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rev. cece armstrong
During worship Wednesday at the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Music and Worship Conference, it was Ash Wednesday.
One Sunday morning, Tom Trenney, the Routley Lecturer this week for the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference and the minister of music at First-Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, invited the choir and whoever wanted to in the congregation to whistle during the hymn “Lord of the Dance,” except during the somber fourth verse. He tried the same thing Tuesday, inviting class participants to pucker up behind their masks and whistle.
“Just being here, being here together is what I’m most looking forward to,” said Eric Wall.
It’s Tom Trenney’s job to deliver the Routley Lecture each day this week during the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference. Rather than lecture students meeting both in person at Montreat Conference Center and online during his opening talk on Monday, Trenney told them a story from a few years back about a college student of his named Summer.
Preaching on John the Baptist, whose ministry centered on preparing people for one more powerful than he and who would baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong began her sermon on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, with these words: “You belong to God.”
When he portrayed Private Gomer Pyle during the mid-1960s, actor Jim Nabors employed a number of catch phrases, including “gall-lee” and “Shazam.” But Pyle, who hailed from fictional Mayberry, North Carolina, which is in the same state as the very real Montreat Conference Center, the setting the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship and Music Conference, was best known for recounting mixed-up stories punctuated by this phrase: “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
The Rev. CeCe Armstrong had barely arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in June 2015, when a white supremacist opened fire on a Bible study class at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, killing nine people.
“It’s time to go,” the Rev. CeCe Armstrong told the thousands of people gathered for closing worship Saturday at Presbyterian Youth Triennium. “We often forget that mission starts at home — your own house or your own church. We’ve experienced things here, but if we don’t take them back, the church doesn’t change but you have. Hallelujah!”
