A Column for Church Musicians & Song Leaders
By Robert K. Wright | March 29, 2026
Are We Missing Out Because We’re Caught Up
Luke 4:19 • Rev. Tony Butler • New Light Baptist Church
I didn’t prepare a single song before Rev. Tony Butler stood up to preach at New Light Baptist Church on March 29th. No title, no scripture, no advance conversation. What I had was a seat and whatever the Holy Spirit was willing to loan me in real time. I want to talk about that — because musicians underestimate how much of this work actually happens in the moment, and how different a skill that is from preparation.
When Rev. Butler opened from Luke 4:19 — a crowd present in body but absent in spirit, wanting the peace they preferred over the peace being offered — I started hearing music immediately. “Lord, Help Me to Hold Out” surfaced first. Not a triumphant song. An honest one. It admits the struggle before it asks for the strength, which was exactly the posture that opening needed. When he said “the peace the people wanted wasn’t true peace — they wanted the peace they preferred,” “Fill My Cup, Lord” and “I Don’t Mind Waiting” by Juanita Bynum followed naturally — one a prayer for filling from the right source, the other a declaration against rushing toward the wrong thing.
His spider’s web illustration — the enemy builds beautiful traps you don’t see until you move the furniture — brought “It’s Only a Test” by Bishop Larry Trotter to mind immediately. I placed “I Am What You See” by Pastor William Murphy just before the message: an identity declaration sung directly into the blindness the sermon was about to name. I closed with Milton Brunson’s “I’m Free” — not because it was planned, but because after a sermon that diagnosed captivity so precisely, there was nowhere else to go.
Here is what I want musicians to take from a service like this one: a trained ear is its own form of preparation. When you know the gospel catalog — not just titles but what each song carries theologically — you can hear a sermon unfold and find the music it is calling for in real time. That is not improvisation. That is a practiced skill worth developing.
The crowd in Luke 4 was present for everything and missed the moment anyway. The musician’s job — whether you prepared for a week or are hearing the title for the first time when the pastor stands up — is to make sure the congregation doesn’t leave the same way they came in.
Robert serves as Minister of Music at New Light Baptist Church.
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