First night

In the end end I decided to go to the first night celebration in the Big Top. For those who’ve never experienced Spring Harvest, the Big Top celebration is, for most people, the key event of the day. Years ago this was true for me, but not so much these days. 

When we first came to SH it was the place where we would learn all the new songs that would be added to our worship portfolio that year. Unlike some people, we didn’t ditch the previous year in favour of the new stuff, we just added them together to build a wider worship base. Nowadays we find we know many if not all the new songs that are introduced. That’s probably because there is a much wider availability of new worship.

The disappointing thing about the music is that each year new songs are added to the book, but you never get to hear or explore them. I’m waiting for the day when they will issue a simple CD with the melody line for every new song in the book so that I can hear the tune and read the words and then make a decision about whether I want to learn the song and use it. There must be a whole mass of really good worship material that we never get to explore because we don’t have the skills to learn directly from the music. Maybe it’s something I need to commit to learning how to do.

Anyway, the first night went well and the worship was positive, well lead, in my opinion, and quite refreshing.