Hard to Leave, Part 1

Why was it hard to leave the contemporary worship music movement? I learned to play the steel string guitar in high school, and in 1976 I began to provide the accompaniment for popular praise music for a college Bible study at a campus ministry in Wisconsin. For about 22 years in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with varying amounts of involvement, my wife and I served in music ensembles as instrumentalists and singers for contemporary worship music. These ensembles accompanied the public worship services at three different OPC congregations.

The instruments included strings, winds, brass, percussion and piano and organ. I do not have music training, but gladly volunteered to lead the the contemporary worship service at (back then) Covenant OPC in Burtonsville, MD for five years. At the time, we used music from several publishing groups including Sovereign Grace Ministries and Marantha! Music. We followed, and in some cases, used the traditional re-write music of Indelible Grace and other artists like Bob Kauflin, Mark Altrogge and Graham Kendrick; we also tapped into others from the 90s, e.g. Twila Paris, Michael W. Smith and Michael Card, and et al.

Being up to my ears, whole-heartedly so, in the movement was a genuinely merry thing, and that made leaving it especially hard.

G. Mark Sumpter