DEANERY NETWORKS MUSIC DIRECTORS

MINUTES OF THE MEETING 27th April 2010 FROM 8 PM AT ST PETER’S CHURCH HALL,

ACTION Attendance/Apologies Present: Tim Hillier (Rural Dean, chair - TH), Petra Hudson (minutes secretary), Val Ward (Englefield Green); Dave Fisher (Lyne+); Jenny Phillips (New Haw); Pam Brush (); Malcolm Bateman () Apologies: Alex Norman (Englefield Green), Rick Erickson (), Richard Jack; Di McGuire (Egham), Adam Creen (Ottershaw); Jenifer Raub-Fraser (Thorpe); Rosemary Richards; Jim Robertson (Chertsey)

Welcome and Introductions TH welcomed all present and opened the meeting with prayer.

He introduced himself as the Rural Dean and Vicar of Chertsey with a great passion for music (violin player, former baritone in a cathedral choir and former conductor of several choral societies) which prompted him to head the Music Leaders’ Network himself.

TH also explained the background of the Deanery networks, the Music Leaders’ network being just one of many that have already started or are planned for the future. The idea of networking thematic areas/ministries of our Runnymede parish churches arose from the 2005 Deanery Vision document which prescribed for the Deanery to support the churches’ missionary and pastoral activities by facilitating closer links. The networks will hopefully promote better understanding of each other’s needs and hopes, as well as sharing of resources and good practice. He explained that this is the “second round” of an introductory meeting for the music leaders, due to the fact that there was interest from several parties for the first meeting but they couldn’t make the date.

1. Introduction of attendees with styles and patterns of worship represented Englefield Green: Introduction, Duties and Setup: Val Ward was delegated by Englefield Green’s Music Coordinator and organist, Alex Norman, to represent St Jude’s in this meeting. Her position is leader of the worship band which consists of a keyboard player and a guitarist plus assorted other instruments played by Royal Holloway students (presently violin, trombone, and three flutes). The band is in a constant state of flux due to the involvement of the students with their temporary residence and holiday absences. Val also sings alto in the choir which is up and down in numbers for the same reason. St Jude’s has a grand piano and an organ very ably played by Alex Norman, with some excellent stand-ins, namely Geoff Chew and Lionel Pike. Alex is looking forward to pursuing further training as a choral conductor at Birmingham Conservatoire so he will be leaving St Jude’s in September.

Page 1 Minutes of Network Meeting Tradition and music used: Englefield Green is an LEP (Local Ecumenical Partnership – Anglican and Methodist). Sunday services: 8am = Said Eucharist (on first Sunday of each month according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer) 9:30am first Sunday of the month = Youth Eucharist, led mainly by the worship band with about four songs, plus usually two organ-led hymns. This service follows a special Youth Eucharist booklet and is aimed at the young and young at heart and also attended by the uniformed organisations. 9:30am all other Sundays = Family Eucharist, led by organ and choir

New Haw: Introduction, Duties and Setup: Jenny Phillips is Choir Leader and also Curate at All Saints’. She has sung all her life and is passionate about choral music. There are four organists on rota but only one is competent to tackle every type of music. Jenny herself plays a bit of piano, “enough to teach a tune to the choir”. The choir is rather depleted in numbers (6-7 sopranos, 3 altos and 1 man) which limits what they can sing, basically excluding all four part choral works. They have stacks of music resources that never get used – some years ago Jenny made a list and asked around other parishes but nobody seemed interested in borrowing or buying (unfortunately, the list isn’t available anymore). They are now often using lighter settings like Pharisee or Angel Voices. The current members are very committed, to the choir and the church in general, but there is the problem of age levels: no youngsters involved. Six juniors joined for the carol choir but did not want to commit on a permanent basis. All Saints’ would love to extend into a music group/worship band but there are no suitable musicians in the congregation.

Tradition and music used: All Saints’ services are a mix of the traditional and contemporary in an attempt to make everybody happy – which seems to be working. They use a special setting of sung worship written by one of their organists, and all 10am services are led by choir and organ. Youth services (J-Clubs) are held parallel in the hall (keyboard). There are sung evensongs twice a month, led by the choir. Vicar Ruth G. encourages baptisms to be held as part of regular services but non-church-goers can be mystified by the celebration of the Eucharist and find it exclusive, so the third Sunday is a non-communion unstructured service with a lighter talk with visual additions and four hymns/songs that are easy to pick up for newcomers.

Ottershaw: Introduction, Duties and Setup: This time we had Pam Brush present for Ottershaw – she is the Choir Leader, who told us a bit more background about the past of Christ Church and the long-lasting problems with two Interregnums, coinciding with the departure of their previous organist Mary Earl, all accumulating to create a lot of upheaval. Now things are slowly settling down under the new vicar Sandra and able and versatile organist and keyboard player Adam Creen. They both seem very keen on contemporary music and as a result there has been a shift in worship patterns. There is a general lack of musicians and singers: five ladies in the choir, four of whom also sing in the music group complemented by two more singers. There is a very competent cellist, and sometimes a guitarist. Pam is an “organically grown” (her own words) choir leader, able to play the keyboard well enough for practice purposes. There are four practices a month of which Adam leads one and Pam the other three. They choose mainly one-part music which is neither really traditional nor too contemporary.

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Tradition and music used: Pam described a mixed service pattern of All Age Worship, sung communion and informal services for the main Sunday services at 10:30am, plus a 9am sung communion once a month. Evensong is teetering, relegated to fifth Sundays in a month. The two that occurred in winter were very badly attended, so the one coming up end of May will be a last trial and if attendance is bad again, evening services will be discontinued.

Lyne+Longcross: Introduction, Duties and Setup: Dave Fisher has been organist and choir leader at Lyne for about five years after leading in Englefield Green for ten years and in New Haw before that. He has at some point helped out playing the organs of most churches in Runnymede and adjacent towns with the exception of Egham and Thorpe. He also is organist and choir leader for St Peter’s Hospital Chapel. The choir is of a very old average age, the youngest being in their early 60s and the oldest in their 90s. There are seven on a good day, including one man occasionally. Sometimes the Thursday practices are down to two singers but are still being held however small the group, honouring their devotion to the choir and church.

Tradition and music used: Holy Trinity has a very mixed location membership with about half of the congregation from outside the Parish (which is very small, only about 1900 people), including many what he called “refugees” from the distinctly anglo-catholic or very evangelistic churches like Thorpe and . He describes them as a small traditionally minded congregation which is grateful for having been given in Wendy a priest sensitive to their understanding of worship including such gestures as processing and reverencing the altar. Wendy and LOM Laurence Gamlen have done good work in rejuvenating Holy Trinity and there are now some families attending. There is an all age service on the 1st Sunday of the month with two conventional hymns and some more modern songs. Sometimes the CoE school comes to attend or contribute which is much appreciated. The other 10am services are common worship Eucharist, led by the choir and using a Rutter communion setting. There also 8am services (said, BCP).

Egham: Introduction, Duties and Setup: Malcolm Bateman came as delegate for St John’s as Music Team Leader Richard Jack was unable to make it. Malcolm has been organist/pianist in Egham for eight years and he explained that, although Richard is overall coordinator, there are different people in charge of the worship on a rota system. St John’s has a choir of about 10-12 singers, more for Christmas and Easter. The choir leader, Diane McGuire, is a music teacher at Strodes College and also a pianist, and they have a choir practice once a week. There is also a pool of about 25 musicians for the worship bands/music groups who play on a rota – each about once a month. Each band usually includes a keyboard player, guitarist and bass guitarist plus three singers, and sometimes drums, plus various instruments played by students of Royal Holloway (clarinet, cello etc) but these are only available during term times. Richard Jack is the overall team leader who organises the rota in three month periods, but the music is chosen by the leader of each service sympathetically to the themes given.

Tradition and music used: St John’s has a variety of services at different times on Sundays:

Page 3 Minutes of Network Meeting 8am Holy Communion (BCP, no music) 9:15am traditional common worship led by piano/organ and choir; once a month with Eucharist Music used is from the Anglican Hymn Book, Common Praise and a song book. This suits the congregation which includes few families or youngsters due to limited child-orientated facilities during this service at present; however, a crèche has just been started. The choir leads the hymns and songs chosen for the services, plus once or twice a month sings an anthem. The logistical arrangement can be difficult as the organ is played from the back and the choir leads from the front. 11am Family Worship with children’s groups. Music is led by the worship band/music group and is much more contemporary, with songs from books like “Songs of Fellowship” but may also include one hymn accompanied by organ (Malcolm is usually on the rota for this service once a month). Once a month, this service is an All Age Worship when the children attend the whole service whereas otherwise they leave after 20 minutes for their own groups. At Christmas, Easter and Holiday Club Sunday the children lead the worship with the songs they have learnt from CDs at Sunday School/Holiday Club and these services are highlights of the year. Evensong was abandoned many years ago because of dwindling numbers (and those who came were mostly “double takers” who also came to a morning service). After that St John’s tried different formats for evening services: youth/student orientated, celebratory or simply informal style. There are no weekly evening services at the moment. Sometimes the Life Course (like Alpha Course) takes place on Sunday evenings and may include musical worship.

Deanery-wide: TH added that the rest of the Deanery churches present a similar mix as described by those present: Addlestone and Virginia Water have fairly recently swapped to the dual approach for Sunday mornings with an earlier traditional and later contemporary option, and fluctuating evening services. Chertsey is practicing mixed economy, rotating different style services both at 10am led by organ and choir or by the music group, and 6:30pm led by keyboard, with a regular traditional spoken service at 8pm. Royal Holloway is very traditional and famous for their outstanding evensongs; Hythe and Thorpe are also Anglo-Catholic in character yet with very different expressions but both struggling musically with no choir or musicians except for the very able organist at Thorpe. For more details see minutes of the previous meeting…

2. Challenges faced by our parishes with regard to music ministry Englefield Green: St Jude’s finds it difficult to balance the different needs of the congregation for traditional and contemporary, and for the specifics of the LEP (Anglican and Methodist).

Ottershaw: Christ Church desperately needs more musicians, including another good organist/pianist because Adam, who is a teacher, is almost always away for school holidays, which of course includes the most important services of the year.

New Haw: All Saints’ finds it difficult to diversify their worship to the extent they would wish to because of the lack of competent musicians for a worship group.

Lyne: The problems at Holy Trinity in general are mainly to do with the setup and staffing of the church as a Joint Benefice with Chertsey and having only a House of Duty Priest in Wendy (2 ½ working days a week although she does a lot of voluntary extra) and Laurence as LOM, so it simply isn’t possible to do all the things they would like to do. The great age of the choir singers is a music specific problem but without more diversification new blood cannot really be expected.

Page 4 Minutes of Network Meeting Egham: Finding the right balance for All Age Services can be challenging. St John’s choir has an aging profile; new recruiting at the younger end seems difficult.

General problems: Recruitment, particularly for choirs: This recruitment problem reverberated through the evening – young people are reluctant to be drawn into choir singing. This probably goes back to the lack of singing in school. It also reflects in the planning of wedding services where the choice of suitable well-known hymns becomes smaller and smaller. The knowledge of music seems to diminish to the same extent as the knowledge of the Christian faith in the general public as we are now three generations past a widely accepted Sunday School tradition. Both teaching and music in church face a blank sheet – the challenge of ministering to a post-Christianity culture.

Balance of Styles: Again this seemed a problem concerning more than just Englefield Green. There ensued a long discussion about the benefits of mixed style worship and while Dave insisted that at least one church in the area should be purely traditional, even he allowed that contemporary styles have their place and their “takers”, and the consent was that any music is good as long as it is uplifting, good quality and theologically sound. This brought up the conundrum of many contemporary songs having either nice melodies but appalling lyrics, or good text with very poor settings. They are often set in a range that needs transposing to be sung at all by the average person in the congregation, and many have such a large range of notes that it makes even transposing impractical and does not allow for natural harmonising, so it adds to losing the skill of singing. On the other hand, the old hymns often have very out of date imagery that is impossible to understand for those who have not been brought up in a traditional Christian environment. We need more good modern hymn writers who also use solid theology, and one name was praised widely: Stewart Townend who’s music was described as powerful but with a regular meter and good structure. Pam passed around a brochure for Cathedral Summer School where Stuart will be holding “an evening of stories and music”, advertised with the sentence “the marriage of great lyrics with accessible melodies means his songs bridge different musical and cultural genres”.

3. Individual hopes and prayers for the future development within our parishes Englefield Green: Val hopes that they will be able to draw more people in and create a style of service that will be relevant to everybody in its entirety.

New Haw: Jenny spoke about a concert she visited in Byfleet with music so filled with the Holy Spirit that it brought tears to her eyes – her hope is that the All Saints’ choir would become good enough to bring music to the people that will move them in such a way.

Ottershaw: Pam hopes that Christ Church will be able to find the right balance and beat the undercurrents left over from the many problems the church has been going through in the past years.

Lyne+Longcross: Dave hopes that his skills will still be useful for a long time, even if he is “yesterday’s man”, and that the choir at Holy Trinity will be big enough again to sing four-part music.

Egham: Malcolm hopes that mutual respect and understanding between the two different congregations

Page 5 Minutes of Network Meeting (traditional and contemporary) will continue to grow, as will numbers. St John’s operates a system of “reference groups” – a cross section of people from the different congregations - who meet twice a year to discuss what’s going on in the services, whether the musical (and other) content is helpful, and provide some accountability and a forum for ideas. This is a new initiative and is being developed further.

Chertsey: Petra hopes that the large but inexperienced new choir (“bums moved from the big pews into the small ones”) will learn to become a real choir, able to sing parts and harmonise and be a blessing to the congregation and a joy to the Lord.

4. Opportunities and Ideas for the sharing of resources/good practise Petra summed up the ideas for sharing as brought up in the previous meeting (for details see previous minutes). Jenny commented that several years ago she put together an index of music resources All Saints’ has sitting around and offered it to other churches but nobody took her up on it. She didn’t think that the list is still available.

The upcoming Christian Resources Exhibition in Esher was mentioned as a good place to look around for those intending to buy new resources, and Malcolm also pointed out the Langham Arts website for online music arrangements.

It would be helpful to have resources accessible by capabilities, something we should keep in mind when putting together the database.

Dave reported that the RCCA is now under new leadership.

There was a strong support for the idea of visiting each other’s services to learn more about different service setting and worship styles, make new friends and perhaps get inspired with ideas on how to help and share.

Deanery confirmation services would be a great place to start sharing the resource of singers: a great mixed choir.

Practising joint services on a regular basis – non-competitive: together in worship not as a performance.

If anybody comes across musical events like come+sings or workshops they should communicate All/PH them to Petra who will distribute via the Music Leader’s Network and/or include in newsletter and website as appropriate.

Jenny drew attention to the country-wide “Hallelujah Chorus”, wondering whether, as a project of engaging with the communities, it would be feasible to organise a Runnymede-wide “Come + Sing Hallelujah” (or another piece), inviting not only the churches but all the local choirs and interested singers. This could perhaps provide a chance for recruitment as well…

5. Upcoming Kebbi Visit Celebration Service TH explained about the upcoming visit of Archbishop Edmund Akanya of Kebbi/Nigeria and his wife, who will be staying in Runnymede for a week following the Alpha Conference (15th – 21st June). Apart from a varied programme of visits for the Bishop and an Open Synod there will also be a Celebration Service held at St Peter’s Chertsey on Sunday, 20th June, 6:30pm. Rosemary Richards, Choir Leader at St Peter’s, has agreed to coordinate deanery-wide the musical worship for this event, which should represent all the different styles of worship in our

Page 6 Minutes of Network Meeting churches, perhaps with an African touch, too. She will be in contact via the Music Leader’s Network.

5. Prayer for our specific parish music ministries and Closing Meeting closed at 9:40pm with prayer, followed by a short time for personal conversation and networking.

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