Real Singing

"Christ's Church sings. It has been so from the beginning of time & will remain so unto the end of time. The Lord Himself is our song, & the Church sings because God sings with us.

"It has been shown time & again that singing & making music benefit humankind physically, mentally & emotionally Singing is also a tremendous tool for teaching, one which Luther himself used to teach the faith. But singing together offers another, perhaps even more valuable, benefit to the Church:  It allows us to create community by blending our individual voices & experiences into one harmonious expression.

"Singing is perhaps the most profoundly personal form of music making, because the sound emerges deep from within oneself. Yet while there is certainly benefit to solo singing as a means of self-expression, the act of singing together as with one voice allows us to rejoice with those who rejoice, & to weep with those who weep. That moment when many breaths are taken in unison with one another reminds us that we are not alone on our journey--that others are joining with us in our celebrations, hopes, trials & fears. That moment when many vocal cords emit a collective sound helps us see & hear ourselves as part of the larger community of our shared humanity & faith.

"This is admittedly aa very different kind of singing than is prominent in our current culture. In an age that has given us easy access to prerecorded music with the click of a button, we have become content to let others make music for us rather than making it ourselves. In a world that showers solo artists with fame & fortune, we have lost our ability to appreciate music making where no one person is the star. In an era when any recorded performance can be manipulated with effects processors & auto-tune, we have become intolerant of music that is less than perfect.

"But community singing is not intended to be perfect. It isn't about money or personal glory. Some community singing will be better, some worse. But the product in every instance is real, genuine music, made by ordinary people, born out of common experiences. As composer Charles Ives once quipped:  'Don't pay too much attention to the notes. If you do, you may miss the music.'"

--"Singing in Community," Dr. Jeffrey Biersch, The Lutheran Witness, March 2019