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!