Anyone who has used Cynthia Cowen's resources knows that they have the following characteristics:
They are complete -- everything you need is here.
They require little preparation, rehearsal, or props.
They are theologically sound and spiritually uplifting.
Many churches have discovered recently that families wish to include worship in the festivities of their Christmas day. This is the perfect way to do it without requiring a lot of work.
It's all here: call to worship, Christmas carols, litanies, meditations, scripture readings, and more
Cynthia E. Cowen is a Christian resource writer and liturgical evangelist. She has written and published numerous programs for women, youth, and special congregational events. She holds a B.A. degree in education from Northern Michigan University and has completed requirements for certification as an Associate in Ministry in the ELCA. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of the ELCA Board of Publications and is president of the Northern Great Lakes Synodical Women's Organization Executive Board.

Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America (to say nothing of world over), being engaged from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Moreover, music's use as an affective agent for political and religious programs suggests that it has ethical significance. Indeed, many have said as much. It is surprising then that music's ethical significance remains one of the most undertheorized aspects of both moral philosophy and music scholarship. Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music fills part of this scholarly gap by focusing on the religious aspects of musical activity, particularly on the practices of Christian communities. Based on ethnomusicological fieldwork at three Protestant churches and a group of seminary students studying in an immersion course at South by Southwest (SXSW), and synthesizing theories of discourse, formation, and care ethics oriented towards restorative justice, it first argues that relationships are ontological for both human beings and musical activity. It further argues that musical meaning and emotion converge in human bodies such that music participates in personal and communal identity construction in affective ways-yet these constructions are not always just. Thus, considering these aspects of music's ways of being in the world, Music for Others finally argues that music is ethical when it preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other, and thereby with God.

On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a "hyper-religious" music of sounds and colors, it aims to show that Messiaen has broken new ground. His reinvention of religious music makes us again aware of the fact that religious music, if taken in its proper radical sense, belongs to the foremost of musical adventures. The work of Olivier Messiaen is well known for its inclusion of religious themes and gestures. These alone, however, do not seem enough to account for the religious status of the work. Arguing for a "breakthrough toward the beyond" on the basis of the synaesthetic experience of music, Messiaen invites a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers. How to account for a religious breakthrough that is produced by a work of art? Starting from an analysis of his 1960s oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jesus-Christ, this book arranges a moderated dialogue between Messiaen and the music theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation of Jean-Luc Marion, the rethinking of religion and technics in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and the Augustinian ruminations of Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Ultimately, this confrontation underscores the challenging yet deeply affirmative nature of Messiaen's music.

Contemporary Christian music has an increasing yet controversial influence on church worship today. This book discusses the topic from a biblical viewpoint and makes a case for using contemporary music in worship -- with theological integrity.

"Two Tenebrae Readings and Services" provides pastors and congregations with dramatic ways to remember the Passion of the Lord.
Tenebrae I - 9 reading parts
Tenebrae II - 12 reading parts
Parts are simple enough for young people and adults. They are creatively drawn from the Bible narratives and present realistic human responses from those who would be his disciples.
These resources require very little preparation. They were conducted in the author's congregation by calling the readers together an hour before the service.
Richard A. Dinges has been an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ since 1978. He has an M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He has served churches in California, Massachusetts, and West Virginia. Currently he is working to establish a Christian Healing Center in West Virginia for the promotion of healing and peace.

Tom Fettke finally brings to the keyboard his vast experience as an arranger. The lush arrangements included in this collection are refreshing settings of beautiful, timeless hymns. Late Intermediate to Early Advanced.

Unlocks the secrets behind the images and music of an important Spanish musical manuscript compiled for a brotherhood of suspected heretics ca. 1500. The Rosary Cantoral is a rare and beautifully decorated manuscript of Latin plainchant for the Catholic Mass compiled in Toledo, Spain, around the year 1500. In an engaging and richly interdisciplinary essay, Lorenzo Candelaria approaches the Rosary Cantoral as a cultural artifact, unlocking the secrets behind its images and music to reveal the social history and rituals of an elite brotherhood dedicated to the rosary and aspects of the religious communityit served: the Dominicans of San Pedro Martir de Toledo. The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo presents a model for realizing the fuller significance of illuminatedmusic manuscripts as cultural artifacts and offers unprecedented insights into the social and devotional life of Toledo, Spain, around the turn of the sixteenth century. After solving the mystery of the Rosary Cantoral's origins,subsequent essays probe the meaning and cultural significance of the manuscript's iconography (including a border decoration after Albrecht Durer), its rare Spanish chants for the Mass, and two striking musical works for multiplevoices (one by Josquin Desprez and another on "L'homme arme"). Ultimately, this book focuses on the extraordinary circumstances that engendered the compilation of the Rosary Cantoral around 1500: a system of patronage between a brotherhood of suspected heretics and a religious house that was a key supporter of the Inquisition in Toledo. Lorenzo Candelaria (University of Texas at Austin) is co-author of American Music: A Panorama.

Dieser Band enthalt die Berichte des internationalen Kongresses Musik aus Kloestern des Alpenraums (Universitat Freiburg i. Ue., 23.-24. November 2007), der eine erste Gelegenheit der Auseinandersetzung und des Zusammentreffens von Spezialisten und Forschern bot, die die Prasenz, Rolle und Bedeutung der Musik in Kloestern des Alpenraums vom 17.-19. Jahrhundert untersuchen. Zu Unrecht von der Wissenschaft vernachlassigt, stellt das musikalische Leben in den Kloestern des Alpenraums ein enormes Interessenpotential dar. Studien zur Musikkultur, der Beschaffung und Zirkulation von Musikquellen, zur internen Produktion und den musikalischen Auffuhrungspraxen im Rahmen der verschiedenen liturgischen Kontexte, zur Bestellung von Vertonungen bei 'externen' Komponisten und zu den Musikalienbestanden der religioesen Institutionen - von Kriegen verschont und daher einzigartig und von unschatzbarem historischen Wert - zeigen sehr deutlich den ganzen Reichtum dieses unerforschten Wissenschaftsgebietes.

Award-winning author Osbeck tells the dramatic stories behind 25 gospel songs, including "The Old Rugged Cross, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, " and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." 112 pp.

It is Christmas Eve. All over town people are preparing for Christmas. Amid the hustle and bustle of the night a little church is open and prepared for any visitor. For some people on this night the scene at the little church's altar will be a lifesaver.
Here is a Christmas Eve drama in a modern-day setting. It includes parts for six adults, four teenagers, and seven children.
Scriptures, read by a narrator, are from Luke. Three familiar Christmas carols, for singing by the congregation, are part of the drama. Performance time is 15-20 minutes.
JoAnn S. Dawson is lay speaker at the Salem United Methodist Church, Wilmington, Delaware, for which she wrote this Christmas play.

(Accordion). 24 Christmas favorites arranged specifically for accordion: Away in a Manger * The First Noel * Go, Tell It on the Mountain * Good King Wenceslas * It Came Upon the Midnight Clear * Jingle Bells * Jolly Old St. Nicholas * March of the Toys * Silent Night * Toyland * We You a Merry Christmas * and more.

Christ Church cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in a catholic country. Musical and archival sources (the most extensive for any Irish cathedral) provide a unique perspective on the history of music in Ireland. Christ Church has had a complex and varied history as the cathedral church of Dublin, one of two Anglican cathedrals in the capital of a predominantly Catholic country and the church of the British administration in Ireland before1922. An Irish cathedral within the English tradition, yet through much of its history it was essentially an English cathedral in a foreign land. With close musical links to cathedrals in England, to St Patrick's cathedral in Dublin, and to the city's wider political and cultural life, Christ Church has the longest documented music history of any Irish institution, providing a unique perspective on the history of music in Ireland. Barra Boydell, a leading authority on Irish music history, has written a detailed study drawing on the most extensive musical and archival sources existing for any Irish cathedral. The choir, its composers and musicians, repertoire and organs are discussed within the wider context of city and state, and of the religious and political dynamics which have shaped Anglo-Irish relationships since medieval times. More than just a history of music at one cathedral, this book makesan important contribution to English cathedral music studies as well as to Irish musical and cultural history. BARRA BOYDELL is Senior Lecturer in Music, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

There has been much passionate debate and emotion aroused by the introduction of contemporary music styles into the modern church. While these debates have rarely produced a victor, the detrimental effects of them have resonated throughout many Protestant churches worldwide. Rather than simply fuelling this debate further, "Open Up The Doors" represents an attempt to provide objective criteria and analytical frameworks by which the quality and function of contemporary congregational music can be assessed. The latest music from Hillsong, Soul Survivor, Parachute, Vineyard, Christian City and others is examined in order to reveal both the beneficial and dangerous trends occurring in modern church music. "Open Up The Doors" considers how well modern music is serving the modern church, and also how effectively it is operating as a musical form in the secular culture that surrounds it.

Our Hymns, Our Heritage encourages a love and appreciation for the church’s hymns—a significant way to pass the Christian faith from generation to generation.

The book features music and lyrics for 121 hymns that every person should know, drawn from a cross-section of styles, themes, and historical eras. The hymns are divided into sections based on the church year, God’s nature and attributes, and our responses to Him. Each hymn is presented on single book spread—the left-hand page gives a brief biography of the text’s author and the melody’s composer as well as a devotional summary to aid singing with understanding. The right-hand page is hymnal-like with the music and stanzas for simple playing and singing.

Our Hymns, Our Heritage can be used by parents and educators alike to instill a life-long love for the richness and beauty of hymns.

Texts centred on the mother of Jesus abound in religious traditions the world over, but thirteenth-century Old French lyric stands apart, both because of the enormous size of the Marian cult in thirteenth-century France and the lack of critical attention the genre has garnered from scholars.As hybrid texts, Old French Marian songs combine motifs from several genres and registers to articulate a devotional message. In this comprehensive and illuminating study, Daniel E. O'Sullivan examines the movement between secular and religious traditions in medieval culture that Old French religious song embodies. He demonstrates that Marian lyric was far more than a simple, mindless imitation of secular love song. On the contrary, Marian lyric participated in a dynamic interplay with the secular tradition that different composers shaped and reshaped in light of particular doctrinal and aesthetic concerns. It is a corpus that reveals itself to be far more malleable and supple than past readers have admitted.With an extensive index of musical and textual editions of dozens of songs, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric brings a heretofore neglected genre to light.

The English Gradual provides clergy and their choirs and congregations simple, with an accurate and easily understood manual of Plainchant for use at the Consecration of the Eucharist.

These simple settings of the Introits, Graduals, Alleluias, tracts, offertories, and Communions are intended for the use of parish choirs, at the principal service on Sundays and Holy-days, throughout the Christian year.

Articles on masterpieces of European religious music, from the middle ages to Stravinsky and Tavener. The late Wilfrid Mellers, who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself as a non-believer; but his preference for music that "displays a sense of the numinous" (in his words) will strike a chord with many wholisten to religious music nowadays, and who share his view that music that confronts first and last things is likely to offer more than music that evades them. The essays form five groups, which together offer a survey of religious music from around the first millennium to the beginning of the second, in the context of the difficult issues of what religious music is, and, for good measure, what is religion? The parts are: The Ages of Christian Faith; The Re-birth of a Re-birth: From Renaissance to High Baroque; From Enlightenment to Doubt; From "the Death of God" to "the Unanswered Question"; and The Ancient Law and the Modern Mind. Musical discussion, with copious examples, is conducted throughout the book in a context that is also religious - and indeed philosophical, social, and political, with the open-endedness that such an approach demands in the presentation of ideas aboutmusic's most fundamental nature and purposes. COMPOSERS: Hildegard of Bingen; Perotin; Machaut; Dunstable, Dufay; William Corniyshes father and son; Tallis; Byrd; Monteverdi; Schutz; J.S. Bach; Couperin; Handel; Haydn;Mozart; Beethoven; Schubert; Bruckner; Berlioz, Faure; Verdi, Brahms; Elgar, Delius; Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells; Britten; Janacek; Messiaen, Poulenc; Rachmaninov; Stravinsky; Part, Tavener, Gorecki, Macmillan, Finnissy; Copland.

Winner of the 2004 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Rock, Rhythm & Blues or Soul, The Holy Profane explores the strong presence of religion in the secular music of twentieth-century African American artists as diverse as Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Tupac Shakur. Analyzing lyrics and the historical contexts which shaped those lyrics, Teresa L. Reed examines the link between West-African musical and religious culture and the way African Americans convey religious sentiment in styles such as the blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and gangsta rap. She looks at Pentecostalism and black secular music, minstrelsy and its portrayal of black religion, the black church, "crossing over" from gospel to R&B, images of the black preacher, and the salience of God in the rap of Tupac Shakur.

Traditionally, west European culture has drawn distinct divisions between the secular and the sacred in music. Liturgical music belongs in church, not on pop radio, and artists who fuse the two are guilty of sacrilege. In the West-African worldview, however, both music and the divine permeate every imaginable part of life -- so much so that concepts like sacred and secular were entirely foreign to African slaves arriving in the colonies. The Western influence on African Americans eventually resulted in more polarization between these two musical forms, and black musicians who grew up singing in church were often lamented as hellbound once they found popular success. Even these artists, however, never completely left behind their West-African musical ancestry. Reed's exploration of this trend in African American music connects the work of today's artists to their West-African ancestry -- a tradition that over two-hundred years of Western influence could not completely stamp out.

The book examines from various viewpoints Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the chronology of the compositional process unraveled from documentary and manuscript sources. The musical language is analyzed in detail, and the fluctuating critical responses to the score are assessed.

Anlasslich der 56. Greifswalder Bachwoche - zugleich 77. Bachfest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft - veranstaltete das Institut fur Kirchenmusik und Musikwissenschaft der Universitat Greifswald Ende Mai 2002 ein Symposium zum Thema Parodie-Messe. Hier gehaltene bzw. hierfur vorgesehene Referate, aber auch Vortrage und Beitrage zum Programmheft sind in diesem Band zusammengefasst. Den Schwerpunkt bilden naturgemass die Messkompositionen Johann Sebastian Bachs mit ihren Vorlagen in seinen Kantatensatzen. Hinzu kommen Texte, deren Themen von grundsatzlichen Ausfuhrungen zum Thema Parodie und zur deutschen Tradition der Parodiemesse bis zur Adaption Bachscher Orgelstucke als Filmmusik reichen.

Dr. Howard Thurman explores how protest and resistance are expressed in spirituals as well as how these songs have been a "spiritual watering hole" in his life..

Book & DVD. This book presents for the first time the complete chant repertory of an orally transmitted repertory of church hymns for the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Sicily. This body of chant has been cultivated by the Albanian-speaking minorities since their predecessors from Albania and northern Greece arrived in Sicily as refugees in the late fifteenth century, as a result of the Turkish invasion of the Balkan region. Bartolomeo di Salvo (19161986), a Basilean monk from the monastery of Grottaferrata, prepared the transcriptions for the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae in the 1950s, but they were never published. Girolamo Garofalo, ethnomusicologist from Palermo, and Christian Troelsgard, secretary of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Copenhagen, have discovered the transcriptions and related documents in archives in Sicily, Grottaferrata, Rome and Copenhagen. As a result of their findings, this unique chant collection is now being made available for the first time. The languages used in the book are English / Italian (front matter and indices) and Greek (the chant texts).