Urim songwriting workshop: Teaching sessions

But soon the workshop was beginning. Not precisely at the 8:00 start time. In fact, closer to 11:00. It had been raining in the morning, and rain almost always delays village events. But the participants began arriving, and when the local coordinators felt enough people had come, they finished the registration process, handed out notebooks, course booklets, and pens, and began the first day's devotional time. The coordinators wanted each day to begin with some congregational singing, prayers, and a devotional message (given by me). For the first devotional, I read from Mark 12:28-31:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

I find this one of the most amazing passages in the Bible--so clearly and succinctly stating the purpose of our existence, the laws that are behind the whole story that God is working out in this world. I like sharing it with Papua New Guinean audiences, because Christianity is still very young in many places here. The traditional religious beliefs are often not far away in people's thinking, even for some people who are regular churchgoers. Jesus's words in Mark 12:29 are so simple, yet so challenging.

Other topics I spoke on during devotional times in the workshop:

• Exodus 15. This is the victory song of the Israelites after God led them through the Red Sea and saved them from their enemies. I shared it as a fantastic example of how God's people respond to miraculous acts through singing the story. I always challenge people in these workshops to consider singing their own stories back to God as worship.
•  Numbers 10:1-10. Here God instructs Moses in a sound-signaling system, as a way of easing the burden on Moses to lead the Israelites. I don't suppose it's a passage that is preached on very often, but I like to show it to Papua New Guineans so that they can see that God is involved in all aspects of our lives. Worship is not something that belongs solely to Sunday morning inside the church building. I also like this passage because the signaling system that God teaches Moses is very similar to the garamut (wooden slit-drum) system that many Papua New Guinean communities have used. (more about garamut in another post)
• Deuteronomy 31:14ff. This is an account of the end of Moses's life, a time when God asked Moses to give the Law to the people one final time. But rather than just speaking the words of the Law, Moses is told to sing it--knowing that people will easily forget spoken words but will remember a song much longer. This passage encourages workshop participants to consider carefully what words they put in their songs. What do they really want people in the community to remember for a long time? How can they sing truth beautifully?
• 1 Samuel 16:14-23. One of our first pictures of what kind of person David was. When King Saul is searching for a musician to ease his troubled mind, one of his advisers suggests the young man David. His list of David's qualities is convicting for anyone. For new songwriters, it's a reminder that composing Christian songs requires some reflection on our own character and behavior before we begin the songs.
• Luke 1:46-55. This of course is Mary's Magnificat, the wonderful song she sang when visiting with Elizabeth. I love the breadth of the content in this song. Mary not only sings about her own joy, but even looks forward to all the people (including us!) who will be blessed through what is happening in her life. When I shared this with the participants, I encouraged them to sing the whole story whenever possible. We're part of a past and a future hope that is much bigger than just each of us as individuals.
• Acts 16:16-26. Here's a glimpse of Paul and Silas, imprisoned for a ludicrous reason, praying and singing late at night in jail. The other prisoners heard them, and we can only imagine what an effect that had on them. We know that after the miraculous not-quite-jailbreak that night, the prison warden was so affected that he and his whole family decided to become followers of Christ. This account shows how music is a comfort to us in difficult times, and how sung truth reaches many people.

In my next post I'll write about the more interactive activities and discussions that formed a big part of the workshop.

I don't always have someone at a workshop who can take pictures of me teaching. It was nice this time to get some shots of me in that role, on that first day: