The Sacred Music Coach

The servant leader

Carl — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:45:03 +0000

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.

Let’s look at Jesus Christ as humble servant.

Interested in this idea? I wrote more about it from a secular point of view on my business blog.

It’s important to note that Jesus didn’t take this idea of service to mean that nobody is providing leadership, or that everybody leads in their own direction. Instead, He provided incredibly strong direction, even when that contained messages which were hard for people to accept.

He also didn’t shy away from distinguishing between good and bad behavior, from articulating right and wrong. But He always kept this in the context of the big goal, the salvation of His people.

So as a leader and servant of your volunteer group, of your workteam, of your family … what does this mean? What are we to learn?

For me, it comes down to some key shifts in your mindset:

As leader, you have some specific jobs you need to do, the same as anyone else in the group. That includes leading the charge on promoting a common purpose and direction, stepping up for the tough decisions and tradeoffs, and letting people know how well they’re doing.
As servant, you should always be asking yourself: “What am I doing today to help this group be the best they can possibly be?”
This should all be done with an attitude of loving support, clarity of purpose, and the inherent value of each person.

Your group will see a big difference when it’s more about getting useful things done together than about your own ego.

Video from the Pittsburgh Colloquium!

Carl — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:11:17 +0000

CMAA Colloquium XX 2010 from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

In addition, the audio recordings are all available on http://music.dierschow.com/2010Colloquium.

Our music is a tabernacle

Carl — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:30:41 +0000

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!

Revitalize!

Carl — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:04:22 +0000

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. It’s totally consuming and draining, but my spirit is renewed for the coming year. I’ve been able to work with so many deeply talented and spiritual people, and have ideas I can take back to my parish.

It’s also a time to connect with each member of our Schola one on one, to see how things are going for them. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to call this week, though, as most people were out in connection with the upcoming holiday. That’s OK – we’ll connect over the course of the coming month.

I’ll be looking at doing another parish chant workshop this year, as that was so well received last summer and helped double the size of our schola. I’ve got some wonderful ideas to work with that came from the instructors and attendees at the Colloquium.

It’s also a time of reflection and planning for our upcoming RCIA year. I’m excited that we’re going to take a day to focus on this next week, to see what needs to be adjusted. We’ve been doing this during the summer for many years, and it’s always a great exercise to get the RCIA team aligned and focused on the most important thing: Bringing people to God.

What could be more important?

3:00 AM?

Carl — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:59:58 +0000

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.

Refresh and renew

Carl — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:18:31 +0000

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.

As I head to the 2010 Sacred Music Colloquium, it’s a great opportunity to build my own energy and bring new ideas back to the schola. As in past years, I’ll meet with each member individually when I return. The purpose of this is to help give voice to people’s celebrations and concerns in a confidential setting, which helps me to lead us in a direction that most people can get excited about. It also helps each individual to test and rebuild their own personal commitment.

I’m thinking that I might repeat the workshop I gave last August, since that was so successful in bringing in new members. It sure changed the energy of the group, and has been a real gift to me as well.

But first – first! – off to Pittsburg for a week of joyful learning and singing!

Anybody want Colloquium recordings?

Carl — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:30:32 +0000

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!

Time to prune?

Carl — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:57:37 +0000

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.

Why would you prune a plant?

There’s deadwood, branches that just aren’t alive or sound anymore.
The plant needs help to put its energy into the most fruitful (!) direction.
You need to prepare the plant for transplanting.
You want to help form the plant into a pleasing shape.

The lesson we should take away from this is that simplifying our own lives, pruning them, is a healthy and useful thing:

We need to clear away the obligations that just aren’t useful anymore.
We need to create space to put our energy into more fruitful activities.
We need to prepare for and respond to life changes.
We need to move our life into more spiritual shape, focusing on who we’re becoming rather than just what we’re doing.

Pruning away activities can result in wounds, just as pruning a tree. But ultimately it’s necessary, healthy and useful.

Rather like taking care of your physical health by trimming away the excess, how would you like to trim away the excess obligations to help your spiritual health?

A test of faith

Carl — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:02:22 +0000

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.

Teaching using the Ward Method

Carl — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:02:32 +0000

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.