Next on Fox: 'Liturgical Idol'

From what I hear, "American Idol" is back for another season. I haven't had much interest to verify this; I've been boycotting the show ever since the untimely elimination of Constantine Maroulis in 2005 (in a way, it was his own fault — he went out singing one of these two sickeningly similar songs by the "band" Nickelback).

Nevertheless, I had an "American Idol"-esque experience today in the lab component of The Church and Music, one of the courses I'm taking at Luther Seminary. I was in the seminary's Chapel of the Cross, not an "Idol" audition-site studio; I was singing the worship leader's liturgy parts from the new hymnal, not a Phil Collins or Pat Benatar song; and thankfully, I was "performing" for an audience of classmates and our vocal music instructor, rather than a trio of mean-spirited and/or seemingly inebriated judges. Actually, looking back, it wasn't very much like "American Idol" at all. But it could still probably make it on Fox.

To explain a little, The Church and Music is a course for Luther students other than those in the Master of Sacred Music program. The vocal lab component is particularly useful for Master of Divinity students like me, who as pastors will likely be leading their congregations in the music of the liturgy in church services. Those folks who really knew their stuff were given an opportunity to test out of the lab component at the start of the semester. Although I had a good deal of choral experience in high school and my first two years of college, I figured it would be good for me to sit through the one hour per week of the vocal-training lab. In part, it was because a few of my friends were doing the same thing, but I also wanted to resharpen my vocal skills a bit and learn this newly modified liturgy.

Whereas I often find myself following in my dad's footsteps in my early stages as a pastor-to-be (stealing the words he uses to open and close his sermons, for example), I am determined to do something different when it comes to the liturgy. My dad doesn't sing it, I guess because he's never been that proud of his voice. There's nothing wrong with the leader reading those parts — in a way, I'm more comfortable with that. But I think I have a halfway decent voice (my wife might argue otherwise when I'm belting out dissonant harmonies against the car stereo — she'll reluctantly assert that I'm off key, and she's probably right), and I like the idea of singing in conversation with the congregation.

Driven by that arguably misplaced sense of confidence, I volunteered today to be the first in our small group of students to take the altar and sing pieces of the liturgy. It's understandable why we all found this scary (I was scared, too, and volunteered in part just to spare someone else the misery for the time being). Singing alone with no accompaniment for a crowd of people is bound to be scary for just about 98 percent of the human population. I'm sure that for some people, it's the most frightening part about becoming a pastor. But, as with my sermon last week, I found it to be actually a very invigorating experience. There's a humble sense of honor in getting to lead a group of people in worship in that way.

And I guess I did OK (I got a bit of applause, which all of us deserve — I mentioned how nice it would be if our congregations gave us a hand after the liturgy every Sunday). As our instructor shared with me, I now need to work on putting more emphasis into the words and smooth out the notes, which might also keep my hands from shaking while I'm up there.

I'm sure that with time, all of us in the lab will get the hang of this liturgical singing ... even if we never get to be as good as Nickelback.