During the farewell service for Pastor Ginny Samuel Cetuk, Hyosang Park led the Chancel Choir (virtually) in “Come Home” by Craig Courtney, engineered by Stephen Offer.
Music Appreciation!
SPOTLIGHT
Chancel Choir Director, Hyosang Park, Accompanist, Yang-Hee Park, and Sound & Video Producer, Stephen Offer
Hyosang and Yang-Hee have continued to rehearse virtually every week via Zoom. Stephen communicates with the team each step of the way. Great musicianship!
If you weren’t able to worship with us on Sunday, 24 May 2020, you’d want to go back to the archive on our website or Facebook to do so. Here’s the link.
Our Chancel Choir’s Music Ministry was a beautiful tribute to Bill and Donna Suits. It was such a joy to hear their voices and see their faces! Here’s what Pastor Jenny Smith Walz says of them:
- “Hyosang does a masterful job of choosing the perfect music and bringing in a superb mix of vocals and instruments every week.”
- “Yang-Hee consistently brings us such beautiful music – before, during, after each service. It’s a gift to be able to listen.”
- “Stephen Offer painlessly puts the virtual choir video together.”
We enjoy your music every week. Thank you!!
Written by Isabella Dougan
Tribute to Bill and Donna Suits
On May 24, 2020, when the world celebrated Memorial Day weekend, the Chancel Choir and Handbell Choir presented the Babylon Canon in tribute to Bill and Donna Suits, church members pictured here, who died of Covid-19 in April. Bill had been an loyal member of the choir. Thanks to Hyosang Park, music director, and Stephen Offer, who produced the sound and video. Listen to it here.
A celebration of life will be held here at Princeton United Methodist Church once travel restrictions are lifted and it is safe for family and friends to gather. It will be a joint celebration to honor both Donna and Bill for their love, lives and faith. Here is a place to register, to be notified when a memorial service can be held.
Sunday 17 May 2020
SPOTLIGHT
Youth Choir
&
Director Tom Shelton
Sunday being Youth Music Sunday, our Youth Choir led all of the music and liturgist parts. Under Tom Shelton’s musical leadership, William Ponder, Leanne Griffiths, Kasey Angelo, Amy Angelo, Julia Potts, Ana Francisco-Cabus. Reanna Bartels- Quansah, Gillian Bartels- Quansah, Lena Hamilton, Elli Collins, Maggie Collins, Julia Potts, Sophia Penn, Robin Roth, Delaney McCarty, Andre Penn, Izzy Distase all took part in leading the service. We have such gifted and grace-filled young people who genuinely lead worship and not just perform.
Tom does a brilliant job,” says Pastor Jenny Smith Walz, “teaching them about worship and worship leadership, about the liturgical year, scripture, and being a church community, as well as musical techniques and anthems.” The songs they performed included popular hymns, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “Amazing Grace,” “For the Beauty of the Earth,” “Down to the River to Pray,” and Chopin’s Waltz in A minor.
They have just wrapped up another year of singing, playing, leading worship, offering their gifts, learning, and loving. Thank You Youth Choir and Director Tom Shelton!
If you weren’t able to worship with us this past Sunday, you’d want to go back to the archive on our website or Facebook Link to watch our amazing youth doing God’s work.
Written by Isabella Dougan.
Relocation Report: Tim and Linda Henry
Hello Princeton UMC from sunny Southern California!
After a heartwarming send-off from the church and closing on the sale of our home, we set off from Princeton in May 2015 and spent the next six months traveling around the U.S. We settled in Palm Springs, in the Sonoran Desert. What a change! Climate, lifestyle, priorities—and, yes, churches. Tim sought a church choir similar to PUMCs, and it wasn’t easy. The United Methodist congregation here is quite small, as is their choir. We eventually began attending the large, local Episcopal Church. Tim enjoys the music program at St. Paul in the Desert, but as you can imagine nothing can replace the joyful music ministry at PUMC or the family-like closeness among choir members created by Hyosang Park. Now that we’re all in quarantine, Tim enjoys weekly Zoom rehearsals with Hyosang and the choir, which includes former members like us who have moved away. We worship with PUMC on Sundays via Facebook.
How fortunate we are to have been members of the PUMC family for more than 20 years! Yvonne Macdonald welcomed our sons into her wonderful youth choirs and encouraged Mark and Will, now 37 and 29, to share their love of choral music in worship. No Sunday at PUMC was complete without afternoon choir practices followed by youth club dinners and fellowship with church friends. Both sons would not have missed going on ASP mission trips each summer where they learned important life skills from Ed and Cindy Bennett, John Powell, Bill and Stacy Chick, Tim Ewer, Alex Lang, and others. Our beloved Peggy Fullman had such an impact on our children. Her heart and hands helped shape them into generous, compassionate young men. Peggy was always present for church families, keeping a watchful eye on her young flock and teaching them to do all the good they can at all times. Jim Harris, David Mertz, and Nancy Duff were wonderfully supportive to our sons, especially during their teen years.
Son Will shared: “PUMC was one of the constants in my early life. As I advanced through school and grew through phases of adolescence, and while my weekends were filled with playing on different sports teams, there is always for me a memory of Sundays spent at the church. I am well aware that numerous pillars of my personality, which are based on goodwill and positive moral values, I gained at PUMC. I will always be forever grateful for that. I believe this valuable impression on young minds is a goal of the Methodist Church, and PUMC greatly succeeded in achieving that for me and the many young friends I had there.”
I am reminded so often of the wonderful fellowship of PUMC women. They are dear friends with whom I shared laughter, tears, and prayers as we prepared fellowship meals and funeral luncheons, organized family life events and made advent crafts, cleaned and painted the old kitchen, set up rummage and bake sales in the social hall, and taught VBS. We were church friends who shared our faith and experiences, caring for our church and each other. Many of us have stayed in touch from afar; sadly, some friends have passed away, and my heart is saddened by their loss.
Our family news now: Mark and Alli live in Evanston, IL. Like many young parents during this pandemic, they’re juggling working from home with their role as their children’s part-time teachers. They are members of First United Methodist Church, where they help teach Sunday School. Mark and Alli have given us three wonderful grandchildren: two boys, Harper and Cameron, who are 8 and 2; and a daughter, Grace, age 5. They will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary this summer.
Will, a filmmaker, settled in Los Angeles five years ago. He is Associate Producer of a new documentary The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O’Neill, which tells the life story of Princeton University physics professor and space pioneer, Gerry O’Neill. The film is slated for release later this year to a streaming service. Will shares his life with his lovely girlfriend, Hannah.
Relocation Report: Jeff and Annette Ransom
After being very active at PrincetonUMC, including in the bellchoir (see photo below) Jeff and Annette Ransom moved to Sun City, Texas in 2016. Here is their update! Their new address is 329 Old Blue Mountain Lane, Georgetown, TX. They have had two more grandchildren for a total of eight, living in Massachusetts, upstate New York, and Texas.
Past What persons/activities/tasks/committees at PUMC built up our faith? Everything we tried, did, almost did, and loved made us better disciples for Jesus Christ. Until that point in our lives over 25 years ago, Sunday church was a family tradition where good people went to show that they were, or at least it had become something close to that, speaking for me only (Jeff). Annette, the trained church organist and consummate church office admin had not drifted so far away, but we were challenged with raising teens and sending them to college, and the east coast work environment, ever-demanding more time away from family. Choir was always the first escape to avoid other things at all our church families, but Sunday School classes and Disciple Studies laid important foundations along the way, yet there were more gentle proddings into many “firsts” for us by the dedicated saints at PUMC who helped us to grow.
Highlights include Natural Church Development, SPR, Cornerstone Kitchen, Don Brash’s Class and the Lay Leader role, as well as the music and choirs. Many people encouraged us along the way: Jana, Catherine, Hyosang, Iona, Larry, Susan, LaVerna, Christopher, Chris, Tracey, Ed, Judy, Doug, Peggy, Yvonne, John, Pat, Michelle, George and Barbara, Mary Lib, Lori, and several more no longer there, but not wanting to overlook any others and the many friends we knew from this congregation. On a more personal level, I do very much miss the finest golfing gentlemen, George and John, I have ever played with, prowess on the course aside and unimportant. NJ was a tough leave all around.
What is your current situation? We’re fully retired, professionally speaking, but not “retiring” from an active, spirit-filled life. We’re members at the FUMC-Round Rock (TX), a friendly, large multi-generational congregation (unlike PUMC, this is a largely white, though a moderately affluent group), very mission active in local and regional efforts. For example, there is still a monthly gulf-coast rebuilding team for Hurricane Harvey recovery, and a sponsored engagement with a local elementary school for weekend (now everyday) food support of families, and the church just completed making over 200 beds for the “No Child Sleeps on the Floor” project. Click here for more of Jeff’s letter.
C. S. Lewis already commented on our present situation over 70 years ago (sort of)? After pointing out that humanity had always lived under various threats to existence through out our history (wars, plagues, raiders, illnesses, air raids, accidents), “this” would be nothing new, referring to the threat of the atom bomb. By extension today we only need to replace that term with the coronavirus. …. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because . . (we) have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” click here for more…
Along with NT Wright, Donald Brash, and others studied while at PUMC, we have established an enduring legacy of faith previously unexplored. Or perhaps, led by the (Ecclesiastes) Spirit, it was a time to know, and a readiness to receive.
In Christ’s love,
Annette and Jeff Ransom
April 19, 2020: “Tell a story…”
(This post is ‘in progress,’ more details to be added and it will be posted on Facebook, where you can leave comments.)
In her April 19 sermon, which begins at minute 33 on the Facebook video, Pastor Jenny Smith Walz, spoke about the first chapter of John. She referred to Science Mike, Mike McHargue, who explains how our brains help us survive and thrive. They take all the bits of information that come to us and organize them into stories, creating order from chaos. This helps our brains be more efficient. If we aren’t given stories, our brains make up stories, and this is both beautiful and dangerous. The unhelpful stories might be based on your brain’s ‘tape” that was recorded when a parent or teacher told you something that defined you, not in a good way. We need really good stories to help us make meaning out of the world we live in. We need “God-written stories” not tapes that need to be transformed through the Resurrection story.
Another birth story of Jesus is in John 1. Jesus is making an appearance in the Flesh. And we are in that story. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Pastor Jenny quoted Walter Brueggeman: “The words with which we praise God will shape the world in which we live.”
“Not only do God’s words create, but our words create. God has ‘wired us’ to create stories. When we tell our stories we are co-creating with God. We are creating the world in which we live, and the words with which we praise God shape the world in which we live.”
Jesus’ parables are stories that not only describe the Kingdom of God, they create the Kingdom of God
The more we understand our story as one that is in line with God’s story, that we are co-creators of the kingdom of God, the more our lives can shine bright like the light that God created at the very beginning. Our stories create the world we live in. We are not at the mercy of God’s story, the story that is being written about the world. We are coauthors with God.
What is your defining story? How do you tell God’s story? How do you tell your life’s story?
“Tell me a story of your beginning…” asks Pastor Jenny. Her own favorite story about her beginnings is Psalm 139: God knit us together in our mother’s womb. . .
A favorite hymn: Tell me the stories of Jesus
(On the comments page, Joseph Paun recommended The Hope of Glory, by Jon Meacham)
Ida Cahill introduced the “Above and Beyond” campaign and offered a way to give offerings online.
Christ arose! Low in the grave he lay was the closing hymn.
The complete service is being posted on Facebook .
The sermon is from minutes 33 to 50.
Hearing and Singing on Good Friday
This year, as on every Good Friday in the last decades, Hyosang Park, Princeton UMC’s music director, planned to observe the day by presenting a requiem, a musical composition in honor of the agony and death of Jesus Christ. Choir members enthusiastically responded to a question about what this concert means to them. Just to participate in the celebration of Holy Week was important for Edwin Francisco. “It is always moving and exciting,” according to Bill Suits.
“It’s meaningful that some of our concerts were dedicated to members who had passed on,” said Karen Hoagland.
The lyrics of a requiem, said Christine Wong, “encompass major themes of the Bible: the covenant of salvation from Abraham to his descendants; God’s wrath and judgment; and man’s fear and suffocation for deliverance from sins and death. It abundantly praises God’s holiness and highness.”
Plans for the Good Friday have changed (Princeton UMC will have a virtual service at 6 p.m.) and choir rehearsals are now virtual, but – singers — here’s an innovative way to get the Holy Week music experience.’ Choose your favorite score, find the youtube video, and – sing along!
Joan Nuse would likely pick the requiem by living British composer Bob Chilcott. “It was an amazing experience. The songs were uplifting!”
Lori Pantaleo’s favorites include the one requiem by John Rutter. The most difficult, she said, came from France, by Maurice Durufle (1947) and Luigi Cherubini, who wrote his Requiem in c minor in 1816 to honor Louis XVI. Other works in the Good Friday series were the “Seven Last Words” by Theodore Dubois in 1867, Faure’s Requiem (1890), Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata 21, Anton Bruckner’s Requiem in d minor, Handel’s Messiah, and the 1837 Requiem in C minor by Michael Haydn.
Here is one video of the Seven Last Words, by Dubois and here is a version that is part of a Good Friday service from Katy, Texas.
The Faure Requiem
The Chilcott
The Bruckner
The Cherubini
This video of Bach’s Cantata 21 and this one of the Cherubini even come with sheet music!
This beautiful version of the John Rutter Requiem was dedicated to the tragedy at Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina.
No matter what is on the program, or whether worshippers are present or online, Jenni Collins says she will look forward to “the intimate nature and the powerful emotion of a Good Friday service.”
Kids Singing Alone but Together
Thanks to the video conferencing program Zoom and the efforts of church staff, children and youth can participate in church life through Sunday School, Confirmation Class, Youth Fellowship – and even the children’s choir meets online with Tom Shelton, children’s and youth choir director.
For instance, at the 30-minute practice on April 1, Tom opened with fun vocal warmups, giving everyone a chance to demonstrate. With a short video, he reviewed what Palm Sunday means and connected it to Sunday’s worship. Children learned the “Hosanna” opening hymn to get ready to wave palms from their homes on Sunday.
Sometimes the children saw only Tom, sometimes they saw and heard one person singing a solo, sometimes their faces were spread out in a grid. “It does my heart good,” says Tom, when I look at all of their faces, and they are sitting up tall in their chairs at home and actually singing!
Connection is the most important part, Tom says. “These are troubling times. It’s nice to have some sense of normalcy or ‘routine’ when everything they are used to is ‘up in the air.’ They LOVE being together!”]
It is takes three times longer to plan a virtual class, practicing how to move from warm up exercises to showing a score. Mostly the singer’s screens are muted, but they unmute themselves to respond. “I love how much they want to be a leader and sing an example,” says Tom. “I have to be very conscious that It’s not ‘just singing,’ but that I’m stretching them musically, by asking questions and having them explain the answers or type the answer in the “chat” message box.
On April 15 the singers will enjoy a treat. They will reprise the musical from February in a virtual “sing along!”
Says Tom: “One positive thing – I’m growing a lot by doing this! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks! “
CELEBRATE ADVENT- December 1, 2019
Singing Mary’s Song
“Singing Mary’s Song” will be the theme for Princeton United Methodist Church during the Advent season, beginning on Sunday, December 1, during 10 AM worship. “Throughout December, musicians and singers of all ages – and even those in the congregation – will have an opportunity to respond to the words of ‘Mary’s Magnificat,’” says Rev. Jenny Smith Walz, lead pastor.
At 5 p.m. on December 1, Hyosang Park, music director, will conduct a free concert “How Great Our Joy!” featuring PrincetonUMC’s handbell choir, handbell quartet and a handbell solo with Duo Grazioso. “Through handbell music and singing Christmas carols, you will experience a truly joyous season,” says Park.
