I remember leading worship at the small chapel, the congregation singing back.
The moment a choir of ordinary voices answers yours — that is a memory the years cannot take away.
The small chapel held maybe a hundred people, but on a good Sunday it felt like the whole world. I stood at the front in my white robe, and when I lifted my voice, the congregation lifted theirs with me — not after me, but with me.
There is no sound quite like it: a hundred people you have baptized, married, and buried, singing the same hymn back at you. Their voices carried more than the tune. They carried the years.
I remember one Sunday near the end of my time there. The light came through the windows sideways, dusty and golden, and for a moment I did not feel old at all. I felt like the young man who first stood in that spot, afraid and full of hope.
We never recorded it. No one thought to. But the sound is still in me — I can close my eyes and hear the congregation singing back.