Another Season Begins

   Here we are, ready to embark on another season of lifting our voices to give praise to the Lord, starting this weekend. As in past years, we are excited to get out and sing and meet old friends and make new ones. Julie, Kim, and I feel truly blessed to have the privilege of making this happen for another year. It seems like an eternity since we did our last concert when in fact it was only a few months. Although we have been practicing some “old” and new songs, it’s just not the same as singing together to you folks out there. Hopefully all of you will continue to check out our website at www.keystonestatequartet.net, for our upcoming concerts. Last year you’ll recall, I did an article on “Why We Sing”. Well, this year I am going to talk a little more about it again, only using some different reasons. First and foremost, each one of us loves the Lord and we want you to get to know Him better, as well. Secondly, as we are ministering to you, we are also ministering to ourselves at the same time. And thirdly, churches today need all the help they can get to spread God’s word and bring folks in to worship with them. There are other reasons, but I will just stick with these three for now.

     So, let’s get started with our main reason, “Helping you to get to know the Lord in an intimate way”. The three of us have learned, over the years, how much the Lord cares about us and is always there for us. Sometimes it’s through good times, but often, it’s through bad times. I personally don’t know how anyone can make it through life without the Lord and His grace and mercy. But there are many folks sitting in churches across the land, every Sunday, who’ve never experienced that love. There are many reasons why this is happening, but that’s a topic for another month. The fact is, they are there for some reason, either good or bad. They may be there to see what religion is all about, listen to what’s being preached, or seeing how they are treated by the folks they meet. How they are treated or what they see and hear will probably determine whether they will come back or not. Our goal is to show people God’s love through our music and hopefully get their attention through a good song. We spend countless hours listening to music to find songs that have both a great melody and meaningful lyrics. Basically, our songs are stories of what God’s love does for someone, only put to music.

     Moving right along to the second reason, which is,” Why we minister”.  I remember hearing Mark Lowry, from the Gaither Vocal Band, talk one evening in a concert, about how people perceive someone on stage. He said most folks think we have it all together and we have no problems to worry about. Then he said, “The truth is the only difference between you and us is this three-foot-high stage we are standing on.” You see we have the same problems, hurts, and concerns that each one of you have. The only difference is we may tuck ours away when we are up in front of you. Sometimes that can be very difficult, and our emotions will start to take over in the middle of a song. You see, when we are singing songs that touch your soul, they are touching ours as well. When we are ministering to you, we are also ministering to ourselves. That’s why we are so selective on the songs we choose. It’s a proven fact that normally a good song will stay with you a long time. Hopefully, that person sitting in the audience will go home humming one of the songs about the love of Jesus. People don’t always realize that while we are ministering to them, their response to our music is actually ministering to us, as well. I guess you could say we feed off each other. What do I mean by that? In the audience’s case, they are taking in the music to nourish their hearts and souls. In our case, we get encouragement by the audience response to the music we are singing. Generally, the better the response and participation from the audience, the better the concert becomes. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s the way most concerts turn out with most singing groups. If we can worship together and even respond by raising a hand or clapping and singing along, instead of worrying what the person beside us is going to think, the Lord is glorified.  I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is going to be a lot of praising the Lord with our voices and lifting our hands when we all get together in Heaven. Try it sometime, you might get to like it. We do!

     My third point is that both people attending a church and others thinking about it are of a different mindset than 25 years ago. What do I mean by that? Years ago, people would come to church because that’s what a Christian should do on Sunday. They may have been more religious because they had been taught as a child that that is how they should be. As we get older, we get more content with how things are and don’t necessarily like change. Consequently, our churches slowly starts to lose their appeal to outsiders and our church growth is hindered. We may have the most religious church in town, but if we are not a loving church, we really have very little to offer anyone thinking about attending our services. Then you have the other extreme, where some churches are growing by leaps and bounds. What do they have to offer that is making so much of a difference. Some will say they have more money, a better youth program, a new gym or sing different music than we do. It’s true that most growing churches have some of these things. But it’s also true that they didn’t start out that way. It took a lot of prayer, hard work from everyone in the church and a deep desire to bring folks in to learn about God’s love. If people don’t feel loved or wanted, no matter how religious your church is, they won’t stay. Jesus always taught about love more than anything else as He traveled about with His disciples. Granted He taught how we should live our lives and even gave us commandments to live by, but LOVE was always the predominant theme of his conversation. So as churches we need both biblical teaching and be able to show people, we truly care about them. It’s a little like the saying about the baseball field in the movie Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come.”

     So how does all of this relate to our reason for singing? First, the themes of our songs relate to the love, grace and mercy of Jesus, not necessarily religious doctrine. We tell people about God’s Son and how they need and can have a personal relationship with Him. The fact is that when a song stirs our emotions, we will listen to the lyrics and then learn what it is all about. It’s sometimes like a sermon put to music, when the topic is something that we really need to hear about at the time. Many young people today are looking for a relationship with Jesus, more so than our churches’ religious doctrines. They are looking for people who care and will listen to their problems without being judgmental or put them down. They are looking for some emotion and enthusiasm in the service, not the usual humdrum experience. We try to offer all of the above with the music we sing. We hope that maybe one of our concerts at your church will encourage you to invite a friend to come and hear about the love of Jesus, in a different way that the usual, being preached to. However, if you don’t do your part and invite someone, the situation will never change. National statistics show that 5% of each congregation does 100% of the work in most churches. When each one of us finally gets that personal relationship with Jesus, we are a changed person and people take notice. They may even ask you what has made this change I see in you, then you can say, “Jesus came into my life.”

     As always, I have been rambling along about a bunch of different stuff that just pops into my head as I write. I am never quite sure how these articles will turn out. But you can be sure that Julie, Kim and I will keep on singing our songs of God’s love and try our best to show His love through our lives. We love the music we sing and feel so blessed when you folks invite us to come and share our ministry with you. Let’s all pray that with God’s help, together we can make a change in someone’s life through our love and music. Remember, “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord.” Bring a friend and come to one of our concerts so that we can worship God together.

Hope to see you there! God Bless You!

-Tom