The Heart of Worship
We have worshipped in a multitude of ways throughout our history, and all of them have sought to glorify God
Just as worship has changed over the years, it changes throughout the morning at First Presbyterian Church.
Walk down a hall by Winship Chapel after 8:30 a.m. on almost any Sunday morning, and you’ll hear the voices of a few dozen worshippers singing hymns to the accompaniment of a small organ and piano. Stay awhile, and you’ll see them sharing in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Less than an hour later, a variety of musical instruments will ring out from Fifield Hall. Some of the songs feature words from old hymns. Some are brand-new compositions.
And later on, the historic sanctuary will resound with music from a massive pipe organ, a glorious Steinway D, a full choir, and sometimes an orchestra, children’s choir, and bell choir.
Throughout the morning, members and friends gather to glorify God and be edified by God‘s word. Three different services with three different rhythms—but one church and one message.
During the first service of the day, volunteers and visitors from the early morning prayer breakfast fill several of the pews. Men and women, some with duffel bags full of their belongings, sit alongside the same First Presbyterian members who offered food and friendship while dawn broke over Midtown. Other members and friends enter the chapel as the prelude begins. Some like the intimacy of the service, some the weekly communion, and some just appreciate the opportunity to begin a busy Sunday with an early morning worship service.
Informality is the order of the day at the 9:10 a.m. service. Many participants dress casually and bring their morning coffee with them from the fellowship table in the prefunction area. Worshippers of all ages fill the chairs in Fifield Hall (where a few hours earlier the morning prayer breakfast was served). Lyrics to songs appear on the screens. On stage, the preacher forgoes the ceremonial robes and uses a music stand as a pulpit. Folks gather after worship for fellowship, coffee, and conversation before heading to Sunday school.
At 11:00 a.m. worship, singers in robes chosen to reflect the shades of blue in the rose window over the choir loft call the service to order with the morning introit. This is the “traditional service.” Robed ministers lead and preach from behind a pulpit, and the congregation sings from the purple Glory to God Presbyterian hymnal.
Worship in the sanctuary takes place beneath a series of marvelous stained glass windows, each of which depicts a different story from Scripture. These stories are at the core of all three services, just as they have been since the beginning of the Church Universal and the church that has met at the corner of Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets for more than one hundred years.
The Glory to God hymnals at FPC have more than 850 hymns and praise songs in a variety of styles.
In addition to serving as Director of Worship and the Arts, Dr. Jens Korndörfer also plays the organ and piano during worship services.
YOUR WORD IS A LAMP TO MY FEET AND A LIGHT TO MY PATH.
—PSALM 119:105
In the Reformed tradition, the Word of God read and proclaimed is the central act of the Church’s worship. How the Word of God is read and proclaimed, however, is not static and has undergone transformation from culture to culture, generation to generation.
With every change comes controversy. William Tyndale, a Bible translator and leading figure in the Protestant Reformation was influenced by Martin Luther. He was executed and his body incinerated because he dared to translate the Bible into English. Even the venerable old King James Version (KJV), authorized in 1604 and popularized by the advent of the printing press, had its detractors, particularly among the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, who would remain committed to the Latin version of Scripture until Vatican II.
With its “thees” and “thous”, the KJV was the standard biblical translation in the English-speaking world until the 1950s, when, in the midst of the Cold War, the National Council of Churches sponsored the Revised Standard Version (RSV). This time, critics burned the books, not the translators.
Many argued, “The King James was good enough for Jesus and it’s good enough for me.” Of course, Jesus spoke Aramaic. We also know that the Scriptures were not translated into English for the first seventeen centuries of Christian history. The RSV became a mainstay of mainline Protestant churches for forty years. It held its place in the pews of First Presbyterian Church until it was replaced by the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
The NRSV took advantage of advances in scholarship and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also addressed certain social and cultural trends by substituting language that was more inclusive of the whole people of God. It eliminated much of the patriarchal language of former translations with regard to human beings but preserved the male pronouns for God and Jesus.
In between the RSV and the NRSV were other versions, including the popular New International Version (NIV), an evangelical response to the RSV that was favored by some Elders when First Presbyterian bought new pew Bibles in 2007. Today, when scripture is read from the pulpit at First Presbyterian Church, it is in the words of the NRSV. Director of Biblical and Theological Education Rev. Dr. Chris Holmes even advised on a chapter in the version's updated edition. The same version is available in each of the pews or on the screens at the 9:10 a.m. service.
Three different services with three different rhythms— but one church and one message.
O SING TO THE LORD A NEW SONG, FOR GOD HAS DONE MARVELOUS THINGS.
—PSALM 98:1
Singing has been part of the church since the first century. The Gospel of Matthew says that after receiving communion from Jesus on the night he was betrayed, his disciples sang a hymn, then went out to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30). Matthew doesn’t say which hymn it was or whether some of the group complained about the choice, but by the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom was already criticizing the music of younger Christians: “Today your children learn satanic songs and dances in question,” he said, “but no one knows a Psalm.”
In the centuries that followed, debates over music often embroiled believers. Pro and anti factions developed over the use of the organ, an instrument invented prior to the birth of Christ. Once the pipe organ became established as the “king of instruments,” along came the electric organ and more debate. At least one denomination split over whether musical instruments were appropriate in worship at all.
The founders of the Protestant Reformation, however, did seem to agree on one thing: that music enhanced worship. Martin Luther claimed that “anyone who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God must be a clodhopper indeed and… should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”
At First Presbyterian, congregants are able to choose from a variety of ways to worship God each week.
John Calvin called music “a gift from God” that has “a sacred and almost incredible power to move hearts in one way or another.”
Arguments raged over the years about whether hymn lyrics should be derived directly from Bible verses or whether other sources were permissible. According to the Presbyterian Historical Society, “The Presbyterian Church of the colonies was largely a psalm-singing church.” That began to change with the 1707 publication of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, written by the British Congregationalist minister Isaac Watts.
Watts based his lyrics on Bible verses (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” for instance, was from Psalm 90, which, in the KJV begins, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations”). Critics called the new texts “Watts’ whims,” but, according to Christianity Today, “after church splits, pastor firings and other arguments, Watt’s paraphrases won out.”
Like Bible translations, hymnal revisions are seldom received with perfect harmony. As with the NRSV, much of the controversy in recent decades has centered around inclusive language. In the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal, “God of Our Fathers” became “God of the Ages,” although a footnote did offer “fathers” as an option. The 2013 hymnal Glory to God eliminated the footnote.
To embrace inclusivity from another perspective, recent denominational hymnals include songs from a variety of ethnic and national origins with various musical styles. Glory to God includes more than 850 hymns and praise songs.
There is no record of the hymns that were sung when a handful of Presbyterians first came together in the upstart railroad town of Atlanta, but we do know of four hymns that were part of the current sanctuary’s dedication on April 6, 1919: “For All the Saints,” “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord,” “All Hail the Pow’r of Jesus’ Name,” and “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” Two of the verses from “All Hail” date back to 1779. The newest of hymns, “For All the Saints,” was composed in 1864— sixteen years after the founding of First Presbyterian Church. All remain in the current hymnal.
The current hymnal also includes fourteen of Watts’s texts, including “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” from his 1707 volume. Dr. Daniel Bara, Codirector of Choir and Orchestra, led the version of the hymnal on page 223 and was accompanied on the organ by Dr. Jens Korndörfer during an 11:00 a.m. service. “The Wonderful Cross,” an updated version with a chorus, was featured during a 9:10 a.m. alternative service accompanied by a praise band. The lyrics for this weren’t displayed in hymnals but projected onto screens.
During informal worship, pastors shed their ceremonial robes to deliver God’s word in a more relaxed and casual setting.
Bara grew up Presbyterian, took piano lessons and sang in choirs throughout his childhood, then went on to study choral conducting and organ. He holds a DMA from Eastman School of Music, part of the University of Rochester. He appreciates various styles of sacred music. “Every church wants to reach out to as many people as it can,” he said. “Music is part of that.”
Bara asserts that, whatever the musical style, the theology behind the words is critical. The preacher of the day chooses congregational hymns for the 11:00 a.m. service, Bara said. He picks the anthems based on the sermon theme and scripture. “I won’t choose an anthem if I find the text to be trite or theologically flimsy,” he said. If a line in an anthem seems outdated or inappropriate for any reason, the choir discusses the concern. “We’ve decided both ways,” he said. “We’ve updated some, not updated others.”
Traditional doesn’t mean old. Just as worship leaders might bring new versions of old hymns to the alternative service, Bara introduces new composers at 11:00 a.m. The chancel choir has performed works by Elaine Hagenburg, Philip Stopford, and Dan Forrest— all twenty-first-century composers working in a traditional mode.
First Presbyterian member Elizabeth Fogartie has been a soprano in the choir for more than forty years, singing under the leadership of multiple generations of choir directors. She also plays in the church’s orchestra as well as the bell choir— all parts of traditional worship. She prefers that service, she says, probably because she grew up in a family with four generations of Presbyterian ministers.
“Being in a choir is being part of something larger than yourself,” she says. She finds the music moving… some pieces more than others. She puts a start by her favorites in her choir folder. “Sometimes you want to cry,” she says, “and sometimes you just want to get up and dance.”
A strength of the church, she says, is being able to offer different styles of worship to suit different preferences.
It’s worth noting that even the alternative service has elements of liturgy dating back to the 1500s, with a time for confession of sins and assurance of pardon. And contrary to the belief that contemporary music focuses more on the performance, the congregation is expected to participate throughout the service, including singing.
In both traditional and alternative worship, the purpose is the same: to glorify God.
“The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a revolution in American Protestant church music comparable to the acceptance of hymns in the eighteenth century,” wrote Thomas E. Bergler of Huntington College in Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology. “A New Christian music tradition emerged which did not exclude or even grudgingly accept popular music idioms, instrumentation and performance styles, but instead embraced them.”
Pentecostal and nondenominational churches would continue to push this trend in the coming decades. It would also be taken up by mainline churches, which introduced modifications to suit both the church and its denomination, such as First Presbyterian Church’s commitment to liturgy.
“The new worship incubating through the 1980s exploded into widespread awareness in the early 1900s and with it the term contemporary worship,” wrote the authors of Lovin’ On Jesus: A Concise History of Contemporary Worship.
As for criticisms that much of today’s Christian music sounds too secular, some favorite hymn texts from past centuries were written to tunes that conformed to the music of the times. “for two-thousand plus years,” observed Senior Pastor Tony Sundermeier, “the Gospel has been proclaimed through the language and culture of the ones receiving the Good News.”
Rev. Kate Culver offers the Words of Institution during communion at the chapel service.
Jim Brown and the choir rehearse for Sunday morning service in the sanctuary.
I WAS GLAD WHEN THEY SAID TO ME, ‘LET US GO TO THE HOUSE OF THE LORD!’
—PSALM 122:1
In both “traditional” and “alternative” worship, the purpose is the same: “to glorify God,” as the Westminister Catechism of the Presbyterian Church puts it. Some church members prefer to do that in the neo-Gothic sanctuary with its lofty ceilings, while others prefer the intimate chapel or the more casual way to connect with God and another in Fifield Hall.
The acoustics of the sanctuary are suited to the kind of music and worship that takes place there, said Bara. Traditional church services have “relied on space where the spoken word and musical word could tumble down the nave, where you feel like sound is all around you,” he said. He added that he’s “dazzled every week” by the music from a refurbished organ and a new grand piano in the sanctuary, played by organist and Director of Worship and the Arts Dr. Jen Korndörfer. But the instruments would be much less impressive with different acoustics.
Worship bands work better with “flatter” acoustics, Bara said.
Fifield Hall, which hosts the 9:10 a.m. alternative service, will soon undergo a major renovation. The new Fifield Hall will have lots of clear glass connecting the worship inside with the greenery outside, and also to the sidewalk and street, visually and physically reinforcing the church’s connection to the natural world and to the city. Rev. Dr. Tony Sundermeier said: “The new Fifield will inhabit some of our core values: welcome, hospitality, and a resonance between what happens in worship and what is happening in people’s lives and in the life of our city and world.”
The motto of Reformation, when Latin was alive in the church and Luther and Calvin were changing Christendom forever: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda (“The church reformed and always reforming”). Scripture says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That doesn’t mean worship has to be. Jesus remains the cornerstone of our worship even as we have worshipped him in different ways throughout our history.
New Ways to Deliver God’s Message
First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta joined the “Voice of the South” in the spring of 1922, when then-pastor Dr. J. Sprole Lyons spoke into a WSB microphone for the first time. Just a few weeks earlier, WSB— which stands for Welcome, South, Brother— had received federal authorization to become the first radio station in the southern United States.
The station was in need of programming to fill its schedules and believed that church services were a natural fit. But many religious folks regarded the newfangled medium as sinful— as much a tool of the devil as motion pictures and stage shows. After Baptist and Methodist churches turned down overtures from the station, its officials approached First Presbyterian.
Lyons immediately saw the potential for “a larger congregation” and, with the approval of the church’s Session, went on the air for the first time on March 19, 1922.
The Atlanta Journal, which owned WSB’s broadcast license, printed the entire text of Lyon’s brief remarks the following day. “It is appropriate that these waves of ether, stirred by God’s mystery of electric power, should spread far and wide the message of his love and grace,” Lyons said. “I bespeak for the wireless telephone service a place of dignity, of usefulness, of uplift, of educational and spiritual blessing to all classes of men.”
Two weeks later, on April 2, an entire church service was broadcast. The Journal described it as “one of the most remarkable performances yet developed in connection with the wireless telephone,” and went on to describe it in detail:
“The voice of Dr. J. Sprole Lyons, pastor of the First Presbyterian church, standing in this pulpit and addressing his congregation in his usual manner, without special effort to make himself heard, was carried by the telephone wires to the wireless transmitter, and from there dispatched by the mysterious electrical waves to a great visible audience… A sound wave put in motion by a single syllable of the minister’s sermon, or a single note of a singer in the choir, or a single touch of the organist on a keyboard was carried on and on… through unmeasured space to the receiving sets of uncounted and unknown listeners.”
This reception apparently caused other churches to reconsider. In its regular promotions of WSB programming, the Journal soon listed sermons and music from Baptist, Methodist, and other Presbyterian churches. Because few families owned radio sets, WSB sent a truck with loudspeakers around the metro area to promote the station’s programming.
By the summer of 1992, the station had boosted its broadcasting power to reach all forty-eight states.
Weekly broadcasts continue to this day. WSB has cited First Presbyterian’s Sunday morning worship service as “the oldest continuous religious program in the world.”
Today, First Presbyterian also transmits via television, live streaming, YouTube, and Facebook. People from around the world are able to virtually attend this church at the corner of Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets in Atlanta. And to complete the circle, Dr. Lyons’s’ grandson and granddaughter-in-law, Bill and Tootie Lyons, participate every week on live stream at Presbyterian Village in Austell.
A Christmas Tradition
Since the first Christmas pageant in 1984, hundreds of First Presbyterian children have participated in this beloved tradition.
In 1984, when Barbara Cavanaugh decided to stage the first Christmas pageant at First Presbyterian, the church had no costumes, no animals, not even a manger— just “a whole lot of children.” As of 2022, the production was in its thirty-eighth year, with no sign of shutting down.
Of course, the cast has changed over the years. The pageant’s first “Mary,” also Mary in real life, is now a forty-six year-old mother of three boys, ages fourteen, twelve, and ten. Mary Wills Clarke Herman was baptized at the church. Her parents, Caleb and Mary Clarke, were members until her father, Caleb, became the Pastor of Eastminister Presbyterian Church in Stone Mountain.
“As far back as I can remember, we were always there,” Herman said of First Presbyterian. She now lives in Carrollton and attends church there. She remembers participating in the church pageant with her friends being “a normal thing.”
“I didn’t have any idea it was the first one, that they had never done it before,” she said. “My sister and brother are older than me. They always did things ahead of me. This was something nobody in my family had done.” Hundreds of children have been part of the pageant throughout its history. As they get older, some graduate from roles such as shepherd or angel to become readers.
The first challenge for organizers was obtaining the fifty or so costumes necessary to put on a proper production. This wouldn’t be the kind of show in which the little shepherds wore bathrobes and tied towels around their heads. These shepherds, angels, and kings would be styled in matching outfits.
One of the other ministries offered a solution. First Presbyterian had a relationship with the huge Carver Homes public housing project, where the women participated in a sewing circle. “We bought bolts and bolts of fabric,” Cavanaugh said. “Brown for the shepherds, white for the angels, blue for Mary.” One mother of a wise man found velvet and brocade finery in a thrift shop and used that for the royal garb of the magi.
The Carver Homes seamstresses ensured that all pageant participants were properly bedecked.
First graders had the major parts: Mary and Joseph; the innkeeper; the camels. Children of that age also were the readers. Four- and five-year-olds were angels and shepherds. Three-year-olds held sticks with sparkly stars. Music directors Herb and Mary Archer had staged a children’s musical called 100 Percent Chance of Rains, about Noah and the ark. They still had animal masks.
Bent coat hangers covered with silver garlands made wings for angels. Pieces of rope cinched the shepherds’ waists. A backdrop served as a manger. No script was needed. The gospels told the story.
After only one rehearsal, the cast was ready to perform in Fifield Hall during the Sunday school hour. “We had no expectations,” Cavanaugh said, “but we pretty much filled Fifield Hall. It was surprising that so many people came. A lot of them were parents and grandparents.”
Cavanaugh organized the pageant for two years before turning it over to Connie Dewberry, another volunteer. Volunteers have been working with the church staff to produce the pageant ever since. The show eventually moved to the sanctuary. There’s only been one year— when the church was closed for COVID— that there wasn’t a live Christmas pageant.
Part of the charm of the pageant is working with a cast of children. Once, a shepherd’s rope belt came untied and his costume fell down around his ankles. Another year, a shepherd spun his crook like a baton, narrowly missing the other characters. One archangel positioned in the choir loft grew weary and leaned over the rail to rest for much of the program. And one year, a young female reader described the wise men’s gifts of “gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh.”
Although the church tries to avoid weddings and funerals while the stage is set for the pageant, there has been at least one of each.
Frances Howell married Jack Parrish on December 11, 2010. “We really wanted that date, and the church said we could have it, but the Christmas pageant was going to be held the next morning, so we would have to work around the pageant scenery, which was already in place,” said mother of the bride Nettie Howell. Frances, a law school student, had a narrow window in which to have her wedding after exams. “We were happy to comply,” said her mother.
The funeral for Ruth Norris Pratt was held on December 11, 2009, with a pageant set intact. Her son, Madison Pratt, said that his mother would have approved. “She taught public school, kindergarten, and first grade,” he said. “She was wonderful with little ones.”
At some point, manufactured animals became part of the set. Harold the Camel is now a fixture, not only for the pageant but for photo ops in the hallway. Sunday school teachers who act as assistant directors wear their own costumes.
“So many wonderful things have been added to make it better every year,” Cavanaugh said. “The first one was simple, so simple. But it was the beginning.”
