Church Song Lyrics

Happy Sweating and Singing

I am happy to report that you can indulge this craving without gaining an ounce by attending “Lysistrata Jones,” the effervescent, tasty and surprisingly filling new musical at the Judson Memorial Church Gymnasium on Washington Square. You may even shed a pound or two. This goofy tale of sex and basketball on a “less than competitive” college campus exudes the kind of youth-fueled energy that revs up the metabolism of everyone in the bleachers.

And I do mean bleachers. The stage for “Lysistrata Jones” — a contemporary riff by Douglas Carter Beane (book) and Lewis Flinn (music and lyrics) on Aristophanes’ bawdy comedy “Lysistrata” — is a basketball court. And while you probably aren’t in danger of being walloped by a flying ball (these kids do not play hard, at least not in that way), the entire audience (of 99) is close enough to the action to feel the burn of high-octane performances.

This proximity to so much happily sweating, singing young talent makes the experience of “Lysistrata Jones” (previously staged under another title at the Dallas Theater Center) feel like what sitting in on one of Mr. Schuester’s club meetings on “Glee” might be like. Certainly the attractive, multi-ethnic, footloose cast whose members would likely be carded in a bar brings to mind that popular television show .

But as directed and choreographed with zippy stylishness by Dan Knechtges, this Transport Group production is also steeped in a giddy appreciation — both starry eyed and savvy — of that sweet spot in pop culture where mainstream blandness turns into so-stupid-it’s-smart camp. In this sense the show brings to mind the divinely dopey Broadway production of “Xanadu,” adapted from a disco-era film flop by a team that included Mr. Beane and Mr. Knechtges.

Like “Xanadu,” “Lysistrata Jones” stirs up a salty mix of classical mythology and the sort of feel-good runaway plot you associate with beach books and escapist summer film comedies. The story is filched, fluffed and twisted from the original “Lysistrata” (411 B.C.), in which one brave and ingenious soul coaxed her fellow female Athenians to withhold sex from their warrior husbands until an end was brought to the Peloponnesian War.

In this latter-day version the title character (known as Lyssie Jay and played with canny ingenuousness by Patti Murin) is a transfer student to Athens College, an institution where expectations are so low that the basketball team just assumes it will lose every game, as it has done for 30 years. Lyssie Jay — who is dating Mick (Josh Segarra), the team captain — makes it her mission to push the perversely named Spartans into victory.

2011 Episcopal Address » First United Methodist Church Fairfield ...

“Let your reach be wide….Cast your net on the other side.” Those song lyrics set the stage for Bishop Janice Riggle Huie’s Episcopal Address. “The entire United Methodist Church is fishing in a sea of change,” Huie said. “In a sea of change, what is the risen Christ asking us to do?”

Truly change is needed in a denomination that has been declining in membership since the 1960s. Nearly all the measures of fruitfulness – membership, worship attendance, and professions of faith – are down (with the exception of hands-on mission and ministry). Apportionments have taken the biggest hit, with only an 84% payout in 2010. That is the lowest in TAC history.

“We may not have as many resources as we like, but what we have is sufficient,” she said. “God is not finished with us yet!…We’re facing a turbulent sea, I believe God has already prepared the leaders we need. You, my friends, are those leaders.

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