How is God using marching band to change the lives of students?

Published: January 01, 2025

Author: K. Gerton

On my first day of band camp at GU, I was shaky, sweaty, and terrified that I might pass out in front of a room full of strangers. In the fall of 2021, my freshman year at Greenville, the effects of COVID-19 remained prevalent, and the future felt uncertain. I’d been experiencing anxiety and had just begun a long journey in learning to cope with feeling terrified in normal social situations.

To get more comfortable around one another, our band of less than fifteen members played an icebreaker game similar to musical chairs. The game involved scooting around in a circle and avoiding being the only person without a chair. It’s hard to feel terrified of a six-foot-tall senior when he’s sprawling on the ground after almost sitting upon you and failing to land in a chair. I immediately felt more comfortable around these strangers, who obviously weren’t afraid to look silly in the interest of bringing our tiny band closer together.

Marching band is often a high-pressure environment. Playing music is difficult enough—right notes, right rhythm, and right time are only the basics. Adding artistry and making music that makes meaning creates another layer of complication. Now throw in marching visual art on top of an auditory one: right foot, right posture, right timing, and right direction. Memorize the music. Roll your steps so your sound doesn’t wobble. Just one mistake from one band member can be obvious to the audience, making the whole ensemble look and sound unprepared. With so many ways to make a mistake and such a small margin for error, it can seem like the best option would be to hide our mistakes.

But we don’t. In rehearsal, we make mistakes as loud and obvious as possible so that we can hear them and correct them. Mistakes aren’t terrifying, reputation-ending, career-shattering embarrassments. Usually, we laugh, correct the notes or rhythm, and move on. We sound better because one of us was brave enough to sound bad in our community. We have to trust one another enough to make mistakes with each other.

In marching band, trust and faith are vital. In the same way that a metronome keeps us in time and a tuner keeps us in tune, trust keeps us in step with one another. We have to trust our upperclassmen to be supportive and caring, trust our section leaders to give us helpful instruction and trust our drum major to organize and direct us. We have to trust our director to be our advocate with other campus departments and to choose music that suits the talents and size of our ensemble. Most importantly, we trust our band members to encourage and not condemn each other and to be punctual and dedicated.

In my own walk with Christ, it’s rare for me to acknowledge this kind of trust and surrender to God—to admit mistakes to God. It’s terrifying to recognize how little control I have over my own life. But I have faith in my bandmates, my drum major, and my director to do their best for our band, and that has helped me understand how I can have faith in God as God leads me and teaches me in my spiritual life. Thanks to my time in the Greenville University Marching Panther Regiment, I’m learning to embrace mistakes as learning opportunities, not fear them. I’m learning to be brave enough to fail in front of people. As a senior, I’m (slowly) learning to lead and support my younger bandmates. I’m so grateful for my time in the GU marching band, and I hope our band continues to grow, pray for each other, and make mistakes together.