After fifty years of ministry and over thirty major Christmas productions,\u00a0 assumed Christmas Celebration 2013 would be my last.\u00a0 I haven’t directed a “traditional” cantata since the early 70’s.\u00a0 In the ’79 and ’80 I began to stretch a bit, then in 1981, Christmas Celebrations (Year) were born.\u00a0 In the early days, David and Karen Boyd partnered with me at First Baptist Church Bartlesville, Oklahoma and together, we developed the format of great music, media, comedy, dance, and drama to share the message of Christ.\u00a0 Of course, a number of churches use similar formats , but we had a tendency to “push the envelope” a bit.\u00a0 Literally hundreds of people have helped me to the point that they do all the work, and I am the “cheerleader.”<\/p>\n
I’ve used every style of music possible, traditional (whatever that means), classical, country, gospel, rock and roll, jazz, and even used rap…once….I won’t do that again.<\/p>\n
I have received some criticism over the years, particularly, when it came to “dance” in a Baptist church, yet everything was done for a purpose and was part of the story line.\u00a0 One time it was “reported to my pastor” that I was allowing dance in the Christmas program.\u00a0 I learned later that the pastor “sneaked in” to a rehearsal to see what was going on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was there, but it was so\u00a0 part of the story he didn’t notice. \u00a0 Of course, in more recent years, I have been much bolder, but have revived very little kick-back.\u00a0 Facts are facts, parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors, etc, will come to see a child dance and sing.\u00a0 Numbers have come to know Jesus.<\/p>\n
I sought out abilities, interests, talents, and gifts of our church families and community members and celebrated them.\u00a0 I’ve had twirlers, comedians, dancers, ballet, and of course, countless singers and instrumentalists.\u00a0 Actors, builders, painters,\u00a0 media specialists…..babies, children, teenagers, college students, adults and some really old folks as well.\u00a0 In other words, members of the body of Christ.\u00a0 (I’ve even\u00a0 had a live animals, dogs, cats, sheep, a donkey…….yes, but we had a way to clean it up.)<\/p>\n
We celebrated the “season” and then made a bee-line to the story of Jesus birth and the Gospel. “The tread of grace” runs from the overture to the finale’\u00a0 Some of my favorite story lines…<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Reality TV:\u00a0 We created a “spoof” on reality TV, and then asked the question, “If\u00a0 you\u00a0 can buy this a reality, how can you possibly deny the reality of Jesus?”<\/em><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 The Bucket List:\u00a0 A fellow had a near death experience and immediately created a bucket list.\u00a0 Through video, he jumped out of an airplane, raced a motorcycle, sang in a county band, etc, but left off trusting Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 I wrote on celebration around the story of a hotel piano player featuring my good friend, singer songwriter, Archie Jordan.<\/p>\n 4. One of my early favorites was written about the child that still lives in each of us and paralleled the child like faith it takes to trust Jesus.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Back in\u00a0 the 80’s we did a Star Wars Celebration and then celebrated the one who made the stars and sent THE STAR.<\/p>\n I’ve repeated some themes and songs over the years, but have never presented the same celebration twice.<\/p>\n FIVE LOAVES AND TWO FISH:\u00a0 I look at the “seasonal” portion of my celebrations as “the five loaves and two fish.”\u00a0 Jesus shared His love and grace, and then fed the people. \u00a0\u00a0 Of course, there people today that need food, but most need clean laugh, a great story, wonderful music and we share Jesus.<\/p>\n The Lord surprised me with Christmas Celebration 2014 and maybe He’ll give me a few more.\u00a0 This year, I get to celebrate with Level Grove Baptist Church in Cornelia, Georgia.\u00a0 I will write about CC’14 in another post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After fifty years of ministry and over thirty major Christmas productions,\u00a0 assumed Christmas Celebration 2013 would be my last.\u00a0 I haven’t directed a “traditional” cantata since the early 70’s.\u00a0 In the ’79 and ’80 I began to stretch a bit, then in 1981, Christmas Celebrations (Year) were born.\u00a0 In the early days, David and Karen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billcoenmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}