THE CHURCH STILL KNOWS... SILENCE

Every Sunday, worship begins with a prelude. The musicians play softly, inviting us to prepare ourselves for what’s coming—a time to remember, confess, lament, hope, or celebrate. The music holds a kind of sacred space, a bridge from the noise of the world into the presence of God.




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​But even with the prelude’s music carrying us, the silence we crave rarely settles in. Instead, what follows is beautifully, messily human. Parents whisper instructions to children. A phone goes off. Someone rustles a cough drop wrapper. People shift in pews, check the time, glance around.

Even here—even in this intentional pause before worship—it doesn’t come naturally to us to be still and silent.

And honestly? I get it.

We live in a world of constant noise and compulsive talking. Our phones buzz with notifications. Our cars fill silence with music or podcasts. We can’t stand in an elevator without staring at screens or making small talk. The idea of just sitting quietly, alone with our thoughts, has become almost frightening.

Silence feels empty. Awkward. Like something’s wrong.

But that’s not what silence used to mean.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot that silence isn’t the absence of something—it’s the presence of something else. We’ve mistaken quiet for emptiness, when quiet can actually be fullness.
The Church has never forgotten this.

While the world fills every moment with noise, the Church still knows how to be silent. Not the awkward silence of a stalled conversation or the uncomfortable quiet when someone asks a question no one wants to answer. Sacred silence. Intentional silence. Silence that isn’t empty but expectant.

“Be still,” the psalmist writes, “and know that I am God”—the loving Father who calls us into peace.
Not “be busy and figure out God.”
Not “fill the space with words about God.”
Be still. Be quiet. Know.

Jesus knew this intimately. Time and again, he withdrew to quiet places—not just to escape, but to listen deeply to the Father’s voice and be renewed by the Spirit.

The Church built this wisdom into our very bones. Our liturgy includes intentional silences—after prayers, during communion, in moments of confession. Monasteries have preserved the practice of contemplative quiet for centuries. Quakers made silence the center of their worship, trusting that God would speak into the quiet.

Even our church calendar knows this. Advent asks us to wait quietly. Lent calls us to silent reflection. Good Friday holds space for the kind of silence that can only come after great loss.

This isn’t mindfulness for stress relief or meditation for self-improvement. It’s something deeper. Sacred silence creates space for God to speak what we’re too busy to hear. It lets us notice what we miss when we’re constantly making noise. It reminds us that we don’t always have to have something to say.

In silence, we remember that we are not the center of the story.

In silence, we stop trying to fix everything with words.

In silence, we discover that God is already there, waiting.

I know it’s hard. I watch it every Sunday during the prelude. Our culture has trained us to fear the quiet, to fill every gap, to believe that silence means something’s broken.

But the Church knows better. We know that silence isn’t empty—it’s expectant. We know that the Spirit often speaks most clearly when we finally stop talking long enough to listen. We know that some of the most important moments in worship happen not when we’re singing or speaking, but when we’re simply being still.

So maybe this Sunday, as the prelude music begins, try to listen through the sound—not as background noise, but as an invitation to prepare your heart and mind. Notice the space it creates between the world outside and the worship within.

And when the music fades, resist the urge to fill the silence with distraction. Don’t check your phone or run through your mental to-do list or worry if the quiet feels awkward.

Just be still.
Just listen.
Just know that God is there, waiting to meet you—in the music, in the silence, and in the space between.

The world may have forgotten how to be quiet. But the Church remembers.

And in a culture of constant noise, maybe that’s exactly what we have to offer--the radical gift of sacred silence.
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Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community