A Little Bit Like Home

It Started With a Song

Some opportunities don’t start with you. They start with someone else coming home and telling you about something you’ve never seen or heard of.

I remember the night my mom and dad came back from a concert with our minister and his wife, Dan and Dee King. They talked about the group they had heard—how talented they were, how well they sang, the kind of music that stayed with you after it was over.

The group was called New Way Singers, a group of high school students touring across the Midwest, singing hymns and contemporary Christian music. I was too young to be part of the program, which was for students after their sophomore through senior years in high school. But that enthusiasm and excitement planted a seed.

My brother Joe was the first to follow it. He went on tour with the group for three summers and was even part of a small ensemble called New Way Express after his senior year. Just a few years later, it was my turn.

Tryouts didn’t happen in a room. They happened on a cassette tape. You recorded a song, mailed it in, and waited. Then came the letter, with either acceptance or a quiet suggestion to try again next year. I remember the excitement of opening that envelope and realizing I was in.

New Way Singers was a two-week experience that started in Norfolk, Nebraska. The first five days were spent in rehearsal. Songs had to be memorized. Parts had to be learned. We practiced several times a day, and somewhere along the way, Chloraseptic throat spray became part of the routine. When Thursday arrived, we headed out on tour for the next 10 days.

That first year, I didn’t know many people. My roommate, Doug Howell from Griswold, Iowa, was one of the first friends I made. He had as much positive energy as anyone I’d ever been around. His greeting was always the same, said quickly and in a high voice: “Hibiguy.” It didn’t take long before that became part of the rhythm of the trip, something you could count on hearing at just the right moment.

The moment I remember most from that first year came on the first Sunday. We had performed that morning at a church service after an early departure, and by the time we arrived at the next stop that evening, we were worn out. It was Father’s Day. Many of us had been away from home for more than a week, and you could feel it.

Before each concert, we gathered for a prayer circle. What was said in that circle mattered, but it was what happened after that stands out. Someone mentioned that while we were away from our earthly fathers, our Heavenly Father was always with us.

Something changed. The music felt different that night. There was a confidence we hadn’t had before, and a sense we were no longer just singing the songs; we were understanding them.

That was the moment it started to come together in a way it hadn’t before.

Somewhere in those days, the group stopped feeling like a collection of individuals and started feeling like something else.

Along the way, there were smaller moments that stayed with me. There were many parts of New Way Singers that made an impression—host families, long bus rides, the music itself—but looking back, it’s not any one of those things that defines it.

It was the people, and the way conversations went from surface-level to something more honest. Faith stopped being something we had just been taught and started becoming something we could talk about, question, and understand in our own way.

New Way Singers was without question a life-changing experience. It didn’t fully feel that way at the time, but it changed more than I knew.

Tom Brand writes about faith, family, and life in Missouri. He’s learned some lessons stay with you—and grow over time. Find more at ALittleBitLikeHome.com.