Songsters at Reading
As mentioned in Monday Spot our Songsters visited the Reading Central Salvation Army Corps last Sunday for the purpose of leading the worship and providing a musical ministry.
Two meetings were led by the Songsters. During the morning, which was themed ‘Come and See’, Deputy Songster Leader Carolynn Woodman, a school music director by profession, spoke to the children present about how God adapts to our needs and will come to us according to those needs.
Carolynn
Rachel Abbott gave an honest and compelling testimony about her life at Bradford University and Bradford Corps where she currently worships regularly.
Rachel
As a prelude to the sermon, given by Rosemary Steadman-Allen, the Songsters featured ‘One Life to Live’ and Rosemary spoke about God coming down to us, experiencing humanity and using His humanity as a bridge to enable people to relate to him through his grace. Various references in John’s gospel were used including John 1, John 11 and John 20. Two knelt in re-dedication and the Songsters concluded with the song ‘With All my Heart’ and ‘Vesper’.
Rosemary
In the afternoon a programme was presented on the theme of ‘Jesus and Us’. This was predominantly conducted by Songster Leader Adrian Horwood with two numbers being led by Carolynn.
Adrian
The music began with ‘Praise His Holy Name’, reflecting ‘God the Father’, and continued with ‘I miss my time with you’ and a song for audience participation (To God be the Glory). Each section of the programme contained a number of readings depicting Jesus’ birth, preaching, teaching, death, resurrection and Pentecost. Jesus the Son included ‘Mary did you know’, ‘Then will the very rocks cry out’, ‘They could not’ (Soloist Rachel Horwood), ‘God so loved the World’ and ‘Radiant Lord, majestic Christ’.
God with us
Rachel Horwood
Deputy Songster Leader Carolynn Woodman conducted the group in ‘He’s the Lily’ and ‘Everybody Sing Praises’. Allan Jones brought thoughts from scripture and spoke about how God fills us with his strength so that can’t becomes can. The afternoon was brought to a conclusion with the singing of ‘With Wings as Eagles’ and the united Reading and Chatham Songsters singing ‘Shine on Us’.