Singing In Community

One of my favorite musicians to watch/listen to right now is a guy named Jacob Collier.  This young-man understands, experiences, and communicates music perhaps better than anyone else before.  (And I am not exaggerating or being hyperbolic.  Jacob knows music in a way that few, if any, ever have).

And one of the unique experiences of his performances is that he creates music using the audience as his instrument.  Watch the video below to see what I mean.  He gives different notes to different sections of the audience, and then moves those notes around creating a really powerful musical experience.

Here are some safe assumptions, especially in crowds the size they are in the video above:

1.    Not everyone in the crowd is a trained musician. 

2.    Pretty much everyone in the room was participating.

3.    It was incredibly moving.

As a worship leader and pastor seeing moments like this is really encouraging.  Because these are GREAT ingredients for a worship service!  Even in a secular space, people are willing to participate in a shared experience of joining together as one voice.

Now, when people show up to a concert they have an expectation that something inspiring, unique, and moving will happen.  And so people are often quite ready to sing along.  We should not be less expectant at church!  We come into the presence of the Inspirer, the most Unique One, the one who moves heaven and earth at His will. 

I think the main reason we have higher expectations for experiencing wonder at a concert, compared to church, is novelty. We may attend a concert once a year, and we may attend church several times a month. The concert is novel, new, exciting.  Church is normal, mundane, boring.

Whether at a Jacob Collier concert, or in the sanctuary on Sunday at SRBC, those moments of community-singing fail if people do not sing.

Psalm 22:3 reads

“Yet You are holy, You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. " 

Another way to translate that would be:  

“God You are Holy and You inhabit the praise songs of your People”

Though God is Holy and set apart, in His grace He is with us as we sing and worship (and pray, and read the Word, and hear a sermon). Through singing together as a church we can become uniquely and increasingly aware of God’s presence with us. 

It's not as though God’s presence with us is dependent on how many people are singing.   That’s not it.  But, God gladly fills the time and space that we give him in our lives, and I think that applies to our singing as a church, too. 

God gladly fills with His presence all the singing that we offer Him.

Do you want to experience a unique blessing of the Lord?  Then sing!

Do you want to be encouraged to press on in your faith through season of struggle and doubt?  Then sing!

Do you want to experience a nearness with God?  Then sing!

Do you want our church to have meaningful, wonderful and awe-inspiring times of worship?  Well, then that requires you to sing.

-Johns Day, Worship Pastor