Music Ministry Roots
By Tom Booth
Greetings from the Southwest! I am honored to write for spiritandsong.com on a regular basis. I am sitting in the beautiful Sonoran desert, near Tucson, Arizona, contemplating where to start. What aspect or area of music ministry might we begin discussing in this column? As the saying goes, "there is no better place to start than the beginning."
In my travels this year, teaching and singing in various dioceses and parish events, my workshops began with this question: Where does our music ministry come from? Where did we get our start? Knowing what has come before is so important in life. History teaches us so many important things. People before us built the foundation we are standing on, and others will surely continue with our work when we are done. That is true in family life, civic life, and ministerial life as well. We are a part of a continuum! We are simply serving in our time and place. It is now our opportunity to serve and shine with the light of Christ.
Musically speaking, our ministry began with King David and others from our Judeo-Christian heritage. David sang and "danced before the Lord." When we take our telecasters and Korg Triton synthesizers and compose a verbatim psalm for a Sunday Mass, we are doing what God's chosen people, the Israelites, did over 2000 years ago. What we are doing has been done and will be done for many more years to come! Will it be another two thousand more years? Who knows? What we need to know is where we come from and why we do it! We sing to serve, and we serve by singing. In 2007, when we worship and sing before the Lord at an XLT or a simple time of adoration, we do what King David did years and years before. We are worshipping the one true God. Holy is his name, alleluia!
As we continue our discussion, we will trace our ministry of music through the olive trees of Gethsemane to the early monasteries of Christendom. After that, we will look at the Council of Trent and follow OUR history all the way to the Second Vatican Council. In the 40 years or so since Vatican II there have been many changes and metamorphoses of contemporary Catholic music — both liturgical and devotional. We need to know how we got here and we need to know who we are, to better serve the One who calls us.