Singing with a Cancer

Julie and I were on vacation in Vermont last week. On Sunday we attended a church of Christ and when we walked in the door the first thing I noticed at the front of the building was a drum set, a piano and a keyboard. With the exception of these musical instruments they looked and acted like every other church of Christ I have been affiliated with; the same songbooks, the same lingo, everything.

There were only about 35 members present and when the song service started three of them operated the musical instruments. Those three didn’t sing at all… they just played the instruments.

I believe the Bible teaches that God wants singing alone during the assembly. One of the arguments of those who believe that musical instruments are acceptable to God is that the musical instruments only *assist* or *improve* the singing.

Not so in this little town in Vermont. The drums and piano dominated and overwhelmed the singing. You could barely hear the singers. The drummer at the end of each verse would add in a little extra “rat-a-tat-tat”.

In addition, the drummer and piano player got out of sync with each other.

It seemed to me that the singing phase of worship had a huge cancer growing on it that nobody could see.

It made me wonder a few things. If it’s OK to have musical instruments in the song worship, how many can you have? At this congregation 3 out of 35 members were playing instruments. Could half of the members play instruments and the other half sing? Where are the limits? Could you have a symphony?

Occasionally we have clients that bring in dogs that have volleyball sized cancers on them. Those cancers don’t start out big… they start out small. I’ve got a feeling that’s what happened at this church… they started out small… maybe just a piano (a small cancer) and then once everyone got used to that they just started adding more and more. The cancer kept growing.

You know sometimes our singing may not sound so great, but heart felt singing directed toward God is far, far sweeter than the clanging of musical instruments.