Our battle with Coronavirus has taken an extreme toll on singers. We are told now that singing spreads the virus many, many feet from our mouths. Some churches, schools, and community choirs are told that singing is NOT allowed. Yet this is such an integral part of worship for many churches, including Good Shepherd.

Since the pandemic began our singers have been trying to make sure that our congregation has music in its online services. This has not always been an easy task, as you can imagine. For a couple of months we used only soloists and family units who live together to provide the singing for the hymns of our services. This means coming to the church and maintaining great distances with me at the organ or piano thus creating coordination problems. The last few weeks we have finally figured out how to use the church’s sound system to record unrelated people spread widely apart in the sanctuary. The singers use the wireless microphones and then the organ and piano are also run through the recording system sound board. All of this takes an extra person listening with headphones to balance the voices with the instruments. You can see where it is very complicated. For a couple of times we did not have enough experience with the equipment to manage all of this and we had many errors produced on the drive.

Telling all of you this saga is meant to inform you about the steep learning curve that your musicians have been undertaking. We are trying our best to give the congregation a sense of the musical worship by the people that normally serve you from the choir loft and the praise band stand.

I am so thankful for the many singers and instrumentalists that have shared their talents with you these many weeks. Choir is innately an ensemble endeavor instead of solo singing; that community effort is one of the primary reasons people are in choir. Therefore, singing alone can be a stressful experience for some singers who are only used to singing in groups. I am very proud of each one’s efforts and know that the congregation also appreciates hearing members of our own Good Shepherd family providing leadership in the music of our worship even if it is on a little zoom screen.