A Singing Seminary

I dream that our Seminary is not just a praying seminary; it is also a singing seminary. To me, both to pray and to sing are a form of spiritual discipline and are two pictures that God has put in my heart.

Last year, the Seminary was confronted with many challenges and so renewal and growth is needed. Those days were really hard times in our lives. Students and teachers were guided or even compelled to retreat and pray together: to fast and drive out demons. In a story in the Bible a boy was seized by a deaf and mute spirit, Jesus said, “This kind can come out only by prayer” (Mark 9:25). I have deeply felt the importance of prayer. That is why during this period of time I have thought about prayer, written about prayer, put prayer into practice; I have prayed together with my co-workers and students. In prayer, I have experienced the love of God.

At almost the same time, God painted another picture in my heart: a picture about singing, singing in prosperity, singing in time of darkness. The psalmist said, “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life” (Psalm 42:8).

I pray that HKBTS can be at the same time a singing seminary. My prayer is that the Seminary does not just train ministers who sing well so they can apply what they have learned in their ministry, in leading the congregation to sing and in conducting the church choirs; neither do I pray that we train ministers who sing well merely for the purpose of leading the church to sing well, nor raising the quality level of music in the churches; nor helping them in their preaching as music training enables them to do better in preaching. These are necessary but to me, most important of all is that their singing is an important part of spiritual formation.

Singing is a practice of spirituality. We sing just because God’s reality and the greatness of his work, his creation and the mystery of salvation can never be something in our head, nor can it be expressed in words; they can however be experienced and sung out from our experience. Singing is a form by which Christians express their praise to God in spirit and in truth for God is great, far exceeding man’s thought; God’s greatness is far beyond our description and his greatness must be experienced in depth. Only through singing can this be fully experienced and expressed.

We can understand from the theology of Jonathan Edwards that singing is the implication of spirituality. Edwards deeply feels the mystery of God’s being and he suggests that there are two ways through which man is allowed to understand God’s glory: God speaks to man’s intellect and soul. Therefore, man has to understand the glory of God with his intellect; he has to experience it with his soul. When man beholds the glory of God, he is exuberant with joy. When man is immersed in an atmosphere of joy, God will have greater glory. So if he merely analyzes with his mind and does not care to experience God’s glory fully, he diminishes it by halves. If he tries to intensely feel but does not truly understand what the glory of God is, he likewise diminishes it by halves.

From this, we begin to understand why Christian worship is indispensable. Since the reality of God’s creation and salvation is a mystery, when they are truly understood and fully experienced, any discussion, analysis and description will all be inadequate. The mystery of this reality of God must be expressed by poems and songs. As such, singing is the ultimate practice of spirituality. And so the act of singing belongs deeply to spirituality. We sing as the depth, breadth and the level of intensity of our emotion cannot be expressed by the literary words of a prose; the appreciation of the length, breadth, height and depth of the mystery of God must be displayed in the form of songs and by the act of singing. As we sing, the sphere and energy of the impact of the lyric in a song are much stronger than by word of mouth. What can be carried and shared through a song far exceeds what can be communicated through discourse. The practice of singing can shape humans, helps to express their most profound request and allow them to taste the joy in the spirit in experiencing God in depth.

In my ministry in HKBTS, I gradually understand the importance of singing as a practice of spirituality. I deeply feel that the ability and depth of the level he can reach in his singing also signifies the depth and breadth of his spiritual life. When a minister who has experiences the love of God so that he exalts God, whenever he is in joy or in pain, he can sing in the spirit, with his body, his vocal chord, his emotions, his intellect and his feelings. This is the practice of spirituality. This life practice is a life of testimony, testifying to the intimate relationship between God and man. This experience of the love of God can have an impact on others to sing, to experience the love of God, to experience the faithfulness of God and to experience the intimacy of being in communion with God. This is also a kind of phronesis, for in the experience of singing, the one who sings can better understand the heart of Jesus, his attitude being the same as that of Christ Jesus as well as his emotions, attitude, thought and the way he acts. That is why I pray that a seminary student can sing and adopt such a life attitude. I pray that God will enable our Seminary to be a singing seminary, enabling us to testify and experience the love of God in our singing.

This life of singing is what I had as first-hand experience when I was small because at an early age, I had had the opportunity to experience and express my feeling towards God through singing. At the age of ten, I joined the church choir and learned to sing hymns in four parts. However, after studying in the seminary and ministering in the church, I had less and less opportunity to sing in a choir and my ability to sing (whether in musical accuracy, breathing and voice quality) gets worse and worse, to the extent that I cannot sing out a half note. In the past 20 years, I occasionally joined a choir: at Princeton Theological Seminary in my Ph.D. studies, or at Valparaiso University when I was teaching and when I returned to teach at HKBTS, but after all, these singing opportunities are few.

But after taking up the office of the Dean of Academic Affairs, I began to recall the importance of singing and seek to intensify the singing practice in the Seminary. Six years ago, I had thought of making “Voice” a compulsory subject. But as this is a controversial issue, it was just an idea in my mind and I would talk about it occasionally with one or two of my colleague teachers, allowing it to incubate, but there was no further action.

It was amazing last July to come across Mr. Chan Kung-sang, a famous baritone singer, who came to the Seminary to speak in a spiritual enrichment meeting during the Music Camp jointly organized by Hong Kong Baptist University and HKBTS. To offer simple hospitality, I invited Mr. Chan to have a cup of tea with me and as we enjoyed the tea, we began talking about singing and I found him very congenial. He even took me home to let me try my voice and introduced some singing techniques to me. Even in the 15-minute session, I learned some singing techniques and found some improvement in my voice quality. For example, I became able to sing some high note that I formerly could not reach. After that experience I began to enjoy singing in the morning chapel hour. I could manage to sing the high notes and avoid impeding my appreciation of the message of a song. I pondered in my heart on the idea that if students could have training in how to use their voice to sing, then their singing life and ability could be upgraded and that would lead them to honoring God and benefitting others.

Having been enlightened, I increasingly enjoyed singing. Amidst the storm and waves that HKBTS was going through, I became increasingly aware of the importance of singing, and I sang not only in the day time but also in the evening in praise of God and enjoyed being in his presence. Because of this experience, I hope that in our Seminary, the congregational singing in the morning chapel hour can function more effectively in allowing students and teachers to fully enjoy the presence of God and to experience God’s love. Under the guidance of Mrs. Helen Wan, since last August, I could see that those students who led the congregational singing prepared the music with all their hearts and that our students always sang with all their hearts. This attitude and practice of singing have gradually built up and will continue further in the future.

January 19, 2009 was HKBTS’s inauguration of the sixth president. I am convinced this inauguration represents a new chapter in the Seminary’s history, and so we must sing spiritual songs before God. Therefore, we especially invited two choirs and Dr. Oliver Lo to sing praise to God in our midst and join in singing with our good voices in praise of God. Throughout the inauguration, I could feel that both the choirs and Dr. Lo brought us into the presence of God and their voices touched the hearts of the brothers and sisters attending the ceremony. Many shared with me afterwards that the Sunshine Choir and the Seminary’s Joint Choir sang very well. I was told that there was great improvement in our students’ singing, whether it was to do with the quality of their voices, or the spirit of their singing and their training and skills. What was most moving was that when the Seminary’s Joint Choir was singing half-way, all our teachers rose from their seats altogether to join the choir and sang with power and grandeur the hymn “Lord, You Have Been Our Dwelling Place.” The audience was greatly touched. As I sat on the stage, I was startled and amazed. I felt that God pleasingly accepted our singing and would want us to sing out the wondrous work he has done in our midst with our endless songs of praise. Here it seems that God has once again verified my dream: God would want our Seminary to be a singing seminary.

I once had a dream about a singing seminary. Last mid-October I attended a theological education conference organized by Overseas Council International in Taiwan. On the last day just before dawn, I had a dream in which I found one of our teachers whose singing has not been outstanding suddenly singing with a sweet tenor voice. From a distance I heard him singing and so with great joy I ran towards him to offer my congratulations. It was a pity that when I reached the classroom from where the voice came, he had gone. Later, I shared this with my colleagues. They teased me by saying that I must have yearned for our Seminary to be a singing seminary so much that such an obsession appeared even in my dream.

They are right in that I truly hope that our teachers, students and staff can make progress in their singing and experience God more in their singing. I pray that God will help us make our seminary more of a singing seminary and earnestly pray that God will grant us a spiritual mentor of singing and empower each of us with a talent for singing so that we can sing in spirit and in truth.

I kneel and pray before God: May our blessed Lord transform our Seminary into a singing seminary so that each one of us in this community sings out songs of praise to God, glorifying his name and experiencing more of his love and his grace.

Apr 2009