by Rev Tan-Yeo Lay Suan
Growing up in a church that sings and gives emphasis to the choir ministry has made me accustomed to catching melodies quickly, singing accurately both the rhythm and the pitch. Coming to Charis opened up a whole new world for me in terms of worship songs and I would say that most of the songs that I sing here, I do not know from before. This is even more challenging when I worship at Worship 2 where the songs are even more new. I should have, I could have picked them up quite easily without too much trouble, but my heart would be fussing over the number of new songs I had to learn each week. There were days when I simply refuse to exercise those marvelous gifts to sing along.
But last week, as I was worshiping and catching up with the tune and the new words, I had this misgiving: The lyrics are so rich yet so out of reach (most are new) as it were. But I recalled the words of the Psalmist, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:1) Then I decided to put away my misgivings and worship. Besides telling our Praise Leaders to choose songs that we are more familiar with, I have found that it is possible to sing songs that are unfamiliar in these NEW ways:
~ Sing as we are able i.e. we may not sing as smoothly as the Praise Leader the lines in the new songs, but we can still sing. Don’t worry about singing with “mistakes” i.e. not musically accurate. I may sing the tune with 2 or 3 notes out of place or even with whole line out of place (by the way, modern choruses have monotonous tunes: that line can sound the same 3 times over in the stanzas. After the first line, chances are the 2nd line will sound exactly the same as the 1st, only with different words).
~ I sing a harmonizing tune which is not the main melody. (This is especially helpful for people who are musical).
~ I sing differently, echoing at times, if the song has long pauses between the lines (I may be the only voice in that section, but it doesn’t matter because God is my audience).
~ I sing a completely different tune because the tune is unfamiliar or I am tone deaf.
I believe that God is not as affected by how we sound as He is by how we respond in the hour of worship. While we get our praise leaders to be aware of our difficulties catching up with new songs, it is important to check our attitude. Will we stay sullen, angry (I was like that at times), disconcerted, uncooperative? Or will we choose to say, “Lord, I am not familiar with the songs but I will sing them, these new songs to You. I will mean every word that I sing so even if I am not musically accurately and perhaps even out of tune, You know I am making a joyful noise unto You.”
“When I worship, I would rather my heart be without words than my words be without heart.” – Lamar Boschman