Resources by Colin Howland
Music Director and Organist
How does Christmas motivate you? How does it shape your calendar during the final weeks of the year? Is it a time filled with activity, or a time for you to stay out of the fray? Each year when Christmas is on the horizon, we anticipate the emotions which come with the season. We see Christmas in our future, and what we foresee Christmas being like determines much of what…
The immeasurable significance of Holy Week is perhaps best attested by the amount of space given to recording its events in the gospels. From a total of 89 chapters in the four gospel accounts, 29 chapters are devoted to describing what Jesus said and did from Palm Sunday to Easter. Not only this, but each gospel is composed so the reader can clearly understand that there is an inexorable movement…
“Their plane is missing.” It was the end of June in 1989, and I was reveling in the joy and excitement of having just graduated from the Curtis Institute the month before. Earlier that day I had played an organ concert at Wanamaker’s (now Macy’s) and a guest at the organ console asked me if I knew the whereabouts of Keith Chapman and his wife Sally. Keith was the head…
“Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into His presence with singing!” Psalm 100:2
Music has a vital role in the life of Tenth Presbyterian Church. We use vocal and instrumental music to worship God together, to grow in the Christian faith, and to give witness of that faith to the world. The Bible clearly portrays God’s people as a singing people. Theologians such as Augustine and…
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God —Colossians 3:16.
Singing biblical truth with thankfulness is at the heart of Christian worship. Musical praise is nothing less than singing the truth about God, which he has given us in his Word…
So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas,and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. —Mark 15:15
If grace is "unmerited favor," then perhaps there is no clearer illustration in Scripture than the exchange of Jesus for Barabbas. The gospels variously identify Barabbas as a robber, an insurrectionist, and a murderer, a combination of crimes which we often associate today with…
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was…
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. (Luke 2:16–18)
The people who heard the shepherds’ testimony were filled with wonder. Wonder is a sense of…
I grew up a fan of the “Broad Street Bullies,” the great Philadelphia Flyers teams of the 1970’s. My school friends and I spent entirely too much time pouring over accounts of their reign of terror; names like “Moose” Dupont and Dave “The Hammer” Schultz still evoke images of bloodied men staggering off the ice. While the individual hockey fights fascinated me, nothing got me going more than a bench-clearing…