Date Posted:16:36:17 04/07/05 Thu Author: Chris Subject: Re: The UBF favorite hymn In reply to:
PECAS
's message, "Re: The UBF favorite hymn" on 14:57:35 04/07/05 Thu
After the singsperation, the presider would always say, 'Good Afternoon, welcome to our Sunday worship service. Let's all rise and sing hymn 11.
Exactly. You're right, the service did not start with the hymn, but with some contemporary songs and the young members standing in front and singing as "warm-uppers." In UBF jargon it was called "creating the atmosphere." It made the service a little bit more attractive for newcomers. After that, the "official" service started with that hymn and everything became formal. It was always a strange rupture of style. At first the contemporary music, and then suddenly everybody standing up and singing that 18th century hymn.
In our chapter, most of our sheep refused to come to the service, though they were pushed a lot and there was contemporary singing in the beginning and free food afterwards. But the service itself was so boring, formal and lifeless that nobody really wanted to partake except the shepherds and missionaries who had no other choice anyway. The chapter leader read his prefabricated six-page "message" with a monotone voice and bad pronounciation. One of the shepherds regularly fell asleep and the missionaries had to tap him when he started to snore. Everybody else was writing down what the chapter leader said, in these typical black timeplaners, which was actually unnecessary since they got a written copy of the "lesson" later anyway. These notes and the copies were used as template for their "sogams."
