Encouragement is an interesting game. It could be a flood of words, a grand gift of some sort or something as simple as a nonverbal acknowledgement at the right time. Yesterday, for me, it was the latter. Four of the latter.
I was standing on the stage at church as part of the worship team. We practice midweek (if you can still count our new time of Friday evening as midweek) to knock out as many bumps and lumps as possible, but something always comes up on Sunday morning.
This week’s problems were a key change when transitioning to another song without stopping the music and the beat of the first song. Rend Collective’s Build Your Kingdom Here is upbeat with a distinctive tune. It’s also sung in a much lower key than I’m comfortable with.
I’ve been having singing lessons for nearly four years, with different teachers for different stages of the journey. My current teacher is working on keeping me on the beat rather than dragging the words (a hangover from my choir days) and utilising the lower range of my mezzo-soprano register.
My voice automatically starts high and wants to stay there, but I can also sing relatively low for a mezzo. I am uncomfortable there, though, because I’m not used to engaging that part of my body. Singing in my chest voice feels like I’m groaning, even though my teacher assures me it sounds better than I think.
The music director decided we would sing Build Your Kingdom Here in G. That put me right in my groaning range. I gave it a go, then asked if we could sing it a bit higher. The answer was no because the rest of the congregation has to be able to sing along (that’s called a congregational key – it’s what works for the majority, even if not for the worship team themselves!), and any higher key was potentially problematic.
I accepted his answer, figuring a key change wasn’t too important given that the pianist was also a talented vocalist, and I could lean a little on her during the song. Except, when the song started, she didn’t sing! I thought at first that she was just getting into the music and would join me in a line or two. She didn’t. I glanced over my shoulder at her, and she was concentrating hard on playing, mouth shut tight.
That’s when I realised I was doing the song by myself. Our church doesn’t do many solos, so when I delivered a chorus by myself for the Christmas Day service, I was terrified. My voice shook and wobbled, only releasing itself when the other four singers joined me for the second verse.
But here I was, standing on a stage, singing by myself, unplanned and in an uncomfortable range that doesn’t suit my voice. All I could do was keep going.
Because I didn’t know I would be singing alone, I wasn’t as nervous as I would otherwise have been, but I could hear myself in the foldback speaker that was pointed right at me, and it wasn’t pretty. Some parts were offkey, some words didn’t come out fully, and I thought I sounded about as uncomfortable as I felt.
I looked at the people in the congregation to distract myself from my thoughts. Our projection screens are to the side of the stage, so people look there rather than at the music team itself, but a few made eye contact. One woman who is often on stage with me knew how awkward I would be feeling and smiled. I appreciated her gesture.
Over the course of the song, which goes for nearly 4 minutes, three more of my church family sent their silent encouragement. In total, three smiles and a wink. Those encouragements said, ‘Keep going’.
At my church, it’s never about individual performance but helping the congregation worship, and whether I was uncomfortable or out of tune, they were still singing. My agenda as part of the worship team is to achieve exactly that, and I often pray that even if what I produce is a hot mess, God will use it for His good purpose. And He did, even if that purpose was just to encourage me through others.
Three smiles and a wink. Four separate instances of encouragement for a singer doing the best she could in the situation she found herself in. They were the difference in finishing the song feeling part of something bigger than myself, and appreciated for my efforts because even if they weren’t as good as someone else’s might have been, they still achieved their purpose.
Thanks, Encouragers.
A Glorious Mess 