It was quite providential. The night before, our church had a fellowship event and all the chairs were moved out of the seating area. Additionally, the carpet cleaning folks were coming mid-week. (We’re a church that delights in coffee, minus the stains) There was a window of time to capture the room’s reverberation in a recording. So, that Monday a group of vocalists and I sang the whole record in unison (and a few takes in harmony). The results are… real. Yes, real.
Every Week
When we gather to corporately worship God, the lips of His people are constantly confessing and praising (Psalm 63), adoring and remembering (Deuteronomy 6:12). On the first day of the week, we normally find ourselves together and in some manner vocalizing our faith together in hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs. This is normal (and expected) Christianity. Wherever you find Christians, you find them singing - I wanted the new album to reflect that.
Encouraged By Others
Hearing one another sing is strangely enthralling. I remember hearing my parents sing in church. It was odd. I mean, dad sang during the week, but it was typically making fun of the country station. When we are singing together as a body it does something spiritual - yes spiritual. Singing collectively encourages one another in the mind and to the heart. In fact, in Ephesians 5 Paul calls it “addressing one another”. Being filled with the Spirit of God, we experience the fruit of building each other up. I believe this is Paul’s point from earlier in verse 17: “understand what the will of the Lord is…”
In capturing this, my prayer is that we will return to biblical perspective of the congregation. Our healthiest place of discipleship and being built up in the faith is in the local church. There, believers weekly commit to this spiritual practice.
Confessional Reverb
Last, my reason for adding congregational vocals was to capture the sound of unity of confession. When we sing together, we have in some way committed to the moment, regardless of if we sing well, regardless of if we argued the whole way to church, regardless of where we are spiritually or what sins we’ve committed. Singing together is confessing together. What’s confessing? Isn’t that with a priest and a little booth? Negative…
Our songs are confessions of something. Christian singing confesses the God of the Bible through the biblical gospel. So maybe the ride to church was truly terrible. Our singing together should confess the truths about God and remind us of “the standard of teaching to which we were committed” (Romans 6:17). Songs simply reverberate (confess) the great doctrines of the Christian faith and the gracious position given to the believer in Christ alone.
Those voices in the background have a weight to my walk with Christ. Hearing many types and stripes of people worship and praise God is normative Christianity. I pray the upcoming album reflects that.
