Kingdom Singers -- the story behind my new choir

      After much prayer, deliberation, and prodding from friends and other singers, I started rehearsals for a new choir in the fall of 2017.

     Although I have sung in choirs all my life, I have never felt the desire to conduct a choir, let alone actually be the founder of one!!!  To make matters even worse, I don't like starting things that might fail, and believe me, there are a lot of things that can go wrong when you lead a choir, especially a new one!!!

     We started in September with about 30 people on our sign-up list and a good 20 who arrived at the first rehearsal, many of whom I did not know personally.  The youngest person in the room was finishing high school and the oldest was retired, and we had everything in between.  And that is when the little voice in the back of my head went off  Each and every possible insecurity came to the forefront for me -- are these people going to get along with each other, are they going to like me, can they sing and what do I know about choirs anyway?

     So what did I do?  I knew the choir was God's will.  He had made that really clear.  I had no choice but to trust Him and not my own feelings on the matter.  As rehearsals continued, I asked Him for wisdom.  One morning, I woke up at 5am and suddenly felt the Lord wanted to talk to me about choir rehearsals -- namely, that I wasn't leading them the way He wanted.  Having sung for many years in professional choirs and being a well-trained musician, I spent most of our rehearsals focusing on singing the right notes and making a good sound.  Because we only meet every other week, I try to use rehearsal time as effectively as possible.  Now there is nothing wrong in that actually -- we are instructed to give our best to the Lord.  However, this time, I felt Him prodding me to model worship, and not just practice songs.

    The following evening, we had choir practise.  However, after vocal warmups, I sat down at the piano and explained to my singers that this time, we would not directly rehearse any of our current repertoire, even though we had upcoming gigs.  Instead, we would hang out with Jesus.  I encouraged them to stand, sit, lie down, move away from the pews (we rehearse in a church), write things down if God spoke to them, or open the Bible.  Then I started playing and singing whatever I felt on my heart.  I pushed back the voice of insecurity which was trying to tell me that people might feel uncomfortable for one reason or another -- and I decided to worship an audience of One.

    The results were actually very amazing, and surprisingly, everyone had only positive things to say.  One person commented why Sunday church couldn't look like this, and another revealed that God had indeed spoken to him.  Someone else shared a Bible verse.  Since then, we have periodically used rehearsal time for open worship sessions, and at the end of our first year, one singer commented that those were the best part of choir by far. 

     I have gained a new understanding of the verse from Proverbs 3, which encourages us to ¨trust in the Lord with all Your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.¨

     As we approach our one year anniversary, here is a quick look back at this past year:

     Our very first gig at the end of October, came after just a handful of rehearsals.  It was a music festival in Kerava, with many other international and Finnish choirs.  Mighty God, You are was written by my long-time friend Andreas Forsberg, and he is the featured soloist in this video.

     Kingdom Singers was founded to inspire and encourage the local church in praise and worship of our almighty King.  However, we were not expecting our first church service to take place in the Helsinki Cathedral downtown, on the 100th anniversary of Finland's Independence, but God is cool that way!   Here is the closing song from that service.

     Our spring term included a service at the International Evangelical Church in downtown Helsinki, as well as at Andreaskyrkan, a Swedish speaking congregation.  One of the aims of our choir has been to include songs in Finnish, English and Swedish, and to break down the language and generational barriers that we sadly often find in churches today.   

     Thankful for a fruitful and fun first year and looking forward to 2018!  If you are interested in singing with us or in having us at your church, please write to kingdomsingersfinland@gmail.com.




    


    

TV interview thoughts

     There is nothing like logging onto Facebook after being out of town in the countryside the entire weekend, and noticing that on your newsfeed, a Christian TV channel has featured an interview you did in 2015 and actually had conveniently forgotten about.....

     Truth be told, I just about loathe being on TV.  Newspaper interviews are not a whole lot better -- I did one last year as PR for a local event and was so nervous, I could barely get myself out of my chair at the end.  I still haven't been able to watch the TV interview in its entirety, although a couple of my close friends assure me that it went just fine (I hope they are telling the truth!).

    However, Himlen TV7 decided to make a 4 minute mini-Youtube version of the interview and today I literally forced myself to watch it (I kept my eyes closed at times).  Although I still find it really eerie to hear myself speaking Swedish, I actually agreed with the content of the interview (which maybe shouldn't be so surprising, since they were my thoughts!!).  Some of the things I managed to touch upon include the importance of embracing diverse musical styles in our churches today, and not limiting ourselves to one style.  In this way, we are inclusive and encourage multi-generational worship services, which are very important as we can learn from one another.  In addition, I believe that our calling from the Lord is usually not a static one, but something which is constantly changing as He molds us.  In fact, if we knew everything He asked us to do right from day one, we would probably be too scared to do anything, so He often reveals things slowly.

     Seeing the interview on Facebook today also reminded me about what I should be focusing on.  In all honesty, it is easy for me to become distracted and de-motivated at times -- much of leading worship can feel like a chore when you do the same things every week (picking songs, writing chord charts, rehearsing with amateur musicians and getting to church early on a Sunday).  However, it is when we are faithful in the small things that the Lord can really use us to change the people and situations around us.  And although TV and newspaper interviews are not my thing and I don't feel at all qualified to do them, I know that one small step of obedience often blesses other people.

   If you speak Swedish, you can watch the shorter Youtube-version here or the complete version here.  If you do manage to watch the whole thing, please let me know what you think and even better -- remind me what I said, because it might just be that I need to hear it again from someone else. :)

Untitled

    I was exiting the train station last night at around 8pm, when I spotted a middle-aged man coming towards me.  He said hello and asked me how I was.  I didn't recognize him and since strangers in Finland don't normally make conversation with other strangers, I answered briefly and continued walking.  Approximately five minutes later, I saw the man on the other side of the street.  Since there is really only one exit to the train station, and I had assumed he was going there, I immediately started wondering at what point he had turned around and started following me.

    I didn't have to wait long to find out because he then crossed to my side of the street and ran a little in front of me before trying to resume conversation.  Again, he said hello and asked me how I was doing, but this time I was beginning to panic a bit (the street was really quiet), so I ignored him and continued walking, but not before his body language registered despair.  I made it to my destination a few minutes later and thought nothing of the entire scenario until this morning. 

    You see, the man whom I met had dark skin and was most likely also a foreigner in a strange country.  I felt somewhat guilty for not wanting to make conversation with him.  Had this situation happened on a bus or tram, I surely would have talked to him -- in fact, I have often had strangers tell me their life story while on public transport (I guess I look sympathetic, or just very non-intimidating).  However, it is almost always the case that if I meet a man alone, especially in the evening, and he tries to make any kind of contact, I opt to just keep walking.  I realize it shouldn't be like this, but I am also interested in my own safety, and six years of living in New York City have taught me that looking out for myself is actually a very wise thing to do.  I never needed a campaign such as #metoo in order to innately understand that women are often the victims of violence and abuse.  In addition, being petite has also meant I have had my fair share of unpleasant situations to learn from, but thankfully none of them have had drastic consequences.

     I pondered a little if I should have done something different.  One option would have been to ask if he needed help or was lost; however, I also know asking questions is often a stalling technique, and I wasn't sure I was interested in waiting around to find out what he had in mind.

    Of course, I don't have to defend my actions, because the man last night did not make his intentions very clear.  I have no way of knowing if he was after sex or if I had met him at an event and he wanted to reconnect (very possible, given my line of work).  Although great progress has been made in the area of gender equality, as a general rule, I am perfectly willing to admit that women are still physically weaker and therefore need to be on their guard -- however, it makes me a bit sad to feel that there is no better alternative than to just turn around and walk away when someone might indeed have needed help.  What would you have done?

Music theory and reading the Bible

One of the goals of my recent vacation was to spend more time reading the Bible (and other books!).   Here are some random things I discovered through my extended time in God's word.

First of all, I am no theologian or Bible scholar.  Although I attended some evening Bible school classes while living in New York, I have never studied anything extensively, although I wish I had. To compensate for this, I often ask the Lord to teach me things as I read.

Reading the Bible for me is often like analyzing a multi-movement instrumental work.  Let me try to explain this.  I am a music theorist and I actually like analyzing music for my own enjoyment (I know, now I sound like a geek!), although it is also part of my job when teaching at the conservatory. When I analyze a given movement or piece, I often look at several layers -- the small details (such as harmonic language, rhythmic patterns and the movement of the melody), larger gestures and then the bigger picture.  In the same way, I love re-reading familiar passages of scripture and scouring for new details.  I often read these aloud, going over them several times if necessary. When I examine less familiar (or forgotten!) passages, I read more quickly to try to get a grasp on the overall story or situation.

For example, this morning, I starting reading out of Matthew 8 -- passages that I heard about as a child in Sunday school and which I have read many times.  It dawned on me that Jesus healed many people who came to Him and first asked for healing.  However, He also healed those who came on behalf of someone else, for example, the centurion in Capernaum whose servant was sick. I also noticed the centurion's humble answer when Jesus agreed to come to his home -- the centurion said he wasn't worthy to receive such a visitor.  Jesus immediately claimed the servant healed and they parted ways.  Finally, I noticed that Jesus, upon entering Peter's home and seeing Peter's mother lying with fever, immediately touched and healed her (Matthew 8:14-15).

I asked God to speak to me about this passage so that I could practically apply the scripture to my own life.  Immediately, it dawned on me that according to the scriptures, Jesus never turned anyone away who asked for healing -- never.  The second thing that hit me is that I can ask for healing for others (this prompted me to immediately pray for a couple of sick people I know!), and finally, Jesus' compassion on noticing an ill person and healing without prompting reminded me of His infinite grace and compassion.  When I continued reading further in Matthew, I realized once again that we have been given this same mandate and authority to touch, pray for and heal others (eg. Matthew 10:8).  In fact, this is a recurring theme throughout the entire New Testament, quite in the same way that we see recurring themes in music, and therefore, we understand its significance for us today.

This post is getting long, so I think I will examine other analytical methods another day!  By the way, if you have ever studied Schenkerian music theory, you will recognize that my description of three layers comes from Schenker's concept of foreground, middleground and background respectively.  However, if you don't know anything about music theory, I hope you still enjoyed this post!

I would be curious to know how others read the Bible, so please feel free to comment below on your own strategies and methods!

Moving abroad (Part 1)

People often ask me what it is like to live in a foreign country, far from family and friends.  I never really know how to answer the question, because a truly thorough response would require hours to formulate.  For the most part, I have always been one who is too busy living life to reflect on it fully. and generally our impressions of a larger life experience will always be compromised of the sum of everyday interactions and experiences.  In any case, this blog post is my attempt to partially answer that question.

Moving to a new country could maybe be described as a personal journey of discovery. To begin with, you have to figure out a lot of things, and preferably rather quickly. These include practical matters, such as how to open a bank account and obtain a personal identification number (without which it is pretty hard to accomplish almost anything else), how to pay your taxes, as well as where to buy certain items.  For example, I went looking for contact lens solution in the regular grocery store and then in the pharmacy, as that is where I would find it back home, and it took me a long time to discover that it is only sold in special eyeglass shops! 

I have done a lot of things in the past seven years that I probably would never have done if I had stayed in North America.  The first on that list would be speaking three languages almost daily.  People often ask me if I think in Swedish -- the truth is, I quite frequently pray in Swedish as well as dream in it!  In addition, I always said I would never, ever conduct a choir, and now I lead not one but two choirs, one of which I founded just last year.  Life takes you on unexpected adventures sometimes.

When I first moved to Helsinki, I braved my fears of new situations and set off to find a church on my own one Sunday. That involved entering a building full of strangers speaking a language I couldn't yet understand.  I am really glad I walked into that church, because I served there many years and have met some amazing people who are still close friends to this day!  In addition to churches, I have also attended parties, work functions, choir rehearsals and other musical events where I didn't know anyone in the beginning.  Most of the time, I end up having a lot of fun, but on occasion I have been at a function and spent most of it staring into my tea cup until I could safely leave.  Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often!

If I could perhaps sum up my experience though, it would be to say that moving abroad has given me the opportunity to trust the Lord in both small and larger areas of my life.  I prayed that if moving to Helsinki was His will, that He would take care of the practical things, such as money and housing.  My first couple of apartments were all unadvertised posts -- a friend of a friend or an acquaintance would get in touch and suddenly, I had a place to live.  When I finally found my own apartment and needed furniture, a good friend called to say she was relocating and wanted to know if I needed a couch, laundry machine, and kitchenware.  Suddenly, within minutes, I had a fully furnished apartment, complete with curtains and decorations.  However, God likes to go above and beyond the bare necessities -- I cannot even count the number of times someone has had an extra ticket to a concert or a musical, a fancy dinner, and even a boat cruise, and has thought to call me.  Faith is like a muscle and the more I have seen the Lord answer my prayers, the easier it becomes to trust Him in all areas of my life.  Moving halfway across the world, leaving the familiar behind, happened to be the perfect environment for Him to show me how much He truly loves me.