I Want To Be The Loudest Man In Church, Just Like My Dad

This Easter, somewhere between the first triumphant blast of the organ, the ring of the timpani, and the procession to the Lord’s Supper, I had an unsettling realization: I had become my father.

We were singing He’s Risen, He’s Risen, that battlecry of a C.F.W. Walther hymn, the kind of Easter anthem that does not ask to be sung so much as it demands to be proclaimed. Over the congregation, the brass, the organ, the sturdy Midwestern Lutherans doing their best, I heard it — not just my own voice. No, despite being a few states away, I also heard his.

For years, I resisted becoming my father in all the ordinary ways sons do. I resisted the stories, the habits, the opinions, the little mannerisms that seem quaint when you’re young and increasingly familiar as you grow older. I especially resisted sounding like him.

Back when every family had one shared landline, I’d answer the phone at our house: “Hello, Gugel residence.” And more than once, the person on the other end would launch right in: “Hello, Pastor…” They thought I was my dad. As a kid, I hated it.

I’d cut them off quickly. “Nope. Wrong guy.”

As I got older, I learned to joke. “Careful,” I’d say. “Don’t start confessing anything. I’m not authorized for absolution.” I wasn’t old enough — or ordained enough — for the Office of the Keys. But the truth is, as a boy, I didn’t love being mistaken for my father. Yet now, if there is one thing I thank God I inherited from him, it’s his voice.

My father has been a Lutheran minister for almost 40 years. He is also, without question, the loudest singer in any church he enters. He comes by it honestly. He was trained among men in seminary chapels where future pastors half-jokingly competed to see who could sing the loudest, strongest, and most confidently. These were men who knew hymns were not decorative but rather theology proclaimed.

My father has always sung that way. He loves music, hymns, and the Gospel. And somehow in him, those things have always seemed inseparable.

Most Sundays growing up, I heard him from the front of the church, chanting the liturgy, preaching the sermon, elevating the Sacrament, and declaring Christ crucified and risen. But on vacation — those rare Sundays when he sat next to my mother, my sister, and me in the pew — we got the full force of it. The opening hymn would begin, my father would inhale, and heads would turn.

People would stop him after church. “You have a beautiful voice.” “Are you in music?” “You should join the choir.” As a teenager, I was mortified. There is no embarrassment quite like being a teenage boy sitting next to the loudest singer in church. I wanted to sink into the pew, and he wanted to sing the fourth stanza louder. Now, years later, I laugh at the memory because I understand it.

When I listen to the livestream of a service he’s attending, even if he’s nowhere near a microphone, I can still pick him out — one voice, clear, confident, unashamed. It is not because he wants attention. It’s because he has joy. The Gospel is so deeply planted in him that it comes out when he sings. And I thank God for it.

In a culture increasingly uncomfortable with unapologetic expressions of masculinity — and in churches increasingly content with male passivity — we need more fathers like that. Not fathers who sing well, but fathers who sing loudly. Fathers who make known what they believe without embarrassment. It matters so much more than many churches realize.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and Goldsmiths, University of London have found what Christians have long known instinctively: Singing together binds people together. Their studies found that group singing increases feelings of social closeness, even among strangers, and can even raise pain thresholds, a common sign of endorphin release. In one study, singers in groups ranging from 20 people to a “megachoir” of 232 reported greater feelings of inclusion, connection, and joy after just 90 minutes of singing side by side.

In other words, singing makes people feel like they belong. Doesn’t that sound a little like what Sunday morning is supposed to do?

Men have always understood this. Soldiers sing marching songs, and fans chant in stadiums. Workers once sang in fields and factories. There is a reason armies chant, protest movements sing, and authoritarian regimes fear songs they cannot control. Song forms identity. Yet in church, many men fall silent. Why?

Part of it is cultural. Modern American Christianity often asks men to choose between two equally unappealing options. On one side is a polished, performative worship culture: stage lights, skinny jeans, fog machines, and emotionally manipulative bridges repeated until everyone feels something. On the other is passive disengagement: men standing silent while women, children, and the occasional elderly bass-baritone carry the congregation.

Neither one forms men. Historic Christian worship offered something sturdier. St. Paul tells Christians to “address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” He tells them to “teach and admonish one another” through song. A hymn is theology ordinary people can memorize. It’s a sermon the congregation preaches back to itself. The great hymns of the church are not sentimental whispers. They are victory songs and resurrection anthems.

Lutherans know this. We sing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God like men storming the gates and Lift High the Cross like a procession into glory. On Easter morning, we sing He’s Risen, He’s Risen like death itself has been dragged behind Christ’s chariot — because it has.

Now every Sunday at church, Marcie, the widow who sits in front of me, turns around and tells me how much she loves hearing a man sing loudly behind her. It reminds her of her late husband. He loved church. He loved the hymns. He sang loudly. Years later, his voice is gone, but the memory of it still comforts her. That matters.

Children are formed liturgically long before they are formed intellectually. Before they understand theology, they understand what Dad does when the hymnal opens. I understood. And this Easter, I heard it so clear in my own voice.

For years, I resisted becoming my father. Now I thank God for the parts of him I am inheriting: his courage, his joy, his refusal to be embarrassed by the Gospel, and his voice. I hope someday my own children hear me sing and know what I believe. And if they hear his voice in mine, all the better.

So, fathers, sing. Sing if you are off-key. Sing if your voice cracks. Sing if the old German melody is hard. Sing if the organist takes it too fast. Sing because your family is listening. Sing because your children are learning. Sing because your wife needs to hear conviction. Sing because widows remember. Sing because the church needs courage. Sing because Christ is risen.

And sing loudly enough that one day your children might thank God they became their father.

Mattias Gugel is director of state external affairs at National Taxpayers Union. He was formerly a policy advisor at the Wisconsin State Senate and is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @mattiasgugel