Local church congregation finds new ways to worship during pandemic

SANDPOINT — Every day, since late in November, Tina and Dave Sundquist have been going outside to sing a song together.

On a dark Thursday evening in late December, the couple steps off their porch and onto their edges of the front lawn to do just that. Framed in the light from their Christmas decorations, they open their mouths, and the verses spill out into the quiet neighborhood in Kootenai.

“This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine,” they sing. The verse repeats once, then twice. “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

The Sundquists began singing the song at the encouragement of their pastor, Lori Morton, at First Lutheran Church in Sandpoint.

Just like anyone else, Morton says 2020 has been a challenge to her as a pastor unlike any other. While some churches have reopened, hers moved to keep its members safe by holding an online worship services instead of meeting in-person.

But as a pastor, she said, connecting with her congregation while also protecting them can be difficult.

“That connection piece and the rituals and the symbols that are part of us, it’s ingrained in who we are,” she says. “How do we lean into those symbols but in a way that still loves our neighbor in a way that Christ loves us?”

The answer Morton found, she said, was music. Morton turned to a a worship series created specifically for churches celebrating advent from a distance this year. As part of it, Morton bid her congregation to sing every night.

“The whole series is about weaving God’s word into various songs,” she says. “Resistance, but also hope.”

So each night at 5 p.m., Morton and members of her congregation step out of their houses and sing the folk song, “This Little Light.”

The song, which turns 100 years old this year, started as a children’s song turned spiritual, with deep roots in both the civil rights movement and within Christian circles.

“People all throughout time have leaned on music in difficult times,” Morton says. “If you can’t do anything about the problems around you, you can still sing.”

For the Sundquists, it’s a way to share the joy of their faith while staying home.

At first, Tina says, it felt strange to go out and sing for anyone to hear.

“I didn't want to sing loud. I was kind of like this, you know, it was soft,” she says.

But Tina continued to set a timer on her phone as a reminder, and every night she’d go out and sing, a little louder each time. When she and Dave stepped outside to sing Thursday night, they belted it.

Tina says she’s struggled with pandemic fatigue, but singing each night has helped. Her adult children, who are visiting from college, told her she sounds happy when she’s singing.

Dave says he likes that the exercise is something he can do to celebrate Advent, even if it’s not inside of a church. For him, it is also an act of defiance — a way to say he won’t be kept down and he won’t be kept quiet.

“It's just an exercise in being able to raise my voice yell,” Dave says. “Shout, scream against the — yeah. It's a temporary relief. But it's a relief that you can look forward to.”

He also appreciates having a way to celebrate Advent — a specifically Christian holiday, and one less commercialized than Christmas — even at home.

For Morton, the daily ritual has also provided relief to her on an individual level, she says.

“At first I was a little tentative going out on the porch,” she said. “But each night I set my reminder on my computer, and it keeps filling me up and reminding me that it’s not my light, it’s Jesus’s light.”

Morton has been teaching her congregation the lyrics to the song in sign language as well as English for the past several weeks, she said.

She and members of her congregation will continue singing each night at around 5 p.m. until Christmas Eve, Morton said. On Christmas Eve, members of the congregation will sing “Silent Night” at 4:30 p.m., and Sandpoint Community Radio, 88.5 KRFY, will play “Silent Night” at the same time.

Some other churches across the country are doing a similar service, such as the First Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnessota, which will have members of the congregation sing “Silent Night” at 6 p.m. at home on the Christmas Eve, or the American Lutheran Church in Newport, Washington, which is encouraging its members to sing the same song at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

“I hope that it reminds [people] that they’re not alone,” Morton said. “I hope it reminds them they’re connected to something bigger than themselves.”

Rachel Sun can be reached by email at rsun@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @RachelDailyBee.