Kingdom Singers -- the story behind my new choir

      After much prayer, deliberation, and prodding from friends and other singers, I started rehearsals for a new choir in the fall of 2017.

     Although I have sung in choirs all my life, I have never felt the desire to conduct a choir, let alone actually be the founder of one!!!  To make matters even worse, I don't like starting things that might fail, and believe me, there are a lot of things that can go wrong when you lead a choir, especially a new one!!!

     We started in September with about 30 people on our sign-up list and a good 20 who arrived at the first rehearsal, many of whom I did not know personally.  The youngest person in the room was finishing high school and the oldest was retired, and we had everything in between.  And that is when the little voice in the back of my head went off  Each and every possible insecurity came to the forefront for me -- are these people going to get along with each other, are they going to like me, can they sing and what do I know about choirs anyway?

     So what did I do?  I knew the choir was God's will.  He had made that really clear.  I had no choice but to trust Him and not my own feelings on the matter.  As rehearsals continued, I asked Him for wisdom.  One morning, I woke up at 5am and suddenly felt the Lord wanted to talk to me about choir rehearsals -- namely, that I wasn't leading them the way He wanted.  Having sung for many years in professional choirs and being a well-trained musician, I spent most of our rehearsals focusing on singing the right notes and making a good sound.  Because we only meet every other week, I try to use rehearsal time as effectively as possible.  Now there is nothing wrong in that actually -- we are instructed to give our best to the Lord.  However, this time, I felt Him prodding me to model worship, and not just practice songs.

    The following evening, we had choir practise.  However, after vocal warmups, I sat down at the piano and explained to my singers that this time, we would not directly rehearse any of our current repertoire, even though we had upcoming gigs.  Instead, we would hang out with Jesus.  I encouraged them to stand, sit, lie down, move away from the pews (we rehearse in a church), write things down if God spoke to them, or open the Bible.  Then I started playing and singing whatever I felt on my heart.  I pushed back the voice of insecurity which was trying to tell me that people might feel uncomfortable for one reason or another -- and I decided to worship an audience of One.

    The results were actually very amazing, and surprisingly, everyone had only positive things to say.  One person commented why Sunday church couldn't look like this, and another revealed that God had indeed spoken to him.  Someone else shared a Bible verse.  Since then, we have periodically used rehearsal time for open worship sessions, and at the end of our first year, one singer commented that those were the best part of choir by far. 

     I have gained a new understanding of the verse from Proverbs 3, which encourages us to ¨trust in the Lord with all Your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.¨

     As we approach our one year anniversary, here is a quick look back at this past year:

     Our very first gig at the end of October, came after just a handful of rehearsals.  It was a music festival in Kerava, with many other international and Finnish choirs.  Mighty God, You are was written by my long-time friend Andreas Forsberg, and he is the featured soloist in this video.

     Kingdom Singers was founded to inspire and encourage the local church in praise and worship of our almighty King.  However, we were not expecting our first church service to take place in the Helsinki Cathedral downtown, on the 100th anniversary of Finland's Independence, but God is cool that way!   Here is the closing song from that service.

     Our spring term included a service at the International Evangelical Church in downtown Helsinki, as well as at Andreaskyrkan, a Swedish speaking congregation.  One of the aims of our choir has been to include songs in Finnish, English and Swedish, and to break down the language and generational barriers that we sadly often find in churches today.   

     Thankful for a fruitful and fun first year and looking forward to 2018!  If you are interested in singing with us or in having us at your church, please write to kingdomsingersfinland@gmail.com.