daily java

Daily Java:

David also ordered the Levite leaders to appoint a choir of Levites who were singers and musicians to sing joyful songs to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, and cymbals. (1 Chronicles 15:16)

I have led singing in church since I was ten years old. A man named Matt Arrington was the song leader at the Freeport, TX, Church of Christ and asked me to lead a song on Wednesday night. Or I badgered it from him, one or the other.

I led ever since. For a while I got to be the requested song leader, especially among the youth groups of the Churches of Christ around Houston, TX. I led at a lot of the Youth Devotionals and Youth Rallies.

I was a music major in college so it came easily to me. Since I was in an a cappella denomination, one which believed musical instruments were wrong when used in worship, it was simple for me with my musical knowledge.

Then in 1994, I left the Church of Christ.  I became the pastor of a  Disciples of Christ church in Northwest MO. They, of course, had musical instruments. Two big farm boys played – one the piano, the other the organ.

The first Sunday I was there, I found out that the pastor was the song leader. And I had never led singing with instruments. So I approached the service with a bit of trepidation.

I do not remember the song that we started with. But it took three tries before the instrumentalists and I could get together to start the song. I was embarrassed but, after all, I had never really done that before. I had led choruses and stuff, but had never led worship that had instruments. It was a totally different thing. People that grow up in it do not know how different it was.

I liked it. But I also like the a cappella music in worship. And people who grow up using instruments do not worship the same way a cappella people do. In the Church of Christ, everybody sang. There were no spectators. It didn’t really matter if you could carry a tune or not. Everybody sang. And everybody enjoyed it. The harmonies were astounding.

We enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we would get together at my house after evening services usually, sometimes up to half or more of the church, to have what we called “Singing and Sandwiches.” We would eat sandwiches and then sing hymns until we were hoarse. It was a time of fellowship you don’t get anywhere else.

In an instrumental church, people listen more than sing. And the harmonies are not nearly as good. You rarely hear four part harmony in an instrumental church. Usually it just people singing an octave low or something like that.

I like playing guitar and I love a full-bore worship services with loud guitars and drums and everything else. But there was something about a cappella singing, having a good time, finding other basses or tenors and singing together, the kids trying to sing lower than they could so they would be a bass, just reveling in the song itself, as well as the fellowship of music with others.

It was wrong to mandate that kind of worship, but it had a lot of heart in it. It had the kind of heart we all need to put into our worship to God, singing from the heart as well as with the mouth.