This Friday, Good Friday in the Christian world, the bells at First Presbyterian Church (FPC) will stop.
If you’ve ever walked Lake Hollingsworth, you’ve likely heard the bells, or carillon. The bells chime on the hour between 9 am and 9 pm daily, with additional chimes on Sundays.
A carillon is a set of stationary bells hung in a tower and sounded by manual or pedal action or by machinery, according to Dictionary.com.
On Good Friday, the bells will stop at 3 pm in recognition of the time when Christ is said to have died. They will chime 30 times, representing 30 pieces of silver (signifying the price for which Judas betrayed Jesus in the Bible), and then fall silent. They will remain silent until Easter morning when they will ring again to celebrate the risen Lord.
The silence is an auditory reminder of the significance of the days between Good Friday and Easter.
Selecting the Music
John Lowery, an FPC member and staff member, has been responsible for decades for planning the music the carillon plays.
“John makes the music happen that plays for thousands of people every day,” says the Rev. Dr. John Fullerton, FPC Senior Pastor.
“The carillon system is a computer program,” Lowery explains. “You can program the carillon for an activity from now until a year from now.”
The system was installed in 1994 or 1995, according to Lowery, and he has been working with it since. Much of the music has been purchased by Lowery and his wife, Mary Edwin Lowery. “Whatever the occasion, we can play music for it.”
Lowery says he has special music for Youth Sunday, Pentecost, Advent, Easter, weddings, and funerals. He also has a playlist of songs featuring Canadian patriotic songs, which he sometimes plays for the Canadian visitors in the winter.
The Canadian song, “Land of Hope and Glory,” is the same music as the United States’ “Pomp and Circumstance,” which he plays on commencement Sundays and when Lakeland High School has their graduation each year. Lowery works diligently to make the bells a community blessing.
Community Impact
Steve Semmel of St. Petersburg commented via Facebook on the bells, saying he always enjoyed listening to the bells when he was in town for work. “The bells were a convenient reminder of the time and kept my brain in track with the passing of hours,” as he walked, he says.
Semmel also says, “When I traveled, I used to walk up to the church and call my wife in St. Petersburg at 6 pm. We listened to the music together. It was sort of our remote date night while I was away.”
The carillon brought the community together during Covid. As we approach Easter, Lowery talks about Easter of 2020 (in the midst of Covid) when large gatherings were not permitted. “At noon, one peal – Christ the Lord is Risen Today – ran for a couple of minutes. We played about 20 minutes of music with no idea what would happen.”
What happened was a line of cars gathered in the parking lot to listen to the music and to celebrate Easter in an unexpected way.
Musical Selections
On the days when weddings are held in the church, Lowery plays three wedding hymns, to the surprise and delight of the bride and groom.
“We don’t tell the bride and groom,” he says. “As people are leaving the sanctuary, the wedding peal plays.”
“I loved that in one of the most special moments of my life, the bells were ringing in celebration of a new unity between Noah and I,” says Anna Butler, FPC’s Children’s Ministry Director who was married at FPC. “We now hear the bells daily at our house, and it often takes us back to that special moment.”
“It’s fun,” Lowery says, “knowing that I can change things around and know that it’s not the same old, same old.”
The late Flo Aldridge, former FPC organist, was recorded playing, and several of those songs have been converted into chimes that can be played. Included in her contribution to the carillon are songs like, “The King is Exalted.”
“The carillon is something to program, something to play with,” Lowery says. “For me, it’s not work. It’s play time.”
Holy Week
If you are in the area this week, listen to the bells on the hour and observe their silence this weekend as the church invites the surrounding community to engage with them in preparing for Easter.