As it has every year since 1959, the Perkins School of Theology community will celebrate the season with its annual Advent Service, on Thursday, December 5, at 6 p.m. The service will take place in Perkins Chapel, 6001 Bishop Blvd., on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The event is free and open to the public.
The 2024 service will mark the 65th anniversary of the Advent Service, which was instituted by Professors Grady Hardin and Lloyd Pfautsch in 1959. The service is closely tied to the history of Perkins’ Master of Sacred Music Program, which continues to plan and sponsor it. This event features a diverse group of liturgical and musical guests. Musical leadership will come from the Seminary Singers as well as Concordia, a treble ensemble of SMU’S Meadows School of the Arts, prepared by Prof. Margaret Winchell and under the direction of select graduate student conductors.
This year, the liturgy will revolve around the Great “O” Antiphons, historically recited in the Roman tradition during Vespers before Christmas.
“Each antiphon sheds light on the expected Messiah by naming a unique quality of the expected one, and concludes with an entreaty to bring salvation to God’s people,” said Marcell Silva Steuernagel, Assistant Professor of Church Music and Director of the Master of Sacred Music and Doctor of Pastoral Music programs at SMU. “In this year’s service, these antiphons will be chanted in dialogue with assigned scriptural passages for the season.”
Participants will also have the chance to hear the newly installed 1927 E.M. Skinner organ in Perkins Chapel. After a January 2018 steam leak caused damage to Perkins Chapel, including the organ, an “organ team” from Perkins School of Theology and Meadows School of the Arts was assembled to conduct a national search. That led to the purchase of a 1927 Skinner organ, Opus 563, from the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Manhattan. The Skinner Organ Company is widely regarded as America’s finest organ builder from 1905 until 1932, when the company merged with the organ department of the Aeolian Company to form Aeolian-Skinner. The Greek Orthodox congregation in New York had acquired the organ in 1953 when it purchased the building from the Fourth Presbyterian congregation. Because Greek Orthodox worship does not typically include organ music, the organ remained mostly unused in its original condition for many decades.
Parking is available at the Meadows Parking Center and Hillcrest parking center levels 1 & 2.
For those unable to attend in person, the Advent Service will be streamed live at this link. Join us virtually to celebrate the season!
