When I was single, my favorite tambayan would be, believe it or not, our local church, the Puno UMC. For a few years, I was part of the church rock band. That’s actually how the hubby and I hooked up.
Those were the days, my glory days. I’m now missing our camaraderie, how we’d jive as friends, grow in faith and play lots of music together. We would jam for hours and study new music. Indeed, I was very blessed to be a part of a very talented group which was highly recognized and admired in our community.
My involvement with the band was actually quite accidental. I was early for church and they were lacking musicians for the morning’s Praise and Worship session before service. You can’t have a vocalist and a drummer lang, right? Long story short, I became a regular. Not because I was good, but because they needed more people in the band.
It wasn’t all glam and fun. At first, we used to be tagged the rebels in the church since we were making “noisy music”, something the church elders didn’t approve of. The morning worship band started out with 3 people. I played the rhythm guitar, then the bass, then eventually became backup-vocals then the worship leader.
It took us a good 2 years of practice, weekly performances, recruitment, hits and misses, before we got the approval of the council and the hearts of the church members. We were also able to hone our talents and become better at what we did. Some of our bandmates were able to compose really good songs, too.
Now that we live far from our home church, we had to look for another local church to attend every sunday. We’d love to stay at the old church but the commute for service and practices deemed too impractical for our limited resources.
The church that we attend now (Del Monte UMC) is waaaay older than my home church and its also way behind in terms of Praise and Worship. It took me a good 6 months of attendance to actually brave up and volunteer myself as a member. And that’s after almost 2 years of absence in church service.
Its been 2 months now since I started and now I find myself singing for the Lord again. It’s like I’m re-living my glory days again. Getting a natural high from all that singing and playing great Christian music.
But there’s a great challenge that goes with it as well. The church is severely lacking in good instruments. And the sad part is that the hubby doesn’t want to play anymore.
This is like de ja vu for me, this time its in another church. I just pray that I’ll continue to be as effective in leading praise and worship as I was before and a better servant altogether.
on Jan 2nd, 2008 at 7:55 pm
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