daily java

Daily Java:

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
    I will praise my God to my last breath!
May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.
Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth;
    let the wicked disappear forever.
Let all that I am praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 104:33-35)

I left the Church of Christ in 1994 after several years of agonizing searching. I came to a point that I felt that I could no longer hold the corporate theology (Baptismal Regeneration, the unscripturalness of instrumental music in worship) and knew that to take their money without believing these core doctrines would be wrong.

So I left in 1994. But where was I to go. The Church of Christ was my life church. I had pastored for them for 20 years and had two degrees from their institutions. What was I to do? Where was I to go?

After casting about, I decided that the Independent Christian Church was a good fit at the time. Oddly enough, though, I ended up going to a Disciples of Christ church in a small town in Northwest Missouri. They advertised in Independent Christian Church newspapers and college placement departments.

I found out later that they could not afford the larger salaries demanded by Disciples of Christ pastors and could get Independent Christian Church pastors for much cheaper.

The first Sunday was something else. I had done some interim work at a church in north Houston so I was getting used to the instruments in worship. But in this church, the Disciples of Christ church in Hopkins, MO, I was also expected to lead the singing.

They used two big raw-boned Iowa farm boys as musicians. They had played piano and organ together for years. I stood up and announced the first song, I started, then they started, we stopped, I started, they started, we stopped again. After three or four false starts, we got together and almost twenty years later, I lead singing with a piano, organ, keyboard, guitar, whatever.

Such a leap to go from acappella to instrumental in one fell swoop. I have never had problems leading singing acappella, and even have almost perfect pitch.

But the cultural leap is amazing. Then there was Christmas with a large church Christmas tree (Church of Christ didn’t acknowledge Christmas as religious), Easter the following year and on. The Church of Christ was iconoclastic, denying all Christian holidays and seasons. We could do them at home and even had church Christmas parties at people’s houses, but not as an official church function.

Almost two decades later, it is hard to remember the both fear and thrill of being cut loose from old traditions, in realizing that they were not scriptural mandates, but were in fact just traditions.

And I sing.