Gospel with Rolling Stones catalog will rock St. James Episcopal Church


File photo by Randy Harris

J.R. Ankney, center, and his band perform at St. James Episcopal Church during the church’s Stevie Wonder Mass on Oct. 27, 2012. Ankney is the church’s music director.


Posted: Friday, August 15, 2014
By DAVID O'CONNOR


Mick Jagger himself won't be there in his choir robes.
And the rest of the Rolling Stones, the "world's greatest rock-and-roll band" and a group known to virtually anyone who's been alive the last 50 years, won't be bringing the stage and equipment into the elegant confines of Lancaster's historic St. James Episcopal Church.

But the music of the Stones will be there for the Mass next Saturday, Aug. 23, at 5 p.m., perhaps the church's most challenging attempt yet in its efforts to use secular music in a standard service, in hopes of bringing home the message of the Gospel.

"No disrespect to organists, but I can bring the world's leading organists to Lancaster, and while we would draw a crowd, we wouldn't get a curious, (spiritually) seeking crowd," says J.R. Ankney, director of music at St. James.
"And I think that's always the kind of people we're interested in finding ... curious, seeking people."

Ankney will sing and play keyboards as part of the "Stones Mass," which will include a full band, backup singers on some tunes and, with closing song "You Can't Always Get What You Want," a French horn at the start of the song and a choir singing in the background, just like on the record.

Using the music of the Stones, the iconic band that ranks with Elvis and the Beatles as a top act in entertainment history, is just the latest step in using mainstream music for St. James, which has had Masses using the music of Stevie Wonder, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and U2, and even once played songs from "Les Miserables."

Ankney explains that when you "mix secular music with top musicians in a beautiful space, and with a great message that ties it all together, it makes it really quite unique" among mainline Protestant churches. St. James is one of the few such denominations in Pennsylvania that's growing instead of shrinking, Ankney says.

The songs that will be played at next Saturday's Mass — and Ankney emphasizes that it's a church service, not a concert — are: "Sympathy for the Devil"; the chart-topping hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"; the mid-60s hit "Paint It Black"; "You Gotta Move" from the early-70s album "Sticky Fingers"; the lesser-known "Salt of the Earth"; and then the "sending song," "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
The Rev. David Peck, rector of St. James, chose the Stones songs for the Mass.

Peck explains that "Sympathy for the Devil” is a song that "really puts Lucifer in his place as a fallen angel. It decries him as the pathetic, sulking creature that he is, only able to sow seeds of chaos that can never bear fruit."

Like many Stones fans, Peck loves the band's "ability to capture the full fury of rage at injustice and violence or sing so tenderly about friendship or so amusingly or naughtily about sex and relationships. And there is in their rugged blues-rock fusion a spirituality of suffering that always appealed to me, and helped me through some of my dark times."

Most people don't know that Jagger got his start singing in a church choir, Peck adds.

Ankney, who will perform with his Duke Street Band, which includes such top Lancaster musicians as jazz guitar player Dave Pedrick, hopes the music "creates a bridge that makes it incredibly easy to feel earth and heaven coming a lot closer together than you feel is possible most days."

Then, with the music combined with Peck's preaching, "You end up with something that's bigger than the sum of its parts. It makes it all relevant for people who maybe don't often come through the door of a church."

The lyrics to the songs will be printed in the bulletin, Akney notes: "We really encourage people to be interactive. Which means, sing along!"

It's really something to sit back and hear an entire congregation sing the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" or "Satisfaction," he says, adding that in a church context, "Satisfaction" can be seen as being about "how we're always looking for something, how The Man always comes on the TV and tells me why my shirt isn't white enough, that sort of thing."


http://lancasteronline.com/religion/gospel-with-rolling-stones-catalog-will-rock...