I gotta have my orange juice.

We’re going to talk about how to talk in church, how to sing in church, and how to read in church. . . . The reason I read [Revelation 15]—and we could have read several passages out of Revelation or other places—is to notice this vast number of people singing together this hymn, which we’ll sing in a minute. . . . But they all sing together.

Now I can tell you something about these people. There was nobody singing a whole lot louder than everybody else. Nobody’s voice was sticking out because they were singing chorally and together. And that’s really the reason that I read this passage. So why don’t we do that?

But first of all, let’s talk about how to talk in church and how to sing in church. . . . I was recently at a conference and we prayed the Lord’s Prayer together and there was one person who said,

Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
[rushed] Thy will be done on earth.

And of course it stood right out because he was doing it his way. So then I asked later on, he said, well, it seems to me that’s what it means. I said, well, maybe. I don’t think so. I think it means:

Hallowed be thy name on earth as it is in heaven.
Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And that’s why we take a pause.

But more importantly, you need to pray with everybody else. At home, you can pray it your way. In church, you pray with everybody else. You subordinate yourself and become part of the group. You can’t be an American. You’ve got to be in with the group. We are one-anothering one another. And you’re not one-anothering one another if you’re doing your own thing in the prayer. I remember years ago, there was a man in a church at which I was an associate pastor, and he would pray the Lord’s Prayer his own way every week.

[exaggerated sing-song] Our Father who art in Heaven.

And you could hear it. You know, everybody else is praying chorally. And he was way out there. He eventually wound up being excommunicated. [laughter] [joking] We took it seriously. But you know, his I-do-my-own-thing eventually led to his counterfeiting money and then telling us that we could just, you know, if we didn’t think he ought to be doing that, we didn’t have any authority over him. So he wound up being excommunicated.

But you see, this is not the time for you to shine. When we pray, when we read together, we read together. That means we read in a kind of a chant fashion. . . . In these prayers we read together, we fall into a rhythm. Our voices go up and down just a little bit. Our voices get loud and soft just a little bit. And there is a rhythm. You know, as a musician, I could write that rhythm out.

Our Father
Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth . . .

You know, there’s a slightly shorter pause there. . . . There’s a rhythmical difference. But we all do it. And you’ve always done it.

Of course, you have to be alert when you’re in a church. Are they saying trespasses or debts? If they say trespasses, they’re going to say forever and ever. If they say debts, they’re just going to say forever. And if they say sins, all bets are off. And if you’re in a Catholic church, they’re just going to say, deliver us from evil, amen. They’re not going to say the doxology, so, it’s really confusing.

It’s like saying the Apostles’ Creed, or saying the Nicene Creed, or singing it. We do it together.

Now, the same thing is true of singing. You need to sing at the same level as everybody else. . . . I’ve been in churches where somebody behind me decided that it was opera time. . . . You think, come on, man, you know, we don’t want to hear you as opposed to everybody else. You’re not really thinking of being part of the community—without intending to, perhaps. You’re doing your thing. You’re shining. Beware of that. I know most of you don’t have this.

It’s even worse if you’re a tenor. Some people decide they want to harmonize, and that’s fine. But if you’re harmonizing louder than everybody else, everybody can hear you, especially if you’re a tenor because tenor notes are one-third higher than the melody notes normally. . . . So we sing together. We subordinate our personality a little bit to be part of everything else.

Now you notice that I stepped back from the microphone when I sang. You don’t need me singing into the mic, or singing super loud so that you hear the pastor trying to lead. In liturgical worship, you don’t have a song leader. Who is the leader who leads in the singing in traditional worship? It’s not a guy doing this. It’s not a pastor singing into a mic. Who is it? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads the singing. He creates this environment and you all fit into it and you all become part of it. . . .

How many of you served in the military? . . . Remember doing close order drill? You learn to march together. And it gets to be kind of fun. Right flank march. Left flank march. There’s a certain amount of pleasure that comes from that. But if everybody’s walking at his own pace, you don’t get that (unless you’re crossing a bridge, then you have to break step so as not to shatter the bridge). There are all these rules.

Alright, so in our singing, if you’re a pastor, step back a little bit from the mic. And I step back when I sing to hear—if we’re singing a hymn. Why? Because I want to sing with you, not at you. If there was lots of liturgical space back here, as there might be in a traditional church, it’d be much easier for me even to turn around and sing with you without feeling weird. But if I did that, I’m singing at the wall. So that kind of thing isn’t really possible in a space like this. But again, the idea is to sing with. I want to sing with you in the hymns. I only stand here if I’m singing in dialogue with you.

Giving you rules. These things are written down in books. But you probably don’t have those books. So, I do.

Now I get to the controversial part. Which is, every book I have on my shelf will tell you, when you read the scripture in church, you read it as if you were reading it with other people. You read it in union with Christ. You read it in union with the angels. Which means, you don’t read it dramatically.

Now, this is a real temptation in our circles, and I have friends who do it, and I have friends who would say, “Jim, I just don’t agree.” And I have to say, “man, I’m the guy with the stole on here.” I’m telling you. This is what you hear, and people, some of the finest saints I know, will read like this, but I wish they wouldn’t.

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, [loud] Lazarus, come forth! [normal] And he who was . . .

Wait a minute. It was Jesus who cried out with a loud voice. I’m just telling you about it. Now I could tell you about the lunch that we had today.

Mr. Myers and I were having lunch and I said, [loud] Jeff Meyers said this!

And I could be very dramatic about it. . . . But that’s not the way we report things, is it? And when you read the Bible, it should be read simply. Even dramatic parts.

[wailing] Jesus wept.

No, don’t do that. Because even though you’re not aware of it and even though you have the best of intentions, people are focusing on you. They’re not hearing the Word of God. They’re hearing your dramatic power, which may not be all that great. It might be good. It might not be.

So, they don’t do this in our seminaries. But there was a time when you had been trained to modulate your voice. Go up a little bit. Go down a little bit. Get a little bit louder, a little bit softer. But don’t throw out huge amounts of enthusiasm. And the other thing is, almost all the Bible is written in lines. If you heard me read, I read in phrases and lines. . . .

Again, the Word of Yahweh came to me saying,
Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre
And say to him, Thus says the Lord God,
You had the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Every precious stone was your cover.

I’m chanting that text. I’m everything but singing it on pitch. Originally, that would have been chanting. When it says the scroll was given to Jesus in the synagogue and He read from Isaiah, He was reading it on pitch. It would sound weird to you if I did it. You’d say, one more weird thing. . . . You know how many traditional service books have got notes, reciting tones? It’s strange. We don’t do this, but we should—even reading—read like it’s coming from heaven. And you’re just one of several people reading. So if you have an opportunity to read the Bible in public, I enjoin you to read it. And those of you that are pastors, you can take me out and beat me up later on, but seriously, I think there is less static on the line if you read this way.

(James Jordan, Biblical Horizons 2012 Conference: Back to Basics)