Musical Sermon Theme
Category: Music...
Posted Sunday, November 09, 2003 at 06:12 PM [GMT-6]

Our pastor is currently preaching a series on issues that are common to the human situation. This morning, his message addressed the issue of... oh, not so fast!

Let's try a little quiz, shall we? I'll give you a hint, and you can guess at the topic of his sermon.

Why would I do this? Well, it's because of a somewhat unusual technique our pastor used to introduce the topic to us this morning. He had the media team play clips from four songs, each of which related in some way to the message. The common link was obvious after listening to them. Much too easy, in fact, for a discriminating, perceptive and sophisticated reader like you. So what I'm going to do is just tell you the four artists, and let you decide which of their songs have a common theme, and thereby figure out that theme. Make sense? OK, here the list of musicians:

  • The Beatles
  • America
  • Roy Orbison
  • Celine Dion (actually a cover of a very popular song from the mid-70s)

This should be a piece of cake for some of you. I'll post the answer in the comments section, or acknowledge the correct answer from you, and let you know via an update to this post.

Update [2003-11-12]: The answer to this admittedly unfair quiz is now in the Comments section.

Permalink
Comments

OK! I'm guessing it had to do with the power of LOVE. I hope you are going to reveal the titles of the songs. I couldn't come up with the one by America or Roy Orbison and Roy is one of my favorites performers. I have all of his music. I love a challenge. Thanks.

Posted by: Clarence at November 10, 2003 12:50 AM

Clarence, good guess...but, nope, that's not it. Don't worry; I'll provide the answer, and the song titles. Thanks for playing; feel free to try again, and be sure to pick up your lovely parting gift on the way out!

Posted by: Eric at November 10, 2003 06:32 AM

Hmmm...magic?

Posted by: jen at November 11, 2003 08:21 AM

OK...this was a tough one; I admit it. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have guessed the answer.

Here are the songs that formed the basis for the sermon theme:

Beatles - "Eleanor Rigby"
America - "Lonely People"
Roy Orbison - "Only the Lonely"
Celine Dion - "All By Myself" (a remake of Eric Carmen's 1975 recording)

Well, it's easy to guess the theme now, isn't it? The pastor's sermon topic was loneliness. If you're interested in listening to his message, it is available in MP3 format here:

http://www.fbc-midland.org/resources/sermons/mp3/sermon03_11_09.mp3

We archive sermons for only 4 weeks, so this recording will be gone around mid-December.

I suspect that if I had referred to Eric Carmen's song, rather than Celine Dion's cover, this would have been much easier to guess. He had only a couple of big hits. But the pastor chose to use Dion's recording, so that's what I had to go with.

Posted by: Eric at November 12, 2003 08:26 AM
Post a comment [Take your time...we're in no hurry.]
Note: You must provide either a website URL or an email address...but there's no rule that says you have to tell the truth. If you don't want your email address published on this site, just input a website URL, or make up an email address.









Remember personal info?