Our new organ is presently being built at the shop of Goulding & Wood in Indianapolis! This instrument is Opus 50 for that firm. Other significant instruments by this firm include Ball State University, Loyola University Chapel in Chicago, and Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans. Typically, pipe organs such as this are built and assembled in the shop and then disassembled, transported to location, reassembled, and voiced on site. Click HERE to see photos of construction.

Parts of our present instrument will be re-voiced and used in the new instrument (the 8' Principal, 4' Octave, 16' Subbass, and 4' Schalmey). Those ranks of pipes will be removed from the present instrument in April or May. The entire organ will be removed in mid-June, allowing the space to be prepared for the new instrument. During the Easter season, a team of engineers will make a tone opening in the south quire wall, behind which will be the new Swell division. As with most construction projects, please be advised that this will be somewhat unsightly for a while. We can expect installation and voicing to occur between October and December, with the main organ operable by Christmas 2012. The Antiphonal organ at the west end is expected to be operable by Easter 2013.

Click HERE to see organ project drawings. 

Preparing for Worship

Sunday, March 18, 2012    

Fourth Sunday in Lent     

Collect

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings     

Numbers 21:4-9 /  Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 / Ephesians 2:1-10 / John 3:14-21   

Services

7:45 a.m., Holy Eucharist Rite I

Celebrant: Dominic Moore

Preacher: Marcia Hunter

Eucharistic Minister: Joseph Jacobs

Lector/Intercessor: Joseph Jacobs

Usher: Wilson Eastland

9:00 a.m., Holy Eucharist Rite II

Celebrant: Dominic Moore

Preacher: Marcia Hunter

Deacon: Lauren Villemuer

Canterbury Choir: John Linker, Organist/Choirmaster;  Henk Linker, Visiting Artist in Residence

Verger: Taylor Beegle

Acolytes: Amanda Stark, Lucy Beal, Katie Butler, Katie Beal, Christian Branham, Maddie Butler, Alison Beal

Eucharistic Ministers: Kevin Ellis, Skip Kimbrough, Elizabeth Leppman, Graham Priest, Taylor Beegle

Lector/Intercessor: Elizabeth Leppman, Christy Ellis

Lay Eucharistic Visitor: Katherine Bihl

Ushers: Bill Farmer, Guy Huguelet, Steve Branham, David Jones

Greeters: Main St.-Winn and Nancy Stephens

West Door-David and Nancy Thompson

Children's Chapel: Cathy Penberthy, Jesse Moore

11:15 a.m., Holy Eucharist Rite I

Celebrant: Dominic Moore

Preacher: Marcia Hunter

Deacon: Lauren Villemuer

Parish Choir & Treble Choir: John Linker, Organist/Choirmaster; Henk Linker, Visiting Artist in Residence 

Verger: Martin Woodford

Acolytes: Isabelle Kluesner, Lillie Kluesner, Sophie Kluesner, Clarita Ledbetter

Eucharistic Ministers: Allissa Ferguson, Guy Graves, Lee Jenkins, Dan Primm, Martin Woodford

Lector/Intercessor: Isaac Sefa, Barbara Mostert

Ushers: Jim Carroll, Bill Cox, TBA

Greeters: Main St.-Joyce Roth

West Door-Herb and Cyndy Miller

Children's Chapel: Tia Matthews, Laurie Morton

Others Serving This Sunday

Music     
Hymns  

686, 302, 309, 623

Click HERE for a link to an online index to the 1982 Hymnal that will allow you to read the texts and listen to the tunes for Sunday's hymns.

Organ   

This is the Good Shepherd Prayer List. Each day at noon, the persons on this list are lifted up in prayer. On Sundays during the Prayers of the People, the Intercessor pauses while we pray aloud or silently for each of those on the prayer list, which is published in the bulletin. You are also invited to add these names to your personal prayer list.  

What are some of the spiritual or religious practices you follow in your life today?   

As you think of your life as a spiritual or religious path, what were some of the features of the way on which you have walked?

What is your practice of prayer?  

What were some of the truly memorable moments of worship in your life? What contributed to making them so significant in your journey of spirit and faith?  

For what are you grateful? 

...that our new Rector and his wife, Brian and Susan Cole, are settling in after arriving in Lexington on Thursday. Brian will preach and celebrate at all three services next Sunday, March 25.

...to welcome Kerry Delmar Kimbrough III and Lila Patrick Linker to our Good Shepherd family. Congratulations to Skip and Joy Kimbrough and John and Molly Linker.

The Episcopal Church is considered by many to be the wealthiest American Christian denomination with regard to liturgical and musical history. Anglican services have expected and required congregational participation since the English Reformation. While other denominations tend to shun their past in favor of embracing new traditions (i.e., the Roman Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council all but abandoned the centuries of plainchant that is rightfully theirs, particularly here in the US), the Episcopal Church embraces old and new traditions with equal fervor. Our musical wealth offers a vast repertory from which we gain spiritual enrichment and edification. With these things in mind, congregants are encouraged to actively participate in hymns and spoken prayers offered by the assembly as an expression of our individual and collective faith. "But, I don't have a pretty voice" or "I can't follow the music" are occasional misconceptions. Since God hatest nothing that he has created (from the Collect for Ash Wednesday), each individual voice, no matter how it may sound to mortal ears, must certainly be pleasing to God. Don't hold back; sing out!

Hymn 686 uses a tune from the early 19th century folk-hymn tradition of the American northeast, and has gained wide acceptance and use in hymnals of many Christian denominations across the US. The text was written by Robert Robinson for Whitsunday 1758 and was first used by Episcopalians in the Hymnal of 1826 with the first line "Saviour, source of every blessing." The first line of stanza 2 originally read "Here I raise my Ebenezer," a reference to I Sam. 7:12. This hymn combining Christian experience with gratitude seems to reflect the author's spiritual pilgrimage during his youth. The organ harmony for this hymn in The Hymnal 1982 is by the late Gerre Hancock. Dr. Hancock, who died this past January, was organist at St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York (where Good Shepherd Choir sang in 2008) from 1971-2004. Affectionately referred to as "Uncle Gerre" by so many of us in the field of church music, he took a keen interest in parish music programs all around the country. Each time we ran into each other his first words after a simple greeting were "How are things at Good Shepherd?!"

Sir John Goss was a pupil of Thomas Attwood (a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn) at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Goss later succeeded his teacher as organist at St Paul's and was also mentor to the younger John Stainer. His Anthem If we believe that Jesus died was composed for the state funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. Set in the somber key of D minor, the four voices of the choir take turns with fugal appearances of the text, a melodic contour that features a descending 5th or 4th and is generally moves in stepwise fashion. Fugal writing gives way to homophonic texture rich with suspensions. A shift to the parallel major (D Major) occurs near the end.