Greetings!
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While many of you were here at home, packing away your Christmas trees and lights, members of the Northbrook UMC Chancel Choir and friends were strolling the historic streets of Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna! We shopped at the Christkindl Markets where they served warm pretzels and mulled wine, and drove through the countryside to Neuschwanstein castle where the farmland was blanketed in the whitest snow I’ve ever seen. We got our fill of pork knuckle and dumplings and enjoyed good German potato salad. Oh, and while we were there, we sang!!  

We were honored to perform in some of the most amazing cathedrals in Germany and Austria! Some of the highlights included singing for Mass at St. Michael’s Jesuit Church in Munich, the Salzburg Dom where Mozart was baptized, Melk Abbey, the Palace Chapel at Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, and St. Michael Basilica in Mondsee where Maria and Georg von Trapp’s wedding was filmed in The Sound of Music.  

Anyone who has traveled abroad knows the benefits and this trip was no exception. The people in our group were able to mix and mingle as they shared meals with one another. I enjoyed seeing the younger folks mesh with the older ones and those relationships will only continue to grow here at home. There was a lot of fun and laughter, but it never took long to see the reverence and sincerity in the faces of the singers when they gathered to sing.

Representing Northbrook UMC by sharing music that conveys the love of God was certainly a unique ministry opportunity. Quite often, the ancient wooden pews were filled with tourists as well as locals who either made plans to attend or simply took a quick rest to hear choral music in a great acoustical space. I continue to be in awe at the power of sacred music to captivate people from all over the world.  

To those of you who contributed to our trip through your financial gifts and prayers, know that we are humbled and extremely grateful. 2025 has just begun and we have a lot of powerful music awaiting Northbrook in the months to come!  
With Joy,
Chad

One of my first years at Northbrook, in worship one day, I was sitting in the back pew and my attention kept being drawn to whispering. Someone was talking constantly. My eyes began searching for the whisperer and landed pretty quickly on a man and wife that I knew. It’s important to note that Spanish was their first and main language. And there they sat with the husband translating every word of the service into Spanish for his precious wife – creeds, announcements, prayers, scripture, and the sermon in its entirety. They were lovingly leaning into one another and he whispered the whole service to her in Spanish. 

It was one of the more beautiful things I’ve ever seen happen in our Sanctuary. He took what was literally a foreign language and translated it so she could understand it. He did it with love and patience, making sure that this person he cared for so deeply was able to understand God and our worship of Him.

It got me thinking that THAT is the crux of what we are called to do as Christians. We are supposed to take this Word of God that is complicated and so difficult to understand and translate it to those God cares for so deeply. We are to take this language that is foreign to so many and lovingly lean into one another and help them understand. We are to tell them through words, example, actions, and our treatment of others that they are valued by God, they are loved beyond their imagination, and there is so much power and wonder to be found in our Lord. WE are called to translate God to those who find God foreign and difficult to understand.

And as parents, we are called to do this same work for our children. We are to take the lessons of God that seem complicated or hard and show them daily life lived with God’s love, joy, understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and service. We are to show them the love of the Father through OUR love as their parents. We are to be the translators of God into the hearts of our children, our Mom friends, our work friends, random people in the park who are struggling, and even the person in your life who you do NOT “get” as a person (haha). 

It won’t be done by yelling the “right way” at them. It won’t be done by enumerating all the ways we think they are wrong, using this difficult Word as our proof. It won’t be done by sharing the things we already know with people who already know them.  

It will be done by lovingly leaning into people and remembering that they are the ones God cares for so deeply – even if they are different, even if they find God to be ridiculously difficult to understand, even if they are difficult to understand. Lean in lovingly and translate His love.

May it be so,

Leslie Bowers
​Director of Worship Arts

January 17, 2025

On January 20th, we recognize the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It has become a tradition in The United Methodist Church that on the Sunday before, we sing the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by James Weldon Johnson. Mr. Weldon was the principal of the Edwin M. Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, and a member of Zion Episcopal Methodist Church. He originally set out to write a poem for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

But with the civil rights struggles of the time weighing heavily on his mind, he shifted focus to create a poem that captured the experiences and resilience of African Americans after Reconstruction, especially with the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South. In 1900, a group of 500 students recited what became "Lift Every Voice and Sing" for the very first time. Later, his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, set the powerful words to music, giving the poem a lasting and inspiring melody.

Not long after, the Johnson brothers moved to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway. The song continued to spread in popularity across Jacksonville and across the country. In 1919, the NAACP dubbed "Lift Every Voice and Sing" the "Negro national anthem", for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African American people. James Weldon Johnson would be appointed to serve as the NAACP's first executive secretary the following year. It has similarly been referred to as "the Black national anthem."

This hymn has made its way through many avenues of our society. Parts of this hymn were used at President Obama's Inauguration in 2009, and Beyoncé even performed the hymn at Coachella in 2018. The song has been performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and at the NFL Super Bowl.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is indeed a powerful hymn. It is perhaps the closest that the modern voice has come to capturing the spiritual character of exilic Hebrew scripture. The song is more like Isiah than anything I've ever read. It's more like an original Psalm than anything I've ever sung. Wendell Whalum, the late choral director at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, often spoke of the progression of the three stanzas as that of praise, lament, and prayer.

The poem's mood moves from exuberant joy based on a past wrought with suffering. The text then recounts a past full of terrible hardship and bloody progress to arrive at God's promise. Finally, the song celebrates God's deliverance and assures that God will keep his people on the right path. All this is sung to a tune more likely played by a high school marching band.

The final stanza is often called a prayer in the African-American community. This prayer culminates with the petitions, "Keep us forever in the path, we pray," and "May we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land."

Dr. James Abbington, Associate Professor of Music and Worship at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, Atlanta, Georgia, and a scholar in African American hymnody, has said, "This song isn't just for African-Americans and people from Africa, it belongs to all of us who are 'true to our God and true to our Native land.'"

With music matching the spirit of the inspiring lyrics, the result is a powerful hymn for all Americans, forged in the fires of the struggle for freedom and refined in the flames of hope. On the occasion when we celebrate Dr. King, I think this hymn reminds us that the struggle for social and racial justice is not just a civic duty; it is a spiritual struggle close to the heart of God, who loves all God's children. 

See you Sunday!
Kena

Rev. Kena Newkirk
Associate Pastor

 Lift Every Voice and Sing 

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place For which our fathers died.
We have come, over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.