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7&4?

katanikhoroskatanikhoros
edited December 2014 in General Announcements
Has the service of the Midnight Praise during the month of Kiahk gone too far in praising St. Mary? It seems that focus at times almost completely shifts away from the mystery of the Incarnation and our role in it and focus purely on the glory of the Theotokos.

I hear a lot of complaints of people turning to Protestant music. My question is, why aren't the orthodox composing and creating new hymns. It seems that our liturgical services have reached a completely static state, incapable of composing new music, words and hymns with Orthodox theology and ethos in English as well as Arabic. Maybe that's why people are turning to Protestant hymns? Has the church become static?

Thanks

Comments

  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    I don't see that the church going that far with kiahk praises. And I don't think its possible considering the incarnation and teaching about it with out considering the Virgin whom the Son took flesh from.

    About Protestant songs, I don't see any connection about people leaving orthodoxy because of our hymns.
  • churchbobchurchbob
    Personally I think that Protestant "songs" pale in comparison to the beauty of the chants of the Coptic Church
  • qawe
    katanikhoros said:

    Has the service of the Midnight Praise during the month of Kiahk gone too far in praising St. Mary? It seems that focus at times almost completely shifts away from the mystery of the Incarnation and our role in it and focus purely on the glory of the Theotokos.

    The ultimate aim of any glorification of the saints is directed towards God, the source of said glory.

    katanikhoros said:

    My question is, why aren't the orthodox composing and creating new hymns. It seems that our liturgical services have reached a completely static state, incapable of composing new music, words and hymns with Orthodox theology and ethos in English as well as Arabic. Maybe that's why people are turning to Protestant hymns? Has the church become static?

    Thanks

    The Orthodox tend to be satisfied with the existing hymnological corpus - they don't see a great need to compose new hymns.  The people who tend to be most interested in composing new hymns often perceive our existing hymns as 'boring' or 'irrelevant' to youth, and are often big fans of the use of Protestant hymns in youth meetings/communion during the Liturgy.  People with such an attitude can't be trusted to write genuine Orthodox hymns.

    Having said that, the outright rejection of composing new hymns is also unjustifiable.  The challenge is to distinguish between Western culture proper and the Protestant/secularist assumptions which largely underpin it.  For this reason, I believe anyone composing a new hymn within our present cultural milieu should have formal theological training, the more advanced the better.  Unfortunately, such are few and far between in the modern Coptic church, and even fewer are raised in the West and are musically/poetically proficient.

    We should also be cognisant of the fact that the vast majority of cultural change will occur organically; writing new hymns will only be a small part of effecting cultural change in the diaspora.


    churchbob said:

    Personally I think that Protestant "songs" pale in comparison to the beauty of the chants of the Coptic Church

    imo the issue is much more serious than simply being 'less beautiful' than Orthodox hymns.  By using entertaining Protestant hymns, that appear to have immediate 'relevancy' to 'me', we are reducing our capacity to persevere through genuine Orthodox worship.  Eventually Orthodox worship will become alien to us, and the only thing we will be able to cope with are emotionally 'uplifting' Protestant songs.
  • katanikhoroskatanikhoros
    You've all brought up really good points, it just really saddens me when I see very few of the youth willing to attend the praise or enjoy it. A large number of them have told me they hate Coptic, and don't enjoy Coptic hymns.

    How do we address this? And the problem only seems to get worse with the older generations. Maybe this is only a phenomenon limited to my church or more exaggerated here, I would love to reach out to them and get them to taste the true beauty of Orthodox praise.
  • qawe
    edited December 2014
    katanikhoros said:

    You've all brought up really good points, it just really saddens me when I see very few of the youth willing to attend the praise or enjoy it. A large number of them have told me they hate Coptic, and don't enjoy Coptic hymns.

    How do we address this? And the problem only seems to get worse with the older generations. Maybe this is only a phenomenon limited to my church or more exaggerated here, I would love to reach out to them and get them to taste the true beauty of Orthodox praise.




    My advice is to get them to literally 'taste' it, before you attempt to get them to gulp it down.

    Why not hold a short (1 hour or even less) tasbeha completely in English? You could maybe just do the 4 hooses? And when they get keener do everything except for the long hymns and Theotokia. And then you could add Khen o shot and Marenonh. And then add the Theotokia. And then add some Coptic, eg in the 4th hoos Psalm 150. Etc.

    A good time to hold this would be after youth meeting or even better on any other day a number of youth tend to congregate at church for any meeting/bible study during the week.

    Even if you spend 5 years just doing the 4 hooses, you will gradually build up an army of people who are keen on tasbeha. These people may then naturally seek to attend your church's real tasbeha. In which case, you will never need to lengthen the mini-tasbeha beyond 1 hour, because hopefully people will be 'graduating' from your mini-tasbeha to the full tasbeha.

    Btw your church's full tasbeha *must* have 50% English for this to be feasible.

    Also try to encourage the few youth who are interested/popular older youth servants to make running this mini-tasbeha their 'service', this will attract more youth and make the interested youth more committed to the cause.

    You can also introduce individual hymns eg Neknai o panoti, Aripsalin, 4th hoos, into Sunday school classes/youth meeting/communion during the liturgy. Even if it's alongside the worst forms of Protestant music, at least it's better than nothing, if your mini-tasbeha doesn't end up working out. You can get boys (and girls) to play the cymbals and triangles while singing these hymns, they will probably enjoy the novelty of this, and it's not something they get to do while singing the Protestant hymns. Once you change the culture, you can try reintroducing your mini-tasbeha.

    May God strengthen you, and in whatever you do, obviously get the support of your parish priest, which should in most cases be easy.
  • katanikhoroskatanikhoros
    Thanks qawe,
    those are all really good tips. I'll try to apply those.
  • Amoussa01
    I completely agree with qawe! You should also take the time to explain to them that the holy psalmody is a spiritual journey to heaven. You must explain the relevance of each section of the praise in their life and they will begin to see the beauty of it! I recommend that you take 10-15 min before or after youth meetings to explain a section of the praise and it's meaning and have them chant it together. So one week can be about ten thino and the next could be about the first canticle. What they need now is just small doses and make sure to keep it in fast tunes and in English. If necessary I could provide you references and spiritual commentaries on the midnight praise.
  • Amoussa01
    A friend and I have made some videso that could help them understand the terminology and the tunes

    (this is an introductory video)
    (this is a continuation)

    These videos that we made were for those who do not know Coptic but wish to understand and participate more in the praises. Keep in mind that the second video may have a few errors regarding the rites but we are working on correcting it soon... it is a work in progress...
  • mabsootamabsoota
    lots of great posts!
    please also invite the older people to tasbeha as well.
    B-)

    try not to separate people too much into groups of age / gender etc.
    coz you'll always end up missing some people out.

    unemployed people, less educated people and older people who don't have kids tend to be the ones missed out when churches give in to the temptation to segregate people like the world does.

    thank God, our church's tasbeha has all these people attending! (although it's mainly teens / twenties)
  • katanikhoroskatanikhoros
    Awesome videos Amoussa01! You guys have motivated and inspired me to address this issue, thank you!
  • lfahmylfahmy
    I agree with most of the things everyone has said. They are all great ideas. But the youth who do not want to participate and come just for socialization have become experts at finding a reason not to go to the meetings, especially tasbeha. At might church, there could be fifteen people outside before the meetings starts, and eight in the meeting when it starts. With tasbeha, the number goes down to a maximum of five there willingly. How do we get them there by their own will? In other words, the "starting off slow" and with a lot of english is to get them to come to the regular tasbeha, but how do we get them to the preparation tasbeha?
  • qawe
    lfahmy said:

    I agree with most of the things everyone has said. They are all great ideas. But the youth who do not want to participate and come just for socialization have become experts at finding a reason not to go to the meetings, especially tasbeha. At might church, there could be fifteen people outside before the meetings starts, and eight in the meeting when it starts. With tasbeha, the number goes down to a maximum of five there willingly. How do we get them there by their own will? In other words, the "starting off slow" and with a lot of english is to get them to come to the regular tasbeha, but how do we get them to the preparation tasbeha?

    You would need to hold the preparation tasbeha on a day a lot of people are at church anyway. From what you're saying though, your church appears to be relatively small (8 people inside a meeting) so having 2 tasbehas might not be feasible. Obviously this will limit your ability to implement many of these ideas, eg minimal long tunes, as the regular tasbeha attendees won't like that. But some other things I mentioned above can still be implemented, eg ensuring popular people are present (usually older servants), and even having food/going out for a late dinner afterwards.

    Btw 5 out of 8 people moving from a meeting to tasbeha is quite a good figure. This suggests that the problem you have is the different from that in most parishes. That is, there are often a lot of people involved in the life of the church, but unfortunately do not embrace the full Orthodox spiritual life, but are rather captivated by secularised ("Protestant") ideas. Whereas, in your parish, it seems that many people view it as social, but those few who view it as spiritual fully embrace an Orthodox spirituality.

    I don't know how to change that sort of culture, as I don't have experience with that. As stated above, I have mainly encountered the opposite problem.
  • lfahmylfahmy
    Thank you @qawe
    Good insight and got me thinking
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