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 You might have heard the notion of leader as servant. I imagine that it might be based in the model of Christ as servant of His people, I’m not sure. But I have some experience with the idea that I might like to share.
Here’s the core of the idea:
- The group is the ones who deliver the value of the organization, much more than the leader personally.
- The leader can have the most impact by helping his people to deliver that value, removing obstacles and facilitating action.
- Therefore, the leader can be most valuable by thinking of himself as servant of the group.
But this is just the starting point, there’s more to the story.
Continue reading The servant leader
 At the Colloquium last week, one of the priests mentioned the relationship between sacred music and worship in his homily. He said something which was quite interesting, that I’ll attempt to paraphrase as best I can:
“Our music is the tabernacle, the means of delivery of the Word to the faithful.”
This is a fascinating idea, that the word of God is conveyed through readings, through ritual, and especially through sacred music because it reaches so deeply. And when people hear the word, they receive the Word.
It’s hard to get my mind around, but it strikes me as truth. Our music isn’t about feeling good about ourselves and how “well” we are worshiping. It’s about giving another means for each of us to receive the blessed Word, the ultimate gift, from our maker.
I’d be interested to hear what thoughts this sparks for you!
I’m really enjoying God’s gift of yearly cycles. During the summer, especially, is my time to refresh, re-energize, and re-commit. This is possible because so many things slow down during this season as people focus on vacations and family.
Sometimes the summer “break” feels a little weird because our kids are grown up and I’m running my own business, but that’s a topic for another day.
For the last three years, I’ve gone to the Sacred Music Colloquium. Continue reading Revitalize!
Yesterday was a challenge!
Up at 3:00AM, to drive to Denver, grab a flight. Then hang around in Milwaukee for 4 hours, and finally on to Pittsburgh. OK, that’s enough whining.
Meeting up with all my great Colloquium buddies was wonderful, as expected. I started out tired, but when we got to singing … heaven! It’s just such a wonderful experience to be immersed with a bunch of great people who are all passionate about bringing back this heritage of music.
Today we did the simplest Mass, English Ordinary Form. That’s mostly just for practical reasons – there’s not enough time to practice anything very hard. We did the Richard Rice ordinaries, which is the first time I’ve heard them done for real. Quite excellent, in my opinion.
I don’t know that I’ll be able to put up as many posts this week as I’d like, since I don’t have network access on my own PC. But rest assured that the recordings are coming! For a teaser of the program, go to http://music.dierschow.com/2010Colloquium.
 Colorado's state flower Summer is my time to reflect and renew my commitments for the coming year. I talked about this some last June, when I was struggling with whether our schola would achieve critical mass. Looking back on the progress, we now have grown to a dozen loyal and talented members, now including women as well as men.
We really are quite blessed. Despite challenges and frustrations, it’s wonderful to be bringing this traditional music back to our parish.
Continue reading Refresh and renew
If you want the audio recordings from the 2008 or 2009 Sacred Music Colloquiums in Chicago, drop me an email. They’re available on the website at music.dierschow.com/2008Colloquium and music.dierschow.com/2009Colloquium, but the recordings are pretty huge if you want to download ALL of them.
I’ll also be making recordings next week of Colloquium XX in Pittsburg, so let me know if you would like to get a copy of that.
I’ve made a number of data CDs of these recently, including a couple that I’m taking to Pittsburg. These are DATA CDs – just a number of ZIP files – because the audio CD versions would take at least a dozen discs.
So drop me an e-mail if you’re interested!
 We lost a big chunk off of one of our big trees with last week’s snow storm, and I spent a lot of time today cleaning up the mess. It gave me some time to think about the importance of pruning, especially since this is the time of year that I look at trimming my obligations and commitments for the upcoming year.
Pruning is good, and it’s healthy.
Continue reading Time to prune?
For the third time now, we pulled together all the chant choirs from the parishes in Fort Collins to do a single Mass. Or in this case, two: one at my home parish, and one next Sunday at the most traditional church building in town.
I’m glad that this one wasn’t the first time we got together, because it was just crazy. Just to give you a feel for it, the planning was again done by three directors, and we never actually got together and met. On top of that, we had four practices, and never had more than one of the directors at each.
I felt particularly bad, because I didn’t attend any of the practices myself, having been waylaid in London last week due to the volcano.
But with God’s grace, it came together this morning. Not perfect by any means, but God doesn’t demand perfection. He just wants to give all for His worship and glory.
My deep thanks go out to all the singers this morning, who especially showed grace and enthusiasm despite some big-time chaos. And I know we’re all looking forward to next week, when we have the chance to sing in a wonderfully resonant space. I think that will blow a lot of people away who haven’t had the chance to sing that way before.
There was an interesting piece on a local news channel about a teacher at the University of Northern Colorado who uses the Ward Method to successfully teach music. I haven’t met her yet, although I’ve been interested to attend one of her workshops.
The reason for mentioning it here is that our chant schola is featured – OK, for maybe ten seconds – in reference to the Ward Method growing out of Gregorian Chant in the Catholic Church.
Check it out on the 9News website.
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2010 Colloquium