Starting this Blog

I am a member of the Trinity Choir at Second Baptist Church in Homestead, Pennsylvania. I joined two years ago and am still struggling with Gospel music in general. This year I was elected President of the Choir. I was the fourth choice still it is an honor. I choose to think my fellow choir member respect me enough to settle for me when no one, including myself, wanted the job.

I began this musical adventure a year ago. I call it that because I have no experience in Gospel Music before. My Christian music experience was limited to singing along from a song book or hymnal. The only other experience I had was singing on a kettle with the Salvos at Christmas time. I really did enjoy that and I miss it greatly.

This has been work. This has been harder than learning to juggle or knit. And frankly I am not satisfied with where I am. If it were not for the tolerance of out Director, Minister John Burwell, I would not still be doing it. As someone that has done a fair amount of performing I do not like being bad at anything. With circus skills you practice them until you are ready to perform. In this choir I think I performed before I was ready to. Granted I am not sure that I am ready at this point.

The up side of being the President is that I do not have to make any creative decisions. I mostly preside over the business meetings and have a say in if we cancel for inclement weather.

I do see one administrative challenge of this year. We need to start reviewing our songs before we sing on Sundays. We do not have a choir room as such. We have been given permission to use a room that has very inappropriate furniture for our purposes. It has bulk chairs that do not fit in the room and steel desk that take up a third of the room. We as a church do not embrace change quickly. In order to make this room useful we will have to change the furniture and remove several items that are being stored in the choir room.

On a couple of house keeping notes there are a couple things that you should know about me. I am a clown, I run a clown troupe. I am also white and the rest of the choir is black. I only mention this as a point of reference. It might also give perspective to some who are far removed from these events.

Also In two years I have not found fault with anyone in the choir. They are all a good natured group of folks that have been welcoming every step of the way. The only person I have questions about is our Director. I personally think he may be to hopeful about my potential. There is more than a chance that he knows something I do not. Even so that is my perspective at this moment.

The reason I mentioned the good nature of the folks in the choir is so you know why there is little drama in these entries. In fact in the entire church of hundreds of people I have only had one person be rude to me. And frankly I think they have their own personal issues they are dealing with and lashing out at me was displaced anger.