I just read an article in the Washington Post, “Fake crowds, real boos: How the NFL is filling each stadium with authentic noise”— a solution professional football teams are employing to recreate a more realistic atmosphere for their athletes in the presence of zero or near empty crowds due to the pandemic. According to Ben Strauss, the author, “Beginning with European soccer this summer, fans have, depending on their view, either been treated to the technical wizardry of piped-in crowd noise or bombarded with gratingly fake stadium sounds that rob sports of their authenticity.”

For several years, Vince Caputo of NFL Media, had collected and catalogued crowd noises at every NFL stadium, and teamed up with Robert Brock, at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, to create an authentic acoustic environment to present these games without an in-person audience.

Another article in USA Today, “Empty NFL stadiums leave players with ‘eerie’ feeling, sense of loss for environment,” described a “cavernous stadium” with “all the charm of an empty airplane hangar” without the fans present.

So I thought back to a most interesting webinar I attended last week: “Creative use of the organ for online worship,” presented by Morningstar Music. The webinar was posted on YouTube, which you can view here:

The presenter of the webinar, David Cherwien, is the Cantor of Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN; he is also the Director of the National Lutheran Choir and is a prolific composer with over 150 publications of choral and organ music.

David told us that his church, Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Minnesota, MN, has recorded all of their services for years, and has not only recordings of his creative hymn introductions, but also recordings of the congregation singing all the hymns. In their online services, they use some of those hymn recordings to playback. That is so when individuals or families listening to the broadcast at home, have a more authentic experience of congregational singing.

Sounds like a brilliant idea! How about having audience soundtracks of applause and people shouting “Bravo!” for our virtual concerts?!

Which brings me to my next topic: who among us hasn’t felt like this pandemic is compressing our sense of time? I mean, I can hardly believe that we are starting our seventh month of staying home—the days and weeks are just flying by.

So here’s a hymn that was shared on Facebook this week which addresses this very phenomenon. Sing this with your virtual congregation!