Around 35 youth learned to sing these words in the Venite (Psalm 95) in our first music training event last week. Psalm 95 is an invitation to worship that Christians have historically sung before or during morning prayer.

The goal of this music program in Sri Lanka is simple: help Christians sing God’s word. It’s a simple yet powerful object. Because the more unified, the more beautiful, the more “theirs” that their singing of God’s word is, the more they will be encouraged and built up by that word, and the more they will have a clear, strong proclamation of that word to their neighbors.

The very simplest path to attaining this goal is to sing the Scriptures. The Bible is full of songs that God’s people have been singing for thousands of years. The more we sing God’s word, the more it will become a part of our daily life, a part of who we are.

So that is our primary objective with the music program. When they showed up last week, if any one of them had been asked to stand up and sing Psalm 95, they wouldn’t have known where to start. But after several hours working with them over two days, they sang it strongly with one voice. You could hear the words clearly, and it sounded like they truly believed what they were singing. Some of the young men actually knew the music well enough to teach others to sing it.

The event last week was about more than one song, however, We laid the groundwork for future music teaching. We even identified a few individuals with high musical aptitude who might carry on teaching the music after we are gone. On top of all that, we think the youth actually had some fun. We are praying that God is working a love for His word in their hearts along with a love for music.

The Lord blessed this initial music training event. We pray that the youth will come to the next and be committed along with us to developing edifying Christian music here in Sri Lanka. We thank you, our dear supporters, for your commitment to the proclamation of the Gospel here in Sri Lanka.

Vicar Benjamin and Grace Vanderhyde serve the Lord through The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) as missionaries in Sri Lanka. In his role as vicar, Benjamin trains up musicians to serve the Ceylon Evangelical Lutheran Church while assisting the other LCMS missionaries serving in Sri Lanka with their work and learning from them. You can read more about the Vanderhydes at www.lcms.org/vanderhyde.