Journal

Worship without a voice?

Posted on November 16th, 2005, in the evening

The title of this post is literal; I did indeed lose my voice after leading worship on Sunday.

I woke up that morning with a sore throat and knew that I had to choose between trying to keep my voice or just singing anyway. I sung anyway. Monday morning I woke up and sounded like a gas leak when I tried to speak.

I spent Monday programming, hardly using my voice all day, but even by the end of the day I had a vocal range of about three semitones. Tuesday and today my voice has been steadily improving (hampered by much call for speaking, or at least too little restraint) but I still can't sing.

Not being able to sing has been quite eye-opening. It's only in lacking the ability that I've realised how much I rely on singing to worship God. (I'm not talking here about 'worship' in the broadest sense, which is a whole life, but in the more specific sense of times set aside to worship God.) I've actually been finding it hard to feel like I can engage with corporate worship without singing.

This observation comes in the context of a number of people around me asking questions about the role of singing in worship at the moment: whether we put too much emphasis on singing, whether the songs we sing are rich enough in content, whether singing together actually achieves anything at all.

These are questions I imagine myself largely to have worked through, certainly in terms of my own praxis, but this week I've been forced to reflect on corporate worship from the point of view of someone who doesn't find singing a comfortable experience.

There is no doubt that singing is a biblical way of worshipping God in times specifically set aside for that purpose, perhaps even the predominant biblical way. There is no doubt that singing has played a significant role in Christian worship in every church tradition, again arguably a dominant role. I think we're on solid ground to keep singing as a prominent feature of our corporate worship. But there is also no doubt that people enjoy singing to varying degrees.

It's been insightful for me as someone who takes very naturally to this dominant form of public worship to find myself even temporarily without that natural compatibility. I need to reflect on this experience and its implications; I know there are things I can learn to help me better lead a congregation in corporate worship.