2 Marin churches raise voices in ‘Blessing’
Churches join voices to deliver music project
After notching more than a million views for a music video titled “The Blessing” — released in May, just two months after the pandemic had plunged American life into a new and troubling landscape — a group of more than 50 Bay Area churches were overjoyed with the reception. There was just one question.
What do they do for an encore?
The answer turned out to be “The Bay Area Blessing — Christmas,” a seasonal sequel, if you will, to the video that tapped into a viral phenomenon that saw countless church groups around the world recording versions of a song that offers words of peace, hope and encouragement. ( You can see the new video by searching for “Bay Area Blessing” on YouTube or at visiting facebook.com/TheBayAreaBlessing.)
For organizers like Linzy Westman, there was no doubt that an appetite for a follow-up the original video was out there.
“People said things kind of the effect of, ‘ Oh, it’s so beautiful to see a message of hope in this dark time,’” says Westman, worship director of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, of the original release. “We just had comment after comment — just hundreds of them coming in — emails, phone calls, everything else.”
The quarantine- style “Blessing” recording finds voices from separate locations all over the Bay Area coming together in a cover of the Grammy-nominated song “The Blessing” by contemporary Christian music acts Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes and Elevation Worship.
“We thought, ‘OK, we’ve got this traction now,’” Westman says. “There are all these people who are looking for something positive, unifying, beautiful, hopeful. What would it look like to come together and do that again? Maybe even on a larger
scale, maybe with a little bit of a different vision — with Christmas approaching?’”
“Bay Area Blessing — Christmas” was an even larger undertaking, featuring more than 140 voices representing nearly 70 churches in 25-plus cities around the Bay Area — from Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, Morgan Hill and Palo Alto to San Francisco, Oakland and Marin, including San Rafael’s Marin Covenant Church and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mill Valley.
“Choosing the songs (to perform) was fairly easy,” says Lucas Parry, worship and creative arts pastor at Peninsula Bible Church. “We knew we wanted a couple of carols that everyone loved, that reminded us of togetherness and community.”
Thus, organizers chose to do a medley of two all-time classics — “Silent Night” and “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”
“’ Silent Night’ is arguably the most famous of all carols and is often sung as we light candles with our neighbors,” says Parry, who spearheaded the project with Westman and Ian Michael G. Pitter of Peninsula Covenant Church in Redwood City. “And even though because of social distancing we may not be able to light each others’ candles this year, the nostalgia in remembering the moment of unity is a powerful reminder that we are not alone. Then, ‘ O Come Let Us Adore Him’ is so fun to sing, especially with big harmonies with tons of people.
“It seemed fitting to end ‘ The Bay Area Blessing — Christmas’ with a giant choir of voices, singing in different languages this powerful chorus.” The video finds the choir singing in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Farsi and other languages.
Organizers hope the video can provide a bit of comfort in 2020, reminding people that — pandemic or not — Christmas is still the “most wonderful time of the year,” says Pitter.
“Our hope is that, even though we are living in an unsure and even unprecedented time, the listener will feel a strong sense of hope, love, joy and peace from this song,” says the worship and creative arts pastor at Peninsula Covenant Church.
The original “Bay Area Blessing” was part of a worldwide movement, as churches came together across the globe to record regional versions of the hope-filled hit song. It seemed to have started with “The Pittsburgh Blessing” and then continued with such offerings as “The Blessing — Canada,” “The Hawai’i Blessing,” the Spanish language “La Bendición Los Angeles” and the blockbuster “UK Blessing,” which on its own has garnered more than 4.2 million views on YouTube.
In stark contrast to other religious organizations that have challenged or defied pandemic restrictions on church gatherings, “The Blessing” represents the highest-profile example of an ongoing trend of churches uniting to find new and creative ways to keep connecting with parishioners.
“I’ve seen that in abundance,” Westman says. “For Christmas Eve alone, we have so many collaborative things going on with other churches. We are doing this Christmas reading with five other churches, just in Palo Alto.
“We are doing this collaborative Christmas event where you get this map of Palo Alto, with all these different churches and everybody has something set up. So, you go and drive through and experience something at each church along the way throughout the city.”
Westman says all of this is new for her church, even though the opportunity to do such projects has really always existed.
“It’s just this year has brought about this collaborative passion in all of us,” she says.
“I think partially because we are figuring things out for the first time. Everyone has to re-imagine their services and everyone wants to reach people and to bless people and help people, because people are struggling.”
But many churches haven’t been able to reach people in the ways they once could.
“So, it’s forcing us to just re-imagine church in a new way and it’s brought about these beautiful creative ideas and beautiful collaborative efforts that have just never existed before,” Westman says.
“It’s been cool to see how there has been this shift within the church, I think, and we’re becoming actually more effective in the midst of a really dark time in a lot of ways.”