The Year in Review

When 2013 started I was working as a missionary to the Philippines with Wycliffe Bible Translators. My final assignment there was to serve as Director for the field organization SIL Philippines. That allowed me to participate in some remarkable opportunities. For instance, I was privileged to join the dedication ceremonies of several translated New Testaments.

Another highlight was leading the organization in a field conference just following the New Year. It was the first time we combined foreigners and national employees in the same gathering.

Later in the year we celebrated 60 years of SIL working in cooperation with the government of the Philippines. At the invitation of Brother Armin Luistro (pictured to the right), the Secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd), we signed a new Memorandum of Agreement.

Among other things, the agreement clarified that DepEd education policies would use the language categories as documented by SIL in the Ethnologue.

As much as I loved my job as Director, this year marked the time to make a significant change. For several years I had felt that my calling was to encourage local congregations to worship in meaningful ways through the role of pastor. So in May I resigned from SIL. (My successor as Director, Jason Griffiths, is in the far left of this photo.) I became a certified candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church and was granted a local license for pastoral ministry in the North Carolina Annual Conference of the UMC.

In June our family moved to Oxford, North Carolina, where I have been appointed to serve two congregations: Salem UMC and Harris Chapel UMC. This is a student pastor appointment, as I am also studying at Duke Divinity School, a United Methodist seminary associated with Duke University.

Life is very different this December 31 than it was one year ago. Hopefully this year will not require as many changes! But I'm doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, and I consider it a tremendous blessing to serve these two congregations as their pastor. Duke is as challenging and inspiring as I had hoped it would be.

Mangali Fieldwork Files

The place we spent the most time researching in the Philippines was an area called Mangali. Technically, SIL calls the language area "Tanudan Kalinga" based on the name of the nearby river valley. It is fairly remote place that lacks direct road access. When we started visiting ten years ago we were able to fly in and out in a single engine aircraft.

It was a privilege to study the music and dance of the Mangali people. As an ethnomusicologist, I was able to publish some of what my friends there taught me about their cultural celebrations:

• In 2006 a colleague and I presented a paper at a linguistics conference that described music words in the local language.

• Later I wrote an MA thesis about the performances at a peace pact celebration. The Music of a Kalinga Peace-Pact Celebration: Making Place Through the Soundscape. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota.

• Based on that thesis, I published a chapter in a book called Austronesian Soundscapes, edited by Birgit Abels.

Currently SIL Philippines hosts some of the original research data on their website: https://philippines.sil.org/resources/audio_and_video/mangali_and_tanudan_valley_music. There are audio and video recordings of traditional music performances, including some rather long videos that demonstrate how to make the bamboo instruments. If you are curious, some of the vocal songs at the top of the page will download faster than the videos further down the page. The gong-based dancing at the bottom of the page is probably most interesting. Just be patient with the download time.

Oral Preparation for Preaching

Around the turn of this century "oral methods" became a trend in mission. The ideas of Marshall McLuhan had finally hit the evangelical sub-culture, and leaders in the church began to realize that most people do not learn best when listening to messages that were written to be read. (Note: I would argue that no one learns best this way.) This gap in understanding was addressed by creating a category called "primary oral learners", which incorporated something like 5.9 billion of the world's population.

Jesting aside, the ideas proposed by these leaders were valuable. They proposed a variety of ways to present scriptural truths that increased comprehension and understanding. Stories, songs, skits, and other "primarily oral" methods became the latest and greatest tools for world evangelization. These methodologies bore some fruit, and I even incorporated some into my own teaching sessions. (For example, I would tell a specific story from the Old and New Testaments when trying to convey a point about worship.)

These days I think a lot about preaching since I have to do it every Sunday. My preaching professor last semester, Chuck Campbell, taught us that an orally-delivered sermon should also be prepared orally. Alas, the default mode for most sermon preparation is to write out a manuscript as if the preacher were preparing an essay. Chuck shared a great chapter from the book Preaching for Today by Clyde Fant: "Out of the Gutenberg Galaxy." Fant proposes a method in which the preacher reads the scripture text out loud several times and then talks about it, forming the sermon conversationally. The resulting outline that goes into the pulpit is simply a list of topic sentences, and the sermon is discussed more than read.

I always like books that reinforce my own ideas and practices. I've never felt comfortable preparing manuscripts, and I don't like giving up eye contact to look down and read while preaching. I will continue to prepare my sermons orally. I think my congregations appreciate it.

Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts

Some people have asked me why I chose Duke Divinity School for my theological studies. While it is hard to narrow it down to just one reason, I would credit Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts (DITA) for tipping the scales overwhelmingly to the divinity school in Durham.

With my calling to help people worship meaningfully, I was drawn to the serious study and reflection on theology and the arts that is being championed by Jeremy Begbie and others. I happen to believe that humans are most God-like when they are acting creatively (which is not necessarily restricted to the making of fine art). God as Trinity is ultimately creative as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interact with each other and with creation. We humans have been given a similar capacity when we were created in this image (Genesis 1:27).

DITA is most active on campus during spring semesters. I'm really looking forward to some interesting fora, concerts, and exhibits this year!

Early Christmas Hymns

Almost everyone looks forward to the end of the year when our worship services are filled with Christmas songs. Singing about the incarnation and birth of Jesus is a long tradition in the history of the church, and nativity songs are some of our oldest existing hymns. Indeed, the angels announced the birth to the shepherds by singing about it (Luke 2:14). In addition, ideas about how Christ was both God and human filled the church's discourses for at least five centuries. No wonder that these important theological ideas would dominate the songs used in worship.

Here is a hymn by Ephrem, originally composed in Syriac in the 4^th century:

At the birth of the Son a great clamor

took place in Bethlehem, for watchers descended

to give praise there, a great thunder

were their voices. With this voice of praise

the silent ones came to give praise to the Son.

Refrain: Blessed is the Babe by whom Adam and Eve grew young again.

Here is how another hymn of Ephrem’s interprets the account of Joseph:

Joseph caressed the Son

As a babe. He served Him

As God. He rejoiced in Him

As in a blessing, and he was attentive to him

As to the Just One – a great paradox!

Refrain: Praise to you, fair Child of the Virgin.

“Who has given me the Son of the Most High

to be a son to me? I was jealous of your mother

and wanted to divorce her. I did not know

That in her womb was a great treasure

That would suddenly enrich my poverty.”

Romanos, a hymn-writer who composed in the Greek language, prepared this Nativity hymn:

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Heavenly One

And today the earth shelters the Unapproachable One,

Angels and shepherds sing His praise;

Led by the star, wise men make their way.

For unto us is born

A new born boy, from before all time God.

These translations are taken from Robert Louis Wilken’s The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, Yale University Press, 2012.

My First Post

One of my goals for 2013 was to start blogging. I just made it in under the wire.

I hope this blog can be a forum for exploring several themes that relate to my calling in life: worship (both public/corporate and private/devotional), ethnomusicology, ethnodoxology, scripture engagement, mission, development issues, theology, church polity, the arts (broadly defined), preaching, and qualitative research.

If I have a life verse it is probably 1 Corinthians 14:15:


Well then, what shall I do? I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand. I will sing in the spirit, and I will also sing in words I understand. (New Living Translation)


My primary goal for twelve years as a missionary to the Philippines was to see churches worship (especially to sing) with understanding. My calling now is still the same, but my vocation is to serve the church as a pastor. Most of the posts in this blog will relate to those themes in some way. May the posts begin...