Church choirs are curious things. As the director, I get to work with some of the most friendly people in the church. These are the people that come to services every Sunday (people that travel a lot or don’t attend regularly generally don’t want to commit to a group like this where they might have to let everyone down by not singing with the group in church), and they’re also the doers in the church (after all, they’re committing to yet one more evening every week). But unlike a professional choir, they don’t practice at home, and they don’t worry too much about not coming to practice if their grand kids are in town or if they’re out traveling.

At my church, I have the added challenge of having very few people in the choir. 5 women sing soprano, 2 sing alto (one of whom hardly ever comes to practice), 1 man and 1 woman sing tenor, and 2 men sing bass (one of whom can rarely come to practice, and is also a tenor who’s kindly agreed to help me out by singing bass). Clearly, having one person decide to stay home to visit with the grand kids makes quite a difference as we practice four-part harmony on Tuesday nights!

But the week before last, another woman with an incredible alto voice joined the choir out of the blue. And last week, the janitor joined the bass section.

This janitor has gone out of his way to be near the choir whenever we practice for the last several months. He’d come talk to me while I was prepping for practices or picking out music, and he’d make reasons to do anything that wasn’t vacuuming in the sanctuary while we rehearsed. I’d asked him to join the choir several times, but he always declined saying that he doesn’t read music. He never seemed to believe me when I told him half the choir couldn’t read music. “Naw,” he’d say, “I’d just mess everyone up and slow you all down.”

Well, last week he gave up all pretense of cleaning in the area and just sat in one of the pews listening to practice. And half-way through practice, after much encouragement from me, our pastor (who sings with us), and the rest of the choir, he finally consented to listen to practice while standing with us and holding the music in his hands. He wouldn’t commit to actually singing, but he would hum along.

That didn’t last long. He’s such a quick study that pretty soon he established himself as a key bass voice in my now-augmented choir.

It’s amazing what two more strong voices can do in a choir. Suddenly all the music sounds exponentially better, and every learns their parts faster. I was so pumped after our last rehearsal that I had trouble going to sleep that night! I hope this is the beginning of an expansion trend.