There's a good discussion going on here about different ways churches serve children and families. Unless you dig, you'll miss this description of a family generally unused to family worship experiencing it on one occasion "The children were back with us and we were singing. Hannah was really into it, and started singing loudly, off-key, and sometimes at the wrong times, but from the bottom of her heart. My first reaction was embarrassment. I like to keep a low-profile. Then, I started wondering what other people were thinking. Once I was able to get passed all that, though, I saw how absolutely beautiful it was. There we were, as a family, united in worship before our God, living out what we're trying to teach at home. Even Daniel was clapping his hands. I couldn't help thinking that this is how things were meant to be."
Many people comment that they are embarrassed to sing around me in church because I am a musician. I might have been a snob as a kid, but now when I worship every noise I hear is beautiful and if it's off-key but loud, praise the Lord! I do blame the invention of recorded sound for our lack of community singing - sacred or otherwise – but that’s a different topic. My tendency to let it all out and worship the Lord without being self-conscious of perfection sometimes has the detrimental effect of speeding up while playing a hymn or not caring if we mess up. I do believe in doing our utmost for the Lord, and my idea of “not caring” is probably still holding myself to a high standard, but one cannot worship if the whole of the attention is looking at what can be improved musically! That said, there is something marvelous about singing in a large group of worshipers who can sing! I’d rather take the room of heart-worshipers with no voices than the room of singers with no worship. I’ve sung with 800 music teachers and it made a beautiful noise, but it’s nothing like a joyful nice made unto the Lord!
Speaking of making joyful noises, last Saturday we visited Linda and Justin and after a lovely dinner we sang through some choir anthems and Linda and I played together (piano and fiddle respectively). There is something special about gathering around the piano and singing together (and we had accompanied SATB!) Then there’s something magical about improvising to a hymn tune with someone who you grew up playing with. I’ve been playing in church with Linda since I was about 10 and much of my musical ability was shaped by playing with her and listening to her direct the church choir, which was a treasure we didn’t fully appreciate until it was over. I was too young to be in choir (silly age discrimination!) but I had to go to rehearsals because the rest of my family was in it. There are many great memories from that time, but I’ll relate a funny one because I cannot relate effectively enough the more moving stories.
Since I wasn’t allowed in choir (see, I’m not bitter) I was the official ‘tage purner.’ (I’ve always had trouble with spoonerisms in my speech.) One Sunday the choir sang “The Heavens Are Telling” by the Haydn, and it is a glorious work (think of a chorus from Messiah, if you don’t know this piece.) They’d worked so hard on it and Linda was using the KORG too accompany the piece in order to have orchestra (including tympani!) sounds. As church performances go it was quite special, but the unfortunate bit was that I was a growing teenager at the time and didn’t quite know the length of my arms. As I reached over to turn the page at a rather climatic part of the piece my elbow hit a button on the KORG and it suddenly went silent. The whole choir froze and looked down at us with expressions of shock. “What did you hit?” Linda whispered to me, “I don’t know, I think it was this” I whispered back in complete terror. Somehow she managed to find sound again and the choir continued, though I have no memory of that. I was mortified but some sweet choir member told me afterwards that it’s a hard piece and it was nice to have a little break in the middle of it.
You better believe the page tuner’s job is an important one!
