Monday, December 4, 2006

World AIDS Day

I was very fortunate this past week to lead in and participate in TPUMC's first annual World AIDS Day Service. One my esteemed colleagues, Evan Jones and I put it together. It was quite a learning expereince as we attempted to gather various agencies in the community together to host this service. What we had originally planned was to host an evening service and go from there.
Once we got on board with some of the San Antonio HIV/AIDS agencies things got a lot more complicated. Long story short, we ended up hosting the majority of the World AIDS Day events in San Antonio!
The schedule looked like this:

11:30: Die-in at Traivs Park/Press Conference (we were able to get three different news stations to cover the press conference)

12:30-6:45: Reading of the names of those who had died of AIDS in San Antonio
7:00-8:10: Service at Travis Park
8:10-9:00: Candelight vigil and procession to the Alamo.

I could spend a lot of time writing about this event, because it took a lot of time to plan but my primary interest was the service, so I'll stick to that.

For the service we enlisted the help of Dr. C. Michael Hawn, chair of the sacred music department at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (yes, my old professor!); Dr. David Heller, the organist at Trinity University, among many other things!; the Alamo City Men's Chorale, the Travis Park UMC Sanctuary choir, the director of BeatAIDS, our senior pastors, and Evan and myself. We also used some beautiful text by the wonderful John Thornburg.

The service began with a lovely prelude on the TPUMC organ by Dr. Heller and was followed by an Invocation to the Holy Spirit, with a congregational refrain provided by John Thornburg and a tremendous set of verses written by Alison Boone and concivied by Betty Curry. Tim Watt sang the solo verses and was incredible!
After that we had a call to worship written in haste by yours truly and then a welcome and introductions by the Revs Karen Vannoy and John Flowers.
Next, Dr. Hawn taught us an opening hymn (text also by John Thornburg) that he had put music to. (We used the refrain of that hymn as a reflection piece between each of the forthcoming homilies.) After teaching us the hymn, Dr. Hawn led us in singing pieces from South Africa, which was spectacular. Then he gave what I thought was a brilliant homily, interspersing kyrie's from around the world with reflections about HIV/AIDS in a global context. You'll see the rest when I post the order tomorrow...
Brief commentary: Michelle Durham, the director of BEATAIDS gave a very nice homily that involved her story as well as the affects of HIV/AIDS on the San Antonio community.
The Alamo City Men's Chorale sang Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters, arr. Kirby Shaw and David Heller played a really interesting piece. (I want to hear the rest of it!)
Following all of this, I preached a homily and then the choir sang a truly inspiring piece by Lana Cartlidge Potts, our awesome organist and composer-in-residence.
All in all, we had over 150 people in attendance, lots of good press covereage and so-so attendance from the church, which is to say, not bad for the first year! We'll see what happens next year!

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