I have always had music in my life. My mother played the piano and sang to us when we were very young. I can’t remember a time before there was singing in my home. My father grew up without musical training, but he could match pitch pretty well. He always stood next to my mom in church and sang the alto part an octave lower, imitating her.

I was in the children’s choir in church, took piano lessons from the age of six and started playing the trumpet at age 10. My parents encouraged my musical interests and when I was in high school they paid for private trumpet lessons and the expenses of travel 60 miles one way each week for those lessons. In high school I sang in the choir and played in the band. In college, the pressures of academic life meant that I had to make choices, but I continued with band, playing in the marching band, the symphonic band and a brass quintet. I wasn’t in the choir in college, but I sang contemporary church music with an outreach group from our campus ministries, the Rocky Road Scholars.

There were two somewhat traumatic events in my early music career that I remember well, with many of the feelings intact. After my sophomore year in high school, our band and choir director took a job in a larger school system in another town in our state. The year before he moved, I had helped him build a harpsichord and he had been teaching me to carve reeds for bassoon and oboe, though I played neither instrument. He was very excited about his new job and I tried to share his excitement. I even helped with the move, carrying boxes and furniture, but my heart was heavy. I knew that I would miss him. I didn’t really connect with our new band director. I continued to play and sing, but it just wasn’t the same. My level of emotional commitment was lower.

But I really enjoyed my college band director. He was really tough and he was a stickler for precision both with music and with movement when we were marching. I was short, but I loved the large shako hats that we wore for marching. I took instrumental methods as a course and learned to play a few other instruments and occasionally would play a baritone or a flute for marching practice.

Then, during a summer break, our band director, who was a pilot, experienced a sudden engine failure in his airplane. He was flying over a very populated urban area and didn’t have power to make an airport. He headed for a parking lot, but failed to see some power lines. He died in the subsequent accident.

The school scrambled, found a new band director, and life went on. Again, I had trouble connecting with the new band director. I played and our band continued to make good music together, but I never was as emotionally committed to the new director.

Life took me to new places. I’ve loved music in many different ways since. In the early years of my ministry, I played in a community band. In Boise, I was in a brass quintet. I occasionally play my trumpet for church.

All of this is to say that as our choir has traveled through the past few years, I have had sympathy for them and their journey. A couple of years ago, our choir director retired to spend more time with her husband who had health problems. She remained in our community, but we hired a new director. In her first season with us, the new director contracted a very aggressive cancer and died. Then the previous choir director suffered a sudden heart attack and died.

We have been through a period of transition with an interim choir director for an entire choir season. Last night we introduced our new choir director to the choir.

I don’t expect the bond to be formed quickly. I expect to continue to hear a complaint now and then from the choir about their new director. I expect that our new director will hear a few comparisons to former directors in his first months with the choir. It is only natural.

Now that I’ve had more years of education and experience, I understand that a big part of my inability to connect with choir and band directors when I was younger was fueled by grief. I was grieving over the loss of other directors and I didn’t know how to express my grief. Unfortunately, anger is a natural part of grief and it can come out in some pretty crooked ways when we aren’t aware of what is going on. I doubt that my high school and college directors did anything to earn my anger - it was part of my learning to accept changes that I didn’t want to have in the first place.

Our whole congregation is still grieving over the loss of the talented directors who gave of their energy to help provide music for our worship. We miss them. We will never forget them. But God always provides leadership for the church - not always the leadership we want, but always the leadership that we need to move in the direction that God is calling us.

Last night as I sat downstairs in the church and listened to the rehearsal, I could hear familiar voices learning parts and working on the anthem for Sunday. It sounded really good. I know that our new director chose an anthem that would show off the choir for his first time directing them in worship. I’m grateful that he did.

This time, with a few more years and experiences under my belt, I pray that I can be welcoming and open to the new leadership that we have received. I hope that I can create an atmosphere where it is a joy for our new choir director to work.

That might be the best tribute I can pay to those who taught me so much about music.

I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.