Children’s Choir: Why It’s Worth Your Investment

  • Children's News, Music News

Summer is coming to a close and that means it’s time to get back to our regular schedules – at school and here at Eastern Hills. So make plans to join us for our Children’s Choirs and Missions Kick-off, Wednesday, August 12. Registration for the 2015-2016 year will begin at 5:45 p.m. followed by special entertainment at 6:00 p.m. in the reception room. Our regular schedule will start the following week, August 19.

I encourage parents and grandparents to make sure your children are a part of this superb ministry.

Research data continues to affirm: Music is essential in a child’s spiritual, musical and intellectual development. Here are some stats and facts I read recently which show the importance of making sure your child/grandchild are involved in children’s choir.

  1. Choir helps children develop creative problem-solving skills.
  2. Movement activities in choir stimulate the development of the inner ear, which impacts coordination and athletic ability.
  3. Choir offers movement activities that cross the midline, which stimulates communication between the left brain and right brain.
  4. Songs in choir combines text, melody, harmony, rhythm and movement — activating the higher learning centers of the brain.
  5. Choir develops discipline, concentration, cooperation and self-confidence which carry over into other areas of life.
  6. Choir involves reading, anticipating, listening and memorization skills that enhance academic pursuits.
  7. Choir allows children to praise God with body, mind, spirit and voice.
  8. Choir helps the 17 percent of children who need special instruction to discover their singing voice.
  9. Choir helps children learn to use their singing voice properly.
  10. Choir presentations help children conquer fear and take positive risks.
  11. Singing is a gift you can give children that will last their entire lives.
  12. Choir includes rhythmic activities, which helps children develop sequential ordering and organizational skills.
  13. Choir creates a sound track for life—a faith database of spiritual truth.
  14. Choir plants scriptural truth in the brain through rhythm, rhyme and repetition for a lifetime.
  15. Choir makes a significant contribution to a child’s understanding of God and the experience of worship and worship leadership.

Many years ago at our church in St. Augustine, Bethany (our daughter who was three years old at the time) had a best friend who could not match pitch. This friend came to choir faithfully each week. She had a sister one year older who also could not match pitch, nor could her parents. However these two little girls came to children’s choir faithfully each week all through preschool and then children’s choir. Somewhere around the second or third grade the light came on for them and they began to have success with pitch matching. By upper elementary they were singing in small ensembles. The girls continued in the youth choir program where both of them had solos. After we left St. Augustine one of the girls sang the lead in one of their big music drama productions. I can’t help but think if they had not been involved in children’s choir, would they have had such an appreciation for expressing themselves through music or even been able to do so with success? I suspect, knowing that their parents were not singers, they probably would have not. Praise God for faithful directors and leaders who worked with these girls for so many years.

We are blessed at Eastern Hills Baptist Church to have such an excellent group of leaders who faithfully work in our children’s choir ministry each week. Don’t miss out on the blessing. Come join us!

 

Children’s Music/Missions Kick-off
Wednesday, August 12, 5:45 – 7 p.m.

Registration: 5:45 p.m.
Entertainer: 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. (Location: Reception Room)
Parents are encouraged to join their children in this fun experience!

You can also pre-register at CLC Lobby or Green Ridge Welcome Areas prior to August 12.

 

Preschool/Children’s Choirs
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 5:45 – 6:25

3 Year Olds, Room 135
Director: Donna Morse

4-5 Year Olds, Room 230
Director: Sandy Harmann

1st Grade, Room 229
Director: Linda Westbrook

Grades 2-3, Room 234
Director: Cheryl Chappell

Grades 4-6, Old Choir Room
Director: Karen Gosselin

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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