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City Is Fortunate To Have Musical Outlets

To The Reader’s Forum:

Jamestown is blessed with tremendous musical talent. Just go around to the area churches and outstanding musicianship rises up from within the ranks. Whether contemporary or traditional, informal or formal, classically trained or self-taught, the superb voices in song and the polished proficiency on instruments is profound. I continue to marvel at the mastery of the Jamestown High School A Capella Choir performing the Christmas concert every year at First Lutheran.

At the end of last year, an invitation went out to the community to sing in the Messiah at St. Luke’s. Hearing about who was going to play the organ, I decided that I had to do it. Thinking it was merely an invitation to sing while seated in the audience, I found myself in the choir. As an amateur among superior voices, the daunting musical score of the Messiah was out of my league, but with Scott Axelson by my side I got through it without committing a major faux pas. It was exhilarating, majestic, inspiring, uplifting, glorious and, above all, worshipful. Given that I had the privilege to sing in the choir section with Brian Bogey as guest organist, it ranked right up there as a “bucket list” moment. The conductor, Andrew Schmidt, did a phenomenal job in puling it all together but not without the indispensable help of exceptional soloists on hand to master the magnificent solos.

How I wish the differences in church were only limited to matters of music pertaining to taste, style and forms or that differences within the church at large were only minor and peripheral but unfortunately, they are not. The differences are substantive. The differences are so deep, sharp and pronounced that with heterodoxical positions being accepted as doctrine and policy into some denominations, others faithful to orthodox beliefs cannot in good conscience share in the divisive doctrinal and moral aberrations. It goes to the heart of what has authority in the church: man’s opinion or God’s Word. When man’s opinion takes precedence, the unity of fellowship is fractured.

The content-rich, theologically sound and exquisitely-composed Messiah, however, exalting the Incarnation of the Triune God, saturated with the prophetic utterances from the Old Testament and immersed in the captivating awesomeness of the “Hallelujah Chorus” in Revelation powerfully brings forth the eternal truth of the gospel. Nothing is more worthy of uniting under than the rule, reign and authority of Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis

Frewsburg

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