2nd Opinion: Going and singing good for youth

Over the next few weeks, many church youth choirs will travel on vans or charter buses or planes on choir tours. Some tour destinations will be exciting urban areas; other will be less-glamorous places.

Doug HaneyStrong youth choirs and mission tours are a significant investment of time and money for churches and families. What once was a staple of summer student ministry has vanished in many places but remains vibrant and vital in others. Some ministers and churches have asked: Isn’t this just a glorified vacation?

I am an advocate for youth choirs and choir tours. Students’ lives are transformed when tours have a clear purpose, when leaders can frame experiences theologically and when students have opportunities not only to sing and serve, but to debrief and reflect.

Missions tours are transformative.

These days, almost every college application requires an essay, a narrative about what has shaped the life of the prospective college freshman. I’ve read essays in which students recount the impact of a mission choir tour.

I particularly remember the essay of a young woman reflecting on her week in the Dominican Republic. She talked about the experience of serving and singing and how it altered her view of the world. These experiences help students “get it.” 

Leaders must frame experiences theologically.

Observe and reflect—these are basic learning modes, and both aspects are critical to learning deeply. Students are quick to observe. They may seem distracted but often are taking in what is going on around them. For many years on mission tours, our Wilshire Baptist Church student minister has led a day-end meeting called “The Gathering.” It has become a staple of our tours and an intentional way to unpack the day.

In addition to the importance of dialogue, leaders need to use focused theological language to help frame what we do. I often say to singers a phrase ascribed to St. Augustine, “One who sings prays twice.” Imagine my delight when I hear students begin to use those words to describe the holy power of singing.

Students need to sing and serve.

There is nothing wrong with choirs that only tour or student groups that only do missions work. These have their place. But in the last decade, I have become persuaded there is a special synergy that develops around the experience of both singing and serving. There was a day when most choir tours involved youth choirs singing at other churches. Good experiences all. But finding ways to sing and serve especially in nonchurch venues offers an opportunity for students to experience God in surprising places. In these forgotten places, student singers offer the gift of beauty to the least and the lost who know in their souls we “do not live by bread alone.”

In the summer of 2013, our 60-voice Wilshire Youth Choir was on mission tour in Nashville. One evening, we sang a program of sacred and secular choral music for several hundred homeless men who had gathered to hear our choir in a cafeteria at the Nashville Rescue Mission. While the chaplain was introducing us, I was seated on the front row and turned around to say to a young man behind me, “Thank you for being here.” He grinned and replied, “I didn’t have a choice.” He meant that to get a bed for the night, one had to show up for chapel. The rules. No offense meant. None taken.

Even though the men—and they all were men—were required to attend chapel, they were a kind audience. They applauded. Some of them sang along. I could hear voices behind me as our youth ensemble, Shekinah, sang “Let it Be.” 

I wondered about the story of every man who found himself at 30-something or 40-something or older standing in line for a bed, something I take for granted every night of my life. When our students sang a medley from the musical, “Les Miserables,” I thought: How do these men on this night hear these words?

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

I felt a deep sadness that there was little we could do to solve the problems that brought these men to this place and at the same time grateful our Wilshire students sang so well in such a modest venue for those who had ears to hear, that for this moment, we offered the holiness of beauty, that these singers were the hands and feet of Christ.

Mission choir tours are not vacations. But mission choir tours do have a unique role in a holistic student ministry—to allow gifted students to sing and to serve and to be focused on others rather than themselves, to see the world with new eyes and to know that God is at work everywhere.

Choir tours and students are worth the investment.

Doug Haney is minister of music at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and a consultant with the Center for Healthy Churches.