Singing Hims Celebrate 50 Years

After a four-day, three-state 50th-anniversary tour, members of the gospel group The Singing Hims filed off the tour bus late in the day at Faith Community Christian Reformed Church in Wyoming, Mich.

They were tired but pleased to have performed time-honored praise music to audiences in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin as a way to celebrate five decades of singing their hearts out for God.

While several chorus members have been part of the group for many years, two trace their participation to its beginning.

One of them is Jack Ponstine, the group’s founder and director. He, in fact, organized the tour as a way to mark the span in which The Singing Hims have been performing in predominantly CRC congregations, schools, and other settings through the years.

“I never would have thought when we began that I’d be doing this 50 years later,” he said in an interview after the trip in late May. “We have been doing this and praising God together for many years – and it’s so great that we still like each other.”

Though their repertoire has changed since they started singing in 1976 in Grand Rapids, Mich.-area churches, the core of their material has remained packed with such oldtime favorites as “How Great Thou Art,” “Here I Am Lord,” “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and “At the Cross,” which has become their theme song.

They have performed their theme song – with the lyrics “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light” – hundreds of times, and yet, said Ponstine, it never gets old for them or for audiences that often sing the selection along with them.

“These oldtime hymns mean so much to us and to those we sing for,” said Ponstine, who made a living as the owner of a marketing company.

Significantly, he added, singing scores of well-known gospel songs, replete with messages of hope and redemption, has been a way for the group members to share their Christian faith with others. 

“This has been our form of ministry,” Ponstine said. “When we sing in many places at many times, we know God is blessing those to whom we are singing. He blesses us greatly as well. We serve a great God!”

Ponstine said he was a senior music major at Calvin College when he came up with the idea of forming a male chorus. Already active as a music leader at a pair of local churches, he loved the music featured in worship services. But he also thought that typical worship fare could be enhanced by expanding the songs played during services and at concerts. The question, he said, was how he could help make that become a reality.

Then “it happened that God just touched my heart with the desire to begin a male Christian chorus,” he said. “I got a few guys I knew together, and we started out, singing here and there in churches.”

For most of the past 50 years, Ponstine’s wife, Kris, has also been a part of the gospel group, accompanying her husband and the rest of The Singing Hims on piano. Kris and Jack met at Calvin College, she said, and although she attended their early performances, she didn’t join the group right away. 

“Before we were married in 1976, I would be there at their concerts, but it was a done deal that I would be part of the group after our wedding,” she added. 

Together, Kris Ponstine said, she and Jack have worked tirelessly side by side building the chorus, finding and setting dates to perform, discussing the selections the group needed to learn, and, crucially, building intimacy with fellow members.

“I have been so privileged all of these years to play for this amazing group of men who love God and love to sing his praises, and who care so deeply for each other,” she said. “It’s also been wonderful to be able to partner with Jack in this ministry.”

The Ponstines estimate that they have held more than 1,000 rehearsals over the decades and have performed at least 500 times at CRC facilities, but they have also sung at nursing homes, prisons, Christian campgrounds, health-care facilities, and gospel chapels.

“There have been many memorable times,” said Jack Ponstine. “Especially important has been all of us getting to know one another and praying together.” 

Postine said that many experiences remain fresh in his mind, from performances with prisoners at the Ionia (Mich.) Correctional Facility to occasions when he and others sang to fellow members who were in the hospital. But a key memory that stands out, he said, was the opportunity to perform alongside his father for nearly 40 years.

“It was a special blessing to have my dad sing with us for so long,” he said. “We both went through some very serious health concerns 10 years ago. We serve a great God who is healing us every day. Each person in the chorus has a story to share.”

In preparation for the 50-year anniversary bus tour, members of The Singing Hims wrote out brief recollections of their times together. These materials don’t include names, but they offer a personal look into the ups and downs and the highlights of their years of singing or playing instruments as part of the group.

One man recalled a time when the chorus was singing at the Guiding Light Mission in Grand Rapids when his wife rushed up to say that one of their children had wandered off and was missing.

“The director of the mission immediately got on the microphone and told the men at the shelter that a child was missing,” he said. “Our world stood still, and it felt like an eternity during the three to five minutes we searched for her.”

Soon a group of older kids appeared, and one was carrying his daughter. They had simply been taking a self-guided tour of the mission facility. “Being separated from a child in that way is frightening. I can only imagine what Jesus must feel like when we separate ourselves from him.”

One woman wrote that she grew up attending concerts and watching her father and grandfather, both members of The Singing Hims, perform side by side in various venues over the years. And on one occasion, she said, she asked her father why she couldn’t join the group when she grew up.

At the time, the group was composed of men, except for Kris Ponstine on the piano. But eventually, more than 30 years into their tenure, they added more instrumentalists, including women, and the person who wrote that reflection said she was able to join by playing her trumpet.

She added, “I have been playing trumpet for The Singing Hims for about six years now, and I love it!”

Another man recounted how he grew up singing throughout his school years and into adulthood with quartets and church choirs, as well as performing duets with his wife.

“My brother asked me to join The Singing Hims over 30 years ago. As soon as I was able to, I joined,” he said, “It’s not just the singing I enjoy, but the community of faithful people. That means the most to me. My favorite moments were always in the jails and prisons where we were allowed to sing.”

By the time September rolls around, the group will be back on the road, especially in West Michigan, performing for audiences. As he thinks of the future, Jack Ponstine said, he wonders if The Singing Hims will be able to endure.

“I ask myself what our musical ministry will look like in the future,” he said. “I hope we have been able to serve as role models for younger people and they will be interested in carrying on this music ministry, which is so powerful because we are singing for Jesus Christ,” he said.