Oh, How They Sing

One of the drawbacks of using IEM’s (In Ear Monitors) is that I can’t hear the congregation.  The choir is close enough that I can still hear them (even through my IEM), but I can’t hear the congregation at all.  I can see lips moving and hands raised, but no sounds at all.  And that’s what makes what happened on Sunday so special.  For the final song on Sunday during our worship time, I took out my earbuds, stepped down from the stage onto the lower platform, and really got to hear our church sing.

If you talk to worship pastors and ministers of music, one of their biggest issues is getting people to participate and sing.  And I’m not going to lie; we struggle with that at Mt. Pleasant as well.  There are times (especially at our 8:30 a.m. service) when I think I see more people yawning than actually singingJ.  But on Sunday at our 11 a.m. service, I was amazed at the overall volume and level of participation of our people.  It wasn’t a tremendously large crowd.  It’s the middle of the summer, so we won’t have really large crowds again until after school starts back.  We weren’t even doing one of the church’s favorite songs.  But, they sang and they sang out.  And if you were there, and you participated, then let me say THANK YOU!!!

It can get extremely discouraging to plan, practice, and prepare and then for no one to participate.  In a couple of months I’ll be going to my yearly worship conference and one of the things they will talk about is how to get people to sing and to participate.  They will have all kinds of tips (like not putting songs in keys that are too high to sing or constantly singing songs that no one knows) and I do my best to follow them and learn from them, but ultimately I believe getting your church to worship is a matter of the heart.  If your people don’t have a heart and a hunger for worship and to experience the presence of God, then those tips won’t make much of a difference. 

So, I’m thankful for the people of Mt. Pleasant.  I’m thankful that we are a worshiping church.  And it’s not because of me.  It’s because of you.

Worship Big!

Brad