I was a bit besides myself. We are at Davin’s home church. Everyone introduced to me so far said the same thing, “Oh, I already know you from Facebook.” Felt quite weird, but it did save me from a lot of redundant “Hi, my name is…”
One of the many things that has interested me every time I visit churches is its liturgy — its simplicity in smaller churches, and its complexity in the bigger ones. This church is quite big, and I was already expecting a bunch of preliminaries. And it did not fail to meet the expectation.
Announcements after lesson study included special music and testimony in between. Divine service opened with an affirmation of faith by reciting Revelation 14:6-12. Prelude. Song service. More announcements and testimonies. Congregational singing.Introduction of the speaker. Special music. Child dedication. Prayer. Another song. Collection of offering. Special music. And finally, the message.
Since I was requested to do the special music, I decided to play Mark Hayes’ piano arrangement of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Now, I can never judge the power of intention. In this case, the intention to minister through music. But somehow, I was not quite sure whether the intention came across. I say that because of two things. First, I played on a small electronic keyboard and acoustically speaking it was different. So many of the pianistic passages did not quite deliver as well as it should. Second is feedback. Several people were not able to understand what I was doing. They knew I was playing, but cannot relate to what I was playing. To them, it was a bunch of “pling, pling, pling” if I would quote verbatim.
That, to me, is where music ministry fails– when music is not able to prepare one’s heart for worship, but rather confuse it. Music becomes unrelatable and irrelevant. It led me to think, maybe I should have not played something complicated for a simple instrument. Another thought was, maybe I should have sung (?) because then words would be clearer? I take music ministry seriously and its thoughts like these that keeps me wondering a lot.
Nevertheless, the worship service finished at around 2 pm, and was announced to commence at 4 pm. We were told that the church was celebrating Youth’s Day, so Davin made a special emphasis on the youth as he shared his testimony that afternoon. I shared my testimony the way I usually do, but hubbs spoke quite emphatically in a way I’ve never seen before. But then again, this is his home church.
We finished sharing around 7 pm and fellowshipped with the brethren some more after that. Indeed, it was a full day spent well in church.
For more information about this church, you may contact:
Pastor Kemar T. J. Douglas
527-4565
clearparksda@gmail.com
Located at:
Gordon Pen, Spanish Town
St. Catherine
Jamaica
