Music & Worship
By Jody Fuller
How have you seen God at work in your ministry over the year?
We give Glory to the Almighty God for taking care of us! We felt God's Hand directing us to do things we had not done before and serve in new areas. Members gave their time to usher, prepare the chancel for the worship services and for the sacraments, be song leaders and instrumental musicians in worship, create beautiful flower arrangements to adorn our chancel, operate the audio visual, and offer Livestream worship every Sunday! Cooperation and unity of spirit was shared by all those who served and those who could not because of the pandemic.
Please list the activities of your ministry this past year.
Flower Guild - Flowers were displayed weekly in the sanctuary with special flowers on Christmas and Easter. For several Sundays during the state of emergency, potted plants from florists were displayed. We thank Pastor Hector for for including the beautiful photos of the flower arrangements in the weekly Letter to the Congregation. Active members of the flower guild are Tomoko Sakurai, Chika Eto, Jojo Alade, Andy Chen, Juan Zeng and Akiko Adachi.
Altar Guild - Anita Gesling, the TUC clerk, bravely served every Sunday carrying out all the duties of the Altar Guild by herself with some occasional help from others. We are indebted to the generosity of Alison Yamaguchi who baked and prepared the bread for the Communion throughout the year and to Daiki Sasaki, TUC Sexton, who changed the paraments and the banners. We are very thankful that TUC members - Rachel Oh, Maria Namasaba, Devon Arthurson, Go Komatsu and Ron Reid joined the setting of the communion table during Christmas and New Year.
Ushers were very happy to welcome people into the sanctuary for worship. Distributing the bulletin, collecting the offering, and tidying the sanctuary are regular work for our usher team. We especially thank Sam Donkor who coordinates the ushers and plans the monthly schedule.
The AV Team provides essential sound and camera work to ensure that the service runs smoothly. They test the microphones, do sound checks with singers and instrumentalists, and go through a checklist of preparations to make sure all the equipment is ready. We are grateful for the countless hours of service given by AV team leader Risa Kikura.
Livestream has been a significant area of community connection at Tokyo Union Church, allowing people to interact with others during the weekly Sunday services, especially when it was difficult or impossible to gather in the sanctuary. After using the Church Online platform for a year, we transitioned in 2021 to our own customized setup housed on tokyounion.org. This made it much easier for family and friends of TUC to worship together on the same page. In addition, the livestream hosts have expanded, allowing plenty of hosting coverage on a weekly basis. The technical work on the A/V side to make this livestream possible included the completion of the Automated Production Control System (version 3.11) and the implementation of various manual control components, enabling the A/V team to use multiple avenues to produce a high-quality live broadcast for the community of Tokyo Union Church. Livestream Worship has connected people from all over the world to TUC on Omotesando. Weekly work reports, equipment rebuild and review and producing AV training videos are just a few of the things that Jonathan Oh has done. Without the leadership and expertise of Jonathan Oh and the entire AV team, livestream would not have been possible.
AV team Leader: Risa Kikura
Livestream Supervisor: Jonathan Oh
Audio team: David Berg, Jeico Berg, Daiki Sasaki, Risa Kikura
Visual team: Brad Schmidt, Daiki Sasaki, Kanehira Mitani, Risa Kikura
Trainee: Isaac Lee, Nanae Yanai, Marisa Yoshikawa
Taizé Service Exclusive: Daiki Sasaki, Risa Kikura
Music - Members of the Sanctuary Choir and Union Praise Team have led the singing in worship. Important safety protocols were observed and the congregation had to refrain from regular singing. We are thankful to all the song leaders who sang on behalf of everyone! Our choirs have been very creative in sharing music in many ways with soloists, duets, trios, quartets and other small ensembles. Special recordings were produced to showcase current and former sanctuary choir members singing from their homes. These virtual choir moments added joy and delight to our worship. Choir Sunday was held on June 5, 2021. The sanctuary choir shared both virtual and live performances to make worship very special. Several other virtual choir anthems were presented featuring the Sanctuary Choir together with the Union Praise Team, and choir alumni members. Special choral arrangements were made by Yuka Omi for these occasions. We recognize and graciously thank Sanctuary Choir Director, Yuka Omi, and Union Praise Team leaders Lorene Abella Clemens and Andy Chen for their dedication and commitment to providing music that fills our hearts during worship. Taize services have provided another way to worship God. These afternoon services are held periodically. Taize-style hymns also find a place in Sunday morning worship from time to time. Our thanks go to Nancy Pierson Umezu for planning and coordinating these services. Special thanks go to to all musicians who have shared instrumental music on the violin, guitar, percussion and more, adding meaning and beauty to our worship.
With grateful hearts we thank the Pastoral Team of Steve Yamaguchi, Hector Herrera, and Audrey Thorne for their leadership, support and encouragement of everyone on the Worship and Music Ministry Team.