It was a fantastic evening, and if I may boast just a little, it was my idea. While I am not gifted with any musical talent, my wife does play the piano, and on occasion, she treats me to a song or two on the baby grand that sits in our living room.

This particular night with the orchestra was not my first, but I will say that I enjoyed it with a particular twist, when compared to previous visits.

As we sat in the mezzanine waiting for the concert to begin (center stage I might add), a passing thought crossed my mind: what shadows of the Gospel can I identify within the beauty of the orchestra’s performance?

By evening’s end, my thoughts began to take shape.

In the moments leading up to the start of the concert, the various performers were on stage making their last minute preparations, checking their music, and fine-tuning their instruments.

All at once, nearly one hundred musicians were playing competing notes without the least bit of concern for the racket that was being created before the waiting audience. If you have never witnessed this, I will tell you that it is actually quite entertaining.

All of a sudden, for some reason that no laymen could detect, a noticeable quiet filled the room.  The orchestra’s conductor then took the stage to a resounding applause.

All of this led to the moment that the musicians had been working toward, and that the audience had been waiting for. The concert began and the noise that once filled the concert hall was replaced with the amazing sounds of an orchestra.

Earlier, these expert musicians had been playing their instruments completely out of synch, and the result was frightening. But now, under the direction of their maestro, they played together, in unison, for a common cause, and to a certain end.

I would venture to say that the thought of deviating from the master plan, as officiated by the maestro, never entered the mind of even one of these musicians.

For a laymen such as myself, it was an awesome sight to behold nearly one hundred instruments being played perfectly and with precision their unique roles within the same musical score. The concert ended with a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.

As we left the show, commenting to each other about our impressions of just how good the performance was, we came upon a man playing a saxophone by himself outside along the sidewalk. This was not an unusual thing in and of itself. In fact, it is quite common.

Still thinking to myself about what I could identify from within the orchestra’s performance that would point me to the work of the Gospel in some way, I was struck by the obvious.

This lone man’s performance on the sidewalk, while much more than I could produce as a non-musician, was a far cry from the sheer musical power and genius of forces joined together that we had just witnessed inside.

This observation led me to the following conclusion.

We happen to be living in an age where many self-identified Christians intentionally separate themselves from the full and corporate gathering of God’s people, otherwise known as the church. For reasons too many to list here, they become like the lone saxophonist outside of the concert hall, alone on the sidewalk, trying desperately to be noticed.

They are heard and they are seen, but by consistently disconnecting themselves from the community, they are cut-off from the thundering power of God’s people gathered together to worship and love God with one voice, under the God-ordained leadership of a conductor, a maestro, or church leadership, if you will.

There are indeed many voices in our time that would have us believe that this was the way of the cross, and that this was the way of the early church. Lone musicians on a sidewalk, disconnected from the orchestra, playing their own sheet music to their own time and according to their own desires.

But Scripture and church history teach us something substantially different.

As with all Scriptural truth, the Bible bears witness from Genesis to Revelation that God’s people were never intended to be playing their instruments, that is, exercising their faith and spiritual gifts, apart from community or absent God-ordained leadership.

God’s inspired word, and even the experience of life teaches us that this does not lead to beautiful and sustained performances; rather, it leads to isolation and chaos. In the context of this metaphor, lone musicians fade away having made little impact apart from anecdotal, feel-good stories.

Even if their sound is crisp and clear, a saxophonist on his or her own will never know the joy of making music to God alongside the clarinet, the violin, the cello, and the harp. The saxophone, while beautiful, does not and cannot make by itself the vast array of musical sounds that God created and super-intended for his glory!

And so, the beauty of the orchestra, created by God, not only produces for us an amazing array of musical sounds, but ironically, it illustrates and calls us to join the majesty of God’s people gathered together, exercising their unique gifts not in isolation, but in unison, to the praise of God’s glory.

How then will we respond?

Will we be seduced by the calls of our time to leave the stage of the church, where God’s orchestra is gathered together by his sovereign design, in pursuit of the appearance of freedom and self-determination to play our instruments according to our own will along the sidewalks of life?

Or, will we with joy take our God-ordained places within the concert hall, for the purpose of playing our unique roles that God deigned for our pleasure and his praise?

Will we in disobedience choose the life of a lone saxophonist, or will we join together in producing the amazing sounds of an orchestra?