After missing last week due to varying degrees of illness among the Edwards tribe, we made it to church yesterday as a family. My wife was serving in the 18-24 month toddler room, so I was solo for the service.
Upon entering the worship center, I was pleasantly surprised to see Micah, the former senior high pastor at our old church, on stage leading the worship team. I knew that he and his family had made the transition to Berean as well, but we hadn’t connected since he has been leading the Sunday night SOULstice service. But at least for this week, he was guiding the Sunday morning contemporary service and did a very fine job in his modern style.
There were a number of songs that were new to me, but eminently singable by the congregation. Too many new songs seem to be written in a “coffee house” warble and are difficult to pull off in corporate worship. When attempted, they mostly become performance pieces for the band rather than an accessible way for the congregation to express their worship. I’m not saying that songs should be musically “dumb”, but it helps to have a melody that’s accessible to the average voice and not covered by the distortion pedal.
Which leads to my next thought. I’ve touched on it before, but it is such a pleasure to be in a congregation that sings. And that you can hear sing. The guys at the mixing board have the band dialed down so that the musical worship is never painful. It helped that Micah’s sound is almost acoustic, but even on Sundays when the normal band plays, it’s never overblown. The horns play again in two weeks and I’m really looking forward to the opportunity!
There was power in being able to shake Micah’s hand after the service. Several of us who have gone through the same change in church homes came up after the service and there was a genuine affection and sense of belonging. It was real and it was awesome.
Finally, my oldest son, Sam, was proud to announce on the way home that he had been the teacher’s assistant in Sunday School because they read the story of Hannah and her son, Samuel, that week. He ran around all afternoon saying, “God talks to me in the tabernacle!” Of course, being 3½, he’s also come up with idea that God is in his tummy, so any gastro rumblings might now be interpreted as the voice of God. We’ll see how it plays out…
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I guess Micah as “senior high pastor” was not the oldest among the high pastors of your old church but something to do with older teens, and he probably wasn’t very senior at all, but this American terminology did confuse me for a bit!
You’ve got it… “senior high” commonly refers to high school age teens, so mostly 14-18 years old or thereabouts (as opposed to “junior high”, which is 2-3 grades lower, so ~11-13 year olds). Micah is about my age. The “high pastor” would be the “Senior Pastor” or “Lead Pastor”, usually the former.