Most of my early memories of singing happened in church. I joined the children’s choir when I was three and a half. I sang and clapped enthusiastically every time we ended a service with “You Shall Go Out with Joy,” and I joined in loud and proud when we sang “Amazing Grace,” because I knew all the words early in life. I was a child who loved to sing, and church, for me, equaled singing. Even if you didn’t have quite that level of enthusiasm for singing in church as a child, I imagine it would be hard to recall a worship service that didn’t include singing. As United Methodists, singing is in our DNA. As worship planners, you select hymns and songs every week that are meaningful to your congregation and tie into the theology and themes of that day’s scripture(s). We spend a lot of time focused on the content of our singing, but not necessarily on the act of singing itself. Singing together is what some call a “mega-mechanism for bonding.” When we sing together, we align our breath and our focus toward the same goal, which, in the case of worship, is praising God and declaring what we believe to and with one another. In other words, it's not just what we sing, but that we sing in worship that forms us.

In this week’s text, Paul draws on the power of communal singing by quoting a hymn about Christ in the middle of his letter to the Colossians. Note that I said, “a hymn.” Scholars are fairly certain this song was sung in communal worship, not unlike “Amazing Grace” or “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” When faced with plumbing the depths of the Incarnation, Paul turned to song. And through that song, Paul demonstrates what the image of the invisible means for us as the church, the body of Christ. In the extraordinary and the mundane, Christ came, and so, in the extraordinary and the mundane, we are called to embody Christ to the world with one another.

As noted last week, during this series, we will offer a prompt each week to help those gathered write down and tell the story of your church, planted and growing and sharing the gospel in your particular community. You might consider putting the prompt on your social media page(s) earlier in the week or presenting it after the sermon, giving everyone paper and a pen and holding space with quiet music while people write down their responses. Invite congregants to keep the paper to themselves or to place it in the offering plate if they are willing to share it with the community. Gather any shared responses during each week of the series and find a way to share them with the church, either on social media, in a newsletter, or even incorporated into the sermon the following week.

For week 2, the writing prompt is: How have you experienced God’s love and presence when you sing and pray together in this church community?