change is gonna come

October 30, 2019 by Paul Vasile in Music, Social Justice

This summer I had the privilege of traveling and working in British Columbia, where I hiked close to several massive glaciers. Though they were retreating in the warm weather, they were a formidable force. Their size and presence took my breath away, as did the volume of water that flowed from them into swollen streams and rivers.

Glaciers are slow-moving agents of transformation that have shaped and re-shaped the planet for millennia. And they reminded me change is natural and inevitable. Resistance is also natural and inevitable. And while it may take a very long time to notice the slow, shaping force of a glacier or river or wind, it’s happening in ways we may never fully recognize or see in our lifetime.

our tears falling down like rain

September 01, 2019 by Paul Vasile in Music

Our Tears, Falling Down Like Rain was written for the 2018 Annual Conference of The Hymn Society in St. Louis, Missouri. I hoped it would be a vessel big enough to hold many people’s prayers of repentance, especially those from diverse denominational and theological spaces. It’s essentially a Kyrie eleison (Lord/God, have mercy), a classic penitential text in the Christian tradition, rooted in a verse from Psalm 126:6.

navigating seasons of trauma and change

November 16, 2016 by Paul Vasile in Social Justice, transition, Church

Living through trauma and transition is exhausting work, whether it's in the White House, our family, or faith community. How can we maintain the energy we need to be fully present, to play a positive and constructive role in the face of challenges and tension we face?

now the green blade riseth

March 28, 2016 by Paul Vasile in Leadership, Easter, Worship

Interim/transitional music ministry and consulting is Easter work. And by ‘Easter’ I don’t mean the focus is solely on success, positive change, or growth. While some might offer churches a quick path to transformation or Seven Easy Steps to Worship Renewal, experience is showing me that healthy congregational processes require an encounter with loss and death.

Cycles of renewal and rebirth are visible all around us should we open our eyes to them. Like the Easter carol proclaims, grain rises out of wintery soil; the rich humus of what has died is a seedbed for new life. Perhaps we intuitively know that the church (the literal Body of Christ) will experience transition, metamorphosis, and even death. But we do not always live as Easter people and even resist what is inevitable, even as we praise the One who died and lives again.