Sermon Songs For the Gospel According to Mark

Sermon Songs for the Gospel According to Mark is a collection of poems related to sacred music, based on a series of twenty-nine sermons delivered by the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, Florida. Each Sunday, from the summer of 2023 to Easter of 2024, I took sermon notes and turned the notes from the text and the homily into the new musical genre I call the sermon song. From Christ's baptism and temptation, set to "Morning Has Broken," to the empty tomb, set to "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," with hymn tunes, folk songs, children's songs, and my own compositions, I take the reader on a lyrical, spiritual journey through the shortest but perhaps the most profound of the four Gospels.