Children as Church Musicians

Over the season of Epiphany we are exploring the many ways in which children minister to others at St Philip's. This week we will look at the gifts that many children and youth have contributed to our music program.

Music as an extracurricular activity as well as an informal pastime continues to be an important part of many people's childhood. In fact, in our culture, where many adults' main experience of music is as a listener or audience member rather than a participant, children, who often learn songs and musical skills as a part of school, camp and other activities, are often more comfortable offering their musical gifts than adults.

At St Philip's, most of our school aged children and youth are studying at least one instrument either in a school program or through private lessons. Many of the children also sing at school in choirs or as a part of their regular classes. Singing in a group, as part of the congregation, choir or Church school class, is a fairly familiar experience for these children and so they are less intimidated than the average adult who perhaps doesn't sing anywhere besides in Church.

This has made many of the children eager to join in the music program, both in worship and at other parish events as St Philip's. To cite some recent examples, at our St Nicholas service on Dec. 1st, 16 children and youth joined our regular choir (of 20 adults) to lead the music for our 10:00am service. They attended rehearsals and learned the music together with adults - for some of the children who don't read yet, this was a very challenging task.

For our upcoming Youth led service, students from the liturgy school class worked with Caitlin to select several of the pieces we will be singing together. Through this process they have learned about the various characteristics of a piece of music which are considered when we choose music for worship.

Children and youth have also shared their musical gifts at our annual Christmas Fair where they played Christmas Carols for those in attendance. Michael has also invited many of these young instrumentalists to play during communion on Sunday morning. They have also offered these musical gifts at our recent talent shows - events that have fostered the building of community and have also served as fundraisers for both outreach and parish ministries.

The leadership that the children have offered musically at St Philip's has the power to draw us in. Music has a mystical power to unite us and the eager and skillful participation of these young musicians sets an example for us all.