Words from WW Blog

Last Sunday as I was standing with a church congregation to sing the opening praise songs, I realized something strange. I wanted to sing, but found it difficult TO sing. The main reason for my vocal limitations was the range of the notes of the songs. They seemed to have settled on the higher range, like a kite floating in the wind out of reach, and stayed there. I could feel the stress on my vocal chords, as I strained to reach them and offer my voice in musical praise.

After a while, I went to the grounded range and, in a quieter volume, sounded like a frog trying to blend in.

There have been many reasons spouted as to why men don’t sing in church, such as that it doesn’t touch their hardened emotions, they don’t like to even go to church, they are unfamiliar with the rising number of praise songs, and they get tired of singing the same words over and over again.

For me, it seems that too many times, churches are trying to recreate the Chris Tomlin-type worship music. Although I enjoy most of his songs, they are just a little bit out of my reach. Perhaps my voice, just like my knees and hips, is showing the effects of my age, losing its flexibility and becoming less reliable. Maybe there needs to be a new type of music that is elderly-friendly!

The church does not need my voice to offer musical worship. After all, I’m sitting here in Starbucks with my cheap knock-off ear buds listening to praise songs on one of the Spotify channels. The song that’s playing right now is like a constant high-pitched siren with the same words that keep going and going. If only I could have had that few amount of words to learn in the latin college class I took, I may have passed it.

Without a doubt I’m showing my bias here, but some old, old hymns were more sing-able for men. After all, some of them were taken from German tavern songs and revised with a Godly-emphasis. I can’t see some of the melodic praise songs we sing in church today being echoed by a tavern clientele as they house their beer steins in the air.

Generalizing in a sarcastic sort of way, most men would rather yell at the refs than sing to the Lord. the thing is, God would hear, and be pleased by, their slightest offerings, while the referees are deaf to the crowd. Of course, that brings in another biblical theme: blessings and curses.

This entry was posted on September 10, 2022 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.