Lately I’ve been attending a non-instrumental church here in Nashville, which surprises me for at least two reasons. For one, I love music of all kinds so to voluntarily limit my musical worship to the acapella variety didn’t initially appeal to me. And also it’s just quite ironic to “do church” without instruments in Music City USA.

So I didn’t quite understand why I kept returning, except that—to reference one of my previous rants about church—these services seem worshipful. And so I keep going.

A few weeks ago I got a little more insight into why I’m gravitating toward making this my new church home. I was talking to Ryan Christian, who is the worship minister at Richland Hills Church of Christ in Texas, about RH’s transition from being acapella-only to being a “both/and” church that also has an instrumental service. He remarked, “Acapella is the great equalizer between styles.”

He’s right. Spirituals, contemporary choruses, ancient hymns: these can all be done well with instruments, but the use of guitars, organs, violins or drums creates very definite stylistic differences that practically disappear when the instruments do.

In my current disillusionment with church services as usual, it’s really no surprise at all that I’m drawn to the simple-but-not-easy excellence of my local church of Christ. I don’t know if I’ll stay there, but it’s home for now.