heart more than to see the beauty of this place compromised, disregarded or counted as nothing, often by the defenders of the 'much better place' doctrine. I suspect they're a bunch of freaking gnostic iconoclasts! What does Genesis tell us.... 1:31 Living Bible "Then God looked over all he had made, and it was excellent in every way" It was good, and it still is. If somewhere else can be better than this place which God calls Good then maybe God isn't so great or He's confused. I think He's as great as ever He was and we're the confused.

God bless the good!