Calvin Choirs Lift their Voices

Mary Hulst stood at the pulpit in the Calvin University Chapel and raised and opened her arms to welcome people to the second “Healer of Our Every Ill” Advent 2020 service, a series that is being offered online Sunday evenings throughout the Advent season.

The services start at 7 p.m. on YouTube, run for 30 minutes, and feature the university’s student Campus Choir, Capella, and Women’s Chorale as well as musicians, with all participants socially distanced and wearing masks.

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” said Hulst, the Calvin University chaplain. “Welcome to this service of lessons and carols. . . . We’re so glad you’ve joined us to celebrate and anticipate the birth of our Savior.”

Looking forward to the Calvin community’s annual Advent concert, which they normally perform twice on a Sunday before Christmas at LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., Pearl Shangkuan, director of choral activities at Calvin, began organizing the program soon after the semester started.

But she was planning for it before then.

Throughout the summer, she had studied a range of safety plans put into practice by various institutions, including Calvin, to determine if there would be a way to  gather groups of singers and musicians over several weeks to put together the concert during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A key part of the decision lay in whether Calvin would be able to open for in-person learning in September. Having instituted a range of safety measures, the university did open on time.

“Once the semester began, I mustered about 100 people, three choirs, musicians, and an audiovisual crew, and we began practicing on a kind of rotation,” said Shangkuan.

They often had the chapel doors open for ventilation, kept large fans blowing, and took frequent breaks. No more than one group practiced in the chapel at the same time — and occasionally participants were in quarantine and needed to practice over Zoom.

Deft editing was required to bring each weekly program together, given that singers and musicians came and went.

“It was a tremendous challenge, but through the sheer grace of God we got through it,” said Shangkuan. “Imagine a congregation rehearsing in a vacuum, letting the words of the songs minister to them before you minister to others.”

Worship Ministries Offer Advent Resources

Joyce Borger, the CRC’s director of Worship Ministries, has watched and listened to the Advent concerts and found them to be beautiful and stirring, reminding her of the message of Advent, she said.

“Advent is about a journey to hope; it is the ground we walk from darkness to light,” she added. “We need that journey. We can’t ignore pain and just jump for joy. . . . The grief people are experiencing [amid the COVID-19 pandemic] is compounded by the deaths of people around them, as well as by all of the other losses this year.”

Not attending weddings or funerals, having to miss family gatherings and graduations, requiring students to attend classes online, has been hard for many of us. There has also been the inability to meet one another at church and having to forgo regular Advent and Christmas services and traditions, said Borger.

“All of this is hard, but Advent gives us the time and space to name and acknowledge these things. The message of Advent is joy and peace, and we need this more than ever now,” she said.

Even in the midst of losses and struggles, in days of grief and darkness, we can turn to the “God who is with us in this troubling time. . . . Christmas is not candles and carols; it is the gospel message. . . . It is about the incarnation of Christ — that is what is important.”

Borger pointed to a number of Advent resources that her office has curated from other CRC churches and individuals who have gifted them for  use by congregations during a Christmas season that has the pandemic as a harsh backdrop. These resources can be viewed on the Network under the headlines Worship and COVID-19 and Advent and Christmas Resources for Use During COVID.

In addition, Worship Ministries has two worship catalyzers, Katie Roelofs ([email protected]) and Jeremy Simpson ([email protected]), as well as 15 endorsed coaches — to whom churches can turn to help them sort through how best to address their worship needs during this time.

Borger makes some suggestions for how churches might celebrate this liturgical time of year:

“As we circle around to the Advent and Christmas seasons once again, whether your church is worshiping all together or in households or in small groups, I encourage you to plan a slow Advent.

“By that I mean being intentional about locating your congregation in the cosmic reality of God’s activity in a specific time and place.”

Going Deeper

In the chapel at Calvin University, the concert that aired last Sunday unfolded seamlessly. It opened with the song “Healer of Our Every Ill,” in which the choir sang, “Healer of our every ill, light of each tomorrow, give us peace beyond our fear, and hope beyond our sorrow.”

This concert, as well as services and concerts and presentations in many places and churches, are helping to lift the spirits of people in this difficult time, said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

“Sentimentality won’t suffice this year,” said Witvliet. “We need something way deeper than that — and that is something the best pastors and worship leaders are offering. . . . We need deep spiritual healing.”

He credited Pearl Shangkuan for doing all of the complex coordination needed to weave together what was necessary to present the weekly Advent performances. “There were so many extra steps built in for this to happen,” he said.

For her part, Shangkuan praised the student participants for their determination and willingness to attend sometimes awkward rehearsals. “When the students were singing, because they had to wear masks or plastic shields, they had a hard time hearing each other,” she explained. “They were under a lot of pressure.”

It was a bit like piecing together a large puzzle to continue this Christmastide musical tradition this year, she said. Presented over five services instead of on one Sunday, and despite all of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, everyone worked hard to assure the concerts flow easily from week to week.

Last Sunday the choirs joined near the end of the concert to sing “Do Not Be Afraid.” The camera moved in and out, catching the socially distanced students as they sang.

Zooming from behind Shangkuan as she conducted, the camera swooped over the chapel, panned across to the face of a young man playing a violin, and then moved out to catch a wide view of the choir as it sang, “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name; you are mine.”

With the camera continuing to pan, the rich and soulful voices filled the chapel. Like other worship choirs and musicians across the CRC in North America this Advent, they are beating back the darkness, lifting grieving spirits, turning fear into hope, and reminding viewers of a season that even the coronavirus can’t destroy.