Newsletter #47

On Christmas Music

On Christmas Music

The Free Will Baptist Leadership Conference will be meeting today and tomorrow in Nashville, Tennessee. Coinciding with this event is the release of an important new book, Arminian Baptists: A Biographical History of Free Will Baptists, which I’m honored to be a contributor to.

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The Reason for the Reason

I’ve recently become much more aware of the fact that an important and meaningful part of my Christmas experiences have been church Christmas programs. No one is more surprised about this than I am.

I have a clear mental picture of the rather large productions my home church did when I was a kid. Though sometimes there were kids’ programs—in which my involvement was compulsory—I’m mainly recalling adult cantatas. The scale of decoration, stage design, and lighting was impressive. As to the music itself, it was a hearty mix of adult voices, both male and female. And as always, Jan McElveen narrated. God rest her soul.

Cantatas were practically mandatory. Any c…