Worship Without A Voice

I wanted to respond to Kathryn's concerns about losing her singing voice and therefore her ability to worship God through song. She also mentioned the quote, often attributed to Augustine of Hippo, 'He who sings (well), prays twice' and expressed a concern about no longer being able to pray this way. Also I wanted to address the fears of Linda (another worship leader) of being heart-broken when the ability to sing leaves her.

The reason I wanted to write about this is two-fold. Firstly, I am and always have been, a singer. At age 40, I was converted to Christianity, after decades of agnosticism and atheism. I was thrilled to be able to offer my voice in corporate praise of my newly-cherished God. But now, at almost 52, I'm aware of the decline of my voice, as most women my age surely must be. Secondly, with my husband, and now, increasingly, both our teenage children, I'm responsible for leading worship at our church and through our small local music ministry. Some of the people we lead will be in a similar position of having a weak, or indeed absent, voice.

But before we go further, lest anyone jump onto their high horse and lecture me that worship is not all about, or limited to, singing and how the modern church has it all wrong, promoting worship leaders with little understanding of doctrine to superstar status blah blah blah. Yes, I know. LOL! I've heard it all before. Been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt, seen my husband's face printed ON the tee-shirt... I know.

I do know what worship is. I've read Romans 12: 1, too. We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices...an act of spiritual worship. Our whole lives are to reflect the glory of God. It's giving God the glory because He is worthy of our praise. And we can do it in all kinds of public and private ways.

My friend Joy, who loves to clean her church, because she loves to clean and she feels close to God that way, is just as much the Whole-Hearted Worshipper, beloved of God, as the person who plays the guitar on Sunday mornings. Though it does always seem to me that the guitarist comes in for a great deal more criticism from other Christians than does my church-cleaning friend.{g} But that's probably another post or twelve.

For the purpose of this limited discussion, I'm referring to the corporate singing which is a traditional Christian response to God's love, because of Jesus' sacrifice, and which we carry out through the power of the Spirit. That's what I'm referring to as worship here. If you object to the term, think of it as shorthand. It's the singing I'm talking about.{g}

For some of us, song *is* our worship language. We feel the most complete worshipper when we are singing our praises to God. There have been many people throughout history who have felt the same way.

Over and over, in the Bible, we read singing as 'declaring' or 'proclaiming'. There were also songs of pleading and songs of victory, songs of longing and songs of hope. Even songs of fear of abandonment. When we have something difficult to say to God, our prayers seem inadequate; we feel inarticulate. Those of us for whom song is our worship language turn to song to fully express our thoughts and feelings in a combined, and therefore fully human, way.

Okay, I should probably explain that. {g} I think we are not simply intellectual beings OR simply emotional OR simply physical. We are all three because God made us all three. Through musical worship, we can reach all the elements of our created selves and express all fully. There are probably other ways which non-musical people can do this, but for me, this is how I do it. I feel like a complete, fully integrated human being when I'm singing, expressively, to God.

So, where does that leave me when my voice goes?

Obviously, there have been brief periods when I have no voice due to illness. I seem to take longer to recover from colds and flu's these days and my voice is the last thing to recover its strength after a cold. It can take 2 or 3 weeks. I suspect that if I practised more often it would take less time to recover though and I am working on trying to practice for at least 30 minutes every day, though that is hard to find the time to do.

During times of no voice though, I do seem to be able to reflect the praises of others. I think of myself as a kind of a drum or a mirror even, so that when I hear the music made by other people, I can act as a kind of magnifier, or amplifier, of what I hear, before it leaves me and reaches God. I just read that back and it looks really daft.{g} I wish I had better words to explain it. I do the same thing when I'm in a group prayer situation. I'm listening to someone's prayer, I'm agreeing with it, the prayer is reaching me, bouncing off me and outwards towards God. I'm part of the prayer, contributing to it, because I'm in agreement with it, so I am amplifying the words. In the same way, with the music I hear, it reaches me, becomes part of me, I engage with it before reflecting it back, amplified, to God.

That's easy to do when it's just for a few weeks at a time. How would I feel if God took away my singing voice for good?

Oh, probably like my friend Maggie who was a dancer and died of Motor Neurone Disease. She loved the Lord. Her whole life was a sacrifice of praise. But when she danced for Him, she 'felt His pleasure' as Eric Liddle said about his running. She was a professional West End theatre dancer and later a ballet teacher. But when she was only a little older than me, God allowed the disease to take away her ability to control movement. I hope I would have the same grace as Maggie did in her last years.

Did Maggie feel excluded when she saw others moving? I don't know. She was certainly cut off from a very important aspect of her worship. Perhaps God freed her from the belief that this was the most important way she could worship Him? I hope so. Perhaps God will do a gracious work in me when the time comes that my vocal contribution to corporate song is not longer possible. But I pray that I never come to resent the amount of time a Sunday morning service others spend in song. May I be able to reflect, magnify and amplify the musical praise of others even when I can no longer sing.

In fact, I hope that I have the attitude my daughter does about the amount of talking that goes on in church.{g} 18 year old Grace has ASD and her understanding of complicated sermons is limited. But she will happily sit quietly throughout a 40 minute sermon which is not edifying her in the least, patiently waiting for her chance to respond to her sweet Lord Jesus in the way she has available to her, through song. She doesn't complain about the length of the sermon, or the amount of words people are speaking. She never calls church boring, and she doesn't feel excluded because she can't engage with the intellectual component of the service and never criticises the preacher. She has the gifts of the spirit: patience, kindness, self-control etc in far greater measure than the elderly ladies who complain bitterly about the loudness of the guitar or the mere presence of the drums or the amount of singing or how fast the hymns were played.{g}

Kathryn was not complaining about the singing in her church. It's just that she is a musical person who loved to sing and now she can't. She fears that she can no longer 'pray twice' and worries about feeling excluded. I don't think I've given her any answers. Just taken a long time to think and write around the whole topic. {g}

I'm happy for others to contribute to these thoughts.