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

Winds of Change

Cos I haven't blogged lately, and in case there is someone out there hanging on my every published word, I give you the following:

Someday all flags will shred, blowing in the winds of change

All flags but the banner of love, blowing in the winds of change.

All this dirt and all this dross, all this straw will all be lost

and all the shame of all it cost, blowing in the winds of change



And we missed what we missed ’cause our hearts were too hard

In Babylon town where the lights are too bright.

Our harps wouldn’t play so we threw them aside

And perpetual day became perpetual night.



Rampant lions now all lie down - lambs will rise to take their crowns.

Castles crumble, cities drown in the rain on the winds of change

The dispossessed, the un-caressed, unloved, unlovely and the under-blessed

their day is dawning in the west, coming on the winds of change.

-

Our song wouldn’t sing - we had nothing to say,

Our lives were too long, our deaths were too strange

We were too far from home, we were too hard to cry

Too broken for hope, hope on the winds of change.



The ground has lain barren for far long enough,

while harvest upon harvest brought nothing but chaff,

But a rose soon will spring from the shepherd’s staff

to call down the winds of change.

Brightest red rose on a banner of blue,

all banners, broken, will bow down to you

The cloth of the sky’s dipped in dawn’s crimson hue

and singing with the winds of change.

So how's your flag looking - do you love it or does it bring you shame. Nationalism is not so P.C. now, is it. I love the kingdom I'm in cos I love the King. A true 7 colour rainbow nation.

the under secretary to the Under-Secretary's under secretary, 11 times removed, otherwise know as...

Richard