Mission Work
Randall Giles is an appointed missionary of the Episcopal Church. Since 2000, he has been working with the Church of South India's Madras Diocese, as director of its department of Liturgy and Music. In that capacity, he has mounted workshops and short courses for church musicians in the diocese, an annual Summer School of Music specifically designed for Village church musicians, and workshops for parishes wanting to work through issues of liturgy and music's place in it.
He has initiated a large project to restore several of the nineteenth century pipe organs in the city of Chennai (formerly called Madras), where no work on maintaining these instruments has been able to be done for many decades. Interest in this work has spread to other localities in India, where pipe organ restoration has begun with European builders engaged to do the work.
He has been involved in the composition of music for the Church of South India, including service music for its general synod meetings, a mass setting in Malayalam for the Madhya Kerala Diocese of the Church of South India, and so far three sets of Vacation Bible School music for the Madras Diocese, which is used by the 50,000 children who regularly attend this diocesan summer programme.
As well as his work in the Church of South India, he is a Visiting Professor of Liturgy and Music at three seminaries in India (United Theological College, Bangalore, Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Chennai, and St Thomas Syrian Orthodox seminary in Nagpur.
He has been invited to other provinces of the Anglican Communion to do workshops and teaching, notably the Episcopal Church in the Philippines, where he occasionally teaches at the Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music in Manila, the Church of the province of Melanesia, where he has offered workshops to village church musicians in the Solomon Islands, and the Church of the Province of Myanmar, where he recently offered a four day workshop on Liturgy and Music to participants from each of the Province's six dioceses, in Yangon. In May 2007 he will be a guest of the Church of Ceylon.
He is involved in an on-going series of sound recordings called "Throughout All the World": Global Anglican Song. The first two of these have been recorded and are in the production stage: music from Anglican communities in the Solomon Islands, and Dalit ("untouchable caste") Christian music composed and performed under the direction of the late Dalit Theologian and scholar of folk music , Theophilous Appavoo. More recordings in the series are planned.
Proposed Poster (click to enlarge)