Essential Red Fall 2008 (Final Project)

For the Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History course with Dan Wilt

First, my apologies for the late posting of this assignment.  That’s baaaaad of me.  My schedule has been unrelenting.

For our final project, I decided to record a Christmas song, specifically speaking of the event of the birth of Christ.  Since our church has a significant children’s ministry, I decided to do a fun little children’s song.

http://harvestvineyard.ca/ChristmasSheep.pdf

http://harvestvineyard.ca/ChristmasSheep.mp3

I wanted to begin the song by initially focusing on the announcement of Jesus birth by the angles.  It’s the proclamation of the coming of the Savior and the advent of the Kingdom of God manifest in a little baby.

Next, I wanted to focus on the response of the news as being praise.  Of course, here the praise response is more clearly seen from the language translation on the PDF file.

Next, I wanted to focus on the desire to seek out the object of the good news.

And in the last verse, I wanted to convey the idea that after they encountered Jesus in the manger, they could not help but share with others the great news of what they had seen that drew them to Jesus.

So the progression of ideas is announcement, praise response, seeking, finding, then sharing the good news.  I believe that this progression of events is not only ‘advent’ in nature, but also relating to our Christian life in how we hear, believe, seek, find then give away.

All that said, I also did take a few creative liberties and embellished the story a little.  However, if needed to do so, I believe that I could back up my embellishments with some scriptural ideas.  :)

My goal here was not only to have a song that makes a point, but also to write a song that is fun that will stick in kids heads and get them singing.  Just as there was joy over Christ’s birth in the fields as the shepherds tended their flocks at night, so to should there be some joy as we reenact with children shepherds in their bathrobes and their  younger siblings dressed in white with cotton balls glued to their noses.

Hopefully, others share my sense of humor…

Of course, all materials I maintain the copyright .