St John's Choir is one with a tradition that goes back right to the founding of St John's.  Under the able direction of Norman Illman, the choir helps us to focus our worship and offer our very best to God. If you have a good choir voice, come and see us soon ...we are always keen to welcome more members!

New Choir Robes

At our harvest festival service the choir had their new robes dedicated! They now look exceedingly smart (more pictures here) - whether it will affect their sweet sound remains to be seen. But why do we bless things like that? and why bother with robes anyway?

Well, we bless things - or dedicate them, or set them apart, for special use. In this case the robes are being used in God’s service, to sing his praises, to lead others in making a joyful noise to the Lord (Psalm 100.2 for example) - ultimately offering our music for God’s greater glory.

But why have robes in the first place? Is it to draw attention to the choir? to make them look pretty? One reason that we use special vestments - choir robes, servers garments (and why priests wear black) is exactly the opposite: the clothes are “uniform” and are designed to draw attention away from the personality within them.

They are not a statement of individuality, but a reminder that those who wear vestments or robes or uniforms are there to serve God and others. That we do that better with others, working together as a team. There’s no room for ego in a group like the choir! So new robes are a reminder that the choir’s roll is to help lead us in worship; not to become an elite singing force, not to be professional and detached, not to be exclusive, or “disable” others with lesser musical gifts, but to be rather like (posh!) overalls a cleaner or mechanic might wear - a reminder that the Church belongs to Christ, not us! It’s also about vocation - realising that we have gifts, that God expects us to use our gifts in his service and that we have a role to play...

So that’s why we think robes are important and why we offer the very best to God in worship that we can - and why we say thank you to God for the new robes and ask for his grace in worthily singing his praises!

This was the prayer Fr. Andrew used over the robes...