13 Solutions for a Church That Just Won’t Sing

Over at Ponder Anew, Jonathan in Texas describes himself as, among other things, “evangelical” and “post-evangelical.” He grew up Southern Baptist and is now happily United Methodist. He has 13 Solutions for a Church That Just Won’t Sing.

He has much to say about each solution. To give you a taste of the piece, here are his 13 solutions without elaboration.

1. Teach. 2. Dust off the organ console. 3. Bring the choir back. 4. Make it obvious that your congregational singing isn’t supposed to be a performance. 5. Get rid of the lead soloist. 6. Don’t sing so much. 7. Sing all the time. 8. Build a resonant sanctuary. 9. Encourage and support the arts in the community. 10. Bring the kids back into corporate worship. 11. Use hymnals. 12. Make the music worth singing. 13. Stop doing the same songs over and over and over.

(With all due respect, though, on no. 2 I don’t think the Protestant Reformation “brought back” the organ into the church. Its use in church gradually increased throughout the second millennium.

Jonathan concludes,

Not all are immediately practical solutions for every congregation, but in time, implementing these ideas would begin to build a singing culture in our congregations once again. No, nothing we do is going to fix this problem over night, but it’s time we make the obvious changes necessary to gradually restore congregational singing. It will take a concerted effort. It will take making changes that aren’t popular with everyone or that might not immediately resonate with the culture around us.

Thoughts?

awr

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Katharine E. Harmon, Ph.D., edits the blog, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit & Wisdom.

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Comments

27 responses to “13 Solutions for a Church That Just Won’t Sing”

  1. Alan Lukas

    I find that singing parishes have a music minister that they can trust…a minister who they will follow because they know they will not be lead to an uncomfortable place. Gain the trust then begin to slowly call them beyond. If the trust is there the organ can be dusty and the acoustics poor.

    Reply
  2. Doug O'Neill

    Alan, even if the trust is there, poor acoustics will hinder the singing. However, if the trust is there, one might more easily be able to do something about the acoustics. Also, are ministers not sometimes called to lead people to “uncomfortable” places? That’s part of preaching the gospel, isn’t it?

    Regarding the original post, the writer is geared toward an evangelical kind of worship, but many are apropos. I agree – he is historically in error about #2. Also, about his explanation of #6 – except I suppose in historic Catholic liturgies that would have depended on what type of Mass it was. These days, however, we are encouraged to fully sing the Mass. And with #4, I would disagree with him somewhat – we actually do put on a performance – it’s just that the congregation members are actors in the drama, rather than audience members. But I understand his point. But everything else is relevant for Catholic liturgy. Honestly, it runs contrary to much popular liturgical practice, but is fully in line with Church teaching, and exactly the right ideas to develop a long-term singing community. We’ve been too preoccupied with the quick fixes, and need to focus on the end game. Sorry for the mixed metaphor.

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  3. Charles Culbreth

    I would refer everyone’s attention to Cdl. Sarah’s letter to the participants of the Sacra Liturgia event in NYC. In it is his exhortation to continue the steady implementations of the CSL as well as recognizing the wisdom the Pope Emeritus imparted regarding liturgical philosophy and practice. But, more importantly, Cdl. Sarah is emphatic as he reminds us that what liturgy is remains the unmitigated worship of God, and when we shift our focus from that “macro” to the “micro” via innovations of our own design, we risk losing the worship focus, period.
    Jonathan’s “solution,” as nobly intended, is a simplistic solution to a presumptive problem that does not reflect the Roman Catholic ethos with any specificity. Sure, there’s resonance, but an inordinate effort to realize congregational singing is not the sole outcome or indicator of the vital signs of worship “quality.” YMMV.

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  4. Fr. Jack Feehily

    People who can sing will sing when offered music that is singable. They will sing when the priest and the deacons sing. They will sing when taught consistently that choirs, cantors, and musicians are there to serve them in the worship of God. They dont and wont sing the music that the director thinks they ought to sing. They are more likely to sing when a cantor lovingly leads them from a visible location in the sanctuary.

    Reply
    1. Doug O'Neill

      @Fr. Jack Feehily:
      Fr. Feehily,

      I disagree with several of your remarks:

      (1) “People who can sing will sing when offered music that is singable.”
      Nearly everybody can sing – unless there is something physical getting in the way. The big problem is that many have never been taught how to use their voices at all. Music education in Catholic schools is generally abysmal, and there’s no culture of singing, as there is in some Protestant churches. Singable music is one part of the equation, but not the whole thing. It is depressing to hear talk among parishioners of who can sing and who can’t – “so and so has a beautiful voice, but mine is terrible”. There’s “can’t,” and then there’s “won’t,” for whatever psychological reasons. Part of the mission of any music director is to convert those “won’t”s into “will”s.

      (2) “They will sing when the priest and the deacons sing.”
      The most important things to be sung are the dialogues, when in fact the priest should not sing with the people, and vice versa. Singing celebrants do help encourage a singing congregation, but it’s certainly no guarantee. I’ve done quite a few weddings where the priest and I are the only ones even attempting to sing anything.

      (3) “They don’t and won’t sing the music that the director thinks they ought to sing.”
      Well, that’s a fine attitude, isn’t it? Nobody should get to opt out of it. Hopefully, the music that the director thinks they ought to sing will be the same music that they can willingly and easily engage in.

      (4) “They are more likely to sing when a cantor lovingly leads them from a visible location in the sanctuary.”
      We have become too dependent on the visible cantor, a ministry that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. We have become way too preoccupied with the visibility factor, with cantors, choirs, organs and congregational seating, and not nearly enough on the acoustical support factors. And I don’t care how loving they are – unless they have some skill, they will not be effective.

      Reply
  5. Alan Hommerding

    As I posted on a Facebook thread following this same article: we need to stop thinking that if we tinker just the right way ONLY with what’s transpiring in the sanctuary, then things will get fixed.
    The contributing factor to this phenomenon that is most often overlooked is that the church community doesn’t sing because the people in the church community don’t sing communally anywhere the other 6.85 days of the week. This is partly related to the passivity/entertainment-model stuff in the article, but it’s also a separate phenomenon. The culture and communities that supported a singing church also sang elsewhere in daily life – music was MADE, not merely consumed.
    Why not name this as a – maybe not sinful, but an insufficient – way that the culture behaves – and one that we DON’T want to emulate as a church? Start every church meeting with a hymn. Teach families a simple sung grace to sing together at mealtime. Re-connect the song of the sanctuary with the song of the domestic church. We name other behaviors/actions of the surrounding culture that we want to counteract/contradict as a church. Why not the anti-song one?

    Reply
    1. Doug O'Neill

      @Alan Hommerding:
      Well said, Alan – creating a culture of singing is the only sure way to solve this problem.

      Reply
    2. Rita Ferrone Avatar
      Rita Ferrone

      @Alan Hommerding:
      +1 Bravo!
      I agree with Alan’s analysis and suggestions. Let’s take the bull by the horns.

      I wrote about this context in the Yale ISM Review:
      “Churches are perhaps the last bastion of communal song in American life. Consider how other streams of shared song have dried up: Singing in the family circle is out of fashion. It’s no longer common for parents to sing lullabies to their children. The National Anthem is sung by soloists at ball games. Even the birthday song has been replaced, in restaurants, by recordings or ditties barked out by the wait staff — with no participation by the patrons expected or required. Is it any wonder that congregational singing in church requires more effort and commitment, if it is to endure?”
      http://ismreview.yale.edu/article/in-this-issue/

      Alan, admirably, takes the argument a step further. What are we to do about it? Pro-active, counter-cultural, healthy, communal practices can indeed be cultivated. Communal singing is a religious practice and human gift too deeply valuable to simply let slide into oblivion because of cultural changes.

      Reply
  6. Charles Culbreth

    So, we are to agree and concede that participatio actuosa is actually a golden calf called actualis participationis?
    For crying out loud literally, have we forgotten that we’re not Mennonites, and we have hundreds of traditions, most of which are being discarded willy nilly, not the least of which is the song the Saint’s sang and heard for centuries?

    They are more likely to sing when a cantor lovingly leads them from a visible location in the sanctuary.

    Fr, Jack, I’m not sure what “lovingly leads them” actually means, but if you found your success via that medium, what need is there for a choir? Or an organ, guitar, piano….
    The Eugene Walsh paradigm that reduced the choir’s role in worship (which is contrary to V2 legislation, but I digress) to a support net for the congregation’s engagement resulted in the reality, not cliché, of “bare, ruined choirs” in the human sense. That’s not Roman Catholic.

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  7. Scott Pluff

    +1 Alan. There’s also the axiom that people will sing when they have something to sing about. I have noticed that the quality of the presiding and preaching has an immediate affect on the level of singing. If the presider is full of energy and enthusiasm in the way he celebrates, people pick up on that. But if the priest seems half-asleep or dull or lost in his own spiritual musings, the assembly becomes God’s frozen people.

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  8. Jay Edward

    I think putting choirs back in the choir loft so the choir is more there to back up the people in the congregation singing as opposed to being up front as if they are on stage performance style helps. Enough with cantors having to put their arms up to cajole participation. We totally give the idea it’s a performance when the assembly breaks out in applause at the end of Mass. The choir is there to give praise to God and to help the people give praise to God, not to bask in applause. And give people real hymns to sing, not banal, saccharine ditties that are cringey for adults, especially adult men to sing. Treat the congregation like adults and they might surprise you. And maybe not everyone will sing, encourage but don’t shame people who don’t.

    Reply
  9. Ed Nash

    So I go to a concert where a country music star starts the song, the people cheer, and they sing along. So the Church is not the last bastion of communal singing…not even close. The suggestion to move the choir to the back to lead by support from the rear goes against every concert sing a long I have been to.

    Cantors whose vibrato shake the roof, the song dejour way of choosing the prayer in the worship service, ministers who stare vapidly into space, and theologically confusing rhymes will shut down vocal chords in a matter of minutes.

    Ask the Zach Brown Band how they lead music and we could take a clue from them. And also…if we are in the business of leading people in prayer through song, then we have to invest in better sound systems.

    I know, someone will ask me to eat a Snickers bar…nice to have you back AWR.

    Reply
    1. Alan Hommerding

      @Ed Nash:
      In the scenario where you go to a concert and people cheer the song and sing along, that’s a happenstance. The audience’s participation in the song is not essential or critical to its success – the star whose video/radio play has made the song well-known and the star’s presence on the stage are the crucial elements. When the star backs off the mic, has the spotlights and the amplifiers turned off, and the audience carries the whole song by itself, then you have an experience of communal song.

      Reply
      1. Doug O'Neill

        @Alan Hommerding:
        What an excellent response. Thanks.

  10. Charles Culbreth

    The audience’s participation in the song is not essential or critical to its success

    Alan, you do realize that this assessment also applies to the essence and “success” of Holy Mass, yes? The Huibers/Oosterhuis (I forget which was the author) book, THE PERFORMING AUDIENCE, illustrates this dichotomy via just its title. And the liturgical documents V2 contain options (or ambiguities) that provides relief for that dichotomy. This is what I’ve tried to articulate thus far in the thread. The notion that robust congregational singing is essential or tantamount to completely realized/actualized liturgy is a shibboleth. In any manner, Sacred/Liturgical Music remains a handmaid to a larger objective.

    Reply
    1. Alan Hommerding

      @Charles Culbreth:
      But the congregation at the Mass is not an “aud”ience – they are not there merely to hear or passively observe. Full participation, at some points in the liturgy, calls for their full participation as the Body of Christ gathered in the Spirit. The Church gathered sings the sacrifice of praise to the Father as the Christ. Therefore, at times within the Mass, the congregation’s participation in the song is essential.

      Reply
      1. Charles Culbreth

        @Alan Hommerding:
        Alan, how could you assume after citing the Dutch duo that I would categorize a congregation as such? Actually, the dichotomy I cited from their term, not mine, is quite apt. What you state in #17, “at times” is precisely what I’ve been trying to get across about the premise of the original article. We musicians cannot coerce, seduce or otherwise convince every soul present to actually heed the call for full participation. You can deem that call as essential all you want. You can cite a thousand parishes where it may actually be rendered as such. But “the congregation’s participation in the song is essential” is an ideal, hardly ever a reality. I’m not jaded. The Church, in its wisdom, has accounted for this reality over millennia.

        Addenda- after thinking about it further, I’m one of those rogues that refuses to consign the processional propers to recitation only, and who believe that congregations could quite easily enjoin the choir/schola in sung processionals whether they’re authored by Weber/Kelly/Rice/Bartlett/you/Fords’/PalmerBurgess etc. So, I hope that gives you an insight to where “I’m” at regarding FCAP.

  11. Michael Wustrow

    I can attest that a strong choral program helps congregational singing. But I have over 100 girls in grades 3-8 that love to sing as a choir, yet often do not sing when they attend Mass with their families. Certain Masses (including one that almost never has a choir) sing much stronger than other Masses, so it also seems that within a parish there can be many different experiences of congregational song. Fortunately Alan Hommerding reminds us that by having communal singing at parish meetings, classes, and also in the home, we can become a singing church in a way that we have not been up until this point. Thank you Alan!

    Reply
  12. Fr. Jack Feehily

    Every parish assembly I have been a part of for more than 35 years has participated fully by singing the Mass with all its music with or without the enrichment of choirs, cantors, and instrumentalists. My comment about visible cantors lovingly leading the assembly was in contrast to cantors who call attention to themselves by virtuoso performances. Why participate when you can just be enthralled with the cantor? Choirs certainly have a role to play through singing special music that helps the assembly lift up its heart.

    Reply
    1. Doug O'Neill

      @Fr. Jack Feehily:
      Thanks for the clarification. I’ve been trying to change a culture of cantor-thrall, and it is not easy.

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    2. Pat Thompson

      @Fr. Jack Feehily:
      Our music director thinks a rehearsal is a 30-minute runthrough, all hymns are played at the same tempo, and for some reason cannot play 16th notes. He also bangs on our beautiful concert grand so you cannot hear the person next to you sing. We have basically sung the same hymns for the last 10 weeks. We long for the days when the choir sang 4-part hymns that reinforced the readings of the day and the congregation sang melody with them. Our cantors had virtuoso voices but held back in the responses. Thanks for letting me sound off.

      Reply
  13. Jim Pauwels

    Not long ago, attending a “Frozen Sing-along” was kind of a thing for people with daughters of a certain age. My daughter informs that there is also “Pitch Perfect Sing-Along”, which I’m fairly sure I’d hate but concede wasn’t made for me.

    People still Christmas carol. Not a lot, but they do.

    Kids still sing in schools all over the country. Not just in choirs; the entire classroom.

    People still get tunes stuck in their head and start humming, whistling, or singing to themselves.

    People sing, maybe more than we realize.

    Reply
  14. Ed Nash

    Alan @ #13

    That song in the concert is not happenstance…it has been carefully planned and orchestrated and the fans expect to sing. Could Churches have the same kind of impact?

    Some do. Some don’t.

    And as you watch the invested people at a concert sing and sway together (they’ve also got good seats too) one can wonder is this possible for worship? Many non denominational churches have invested in that kind of experience. And it has paid off. My parish struggles with this because of the reasons I cited above. Cantor show, non singing priest, lousy speakers, words that confuse…

    Is there a time in the Mass when a congregation’s participation in the song is not essential?

    Reply
  15. Paul Inwood

    Data point: The Performing Audience was written by Bernard Huijbers alone. Huub Oosterhuis was not involved.

    Bernard’s point was that the difference between a concert and a liturgy is that at a concert the audience is passive. At a liturgy, the “audience” is active. He was not putting down the congregation, as Charles seems to think (sorry if I misunderstood your point, Charles), but lifting it up. And this precisely because of Sacrosanctum Concilium 30:

    To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.

    Reply
    1. Charles Culbreth

      @Paul Inwood:
      I’m starting to actually doubt whether folks actually read what others have written. Firstly, Paul, I did clearly indicate I knew that only one of the two wrote the book. I didn’t want to interrupt my post to do a check. Secondly, I read the book back then, and got the thrust. Charles does not seem to think Bernard’s intent was to put down or suppress the congregation, so yes, you did grossly misinterpret my point, thanks.
      And I mistakenly assumed that my addendum attesting to my support of the congregation learning to take up accessible vernacular propers would get you, Alan and any other readers to understand I’m not anti-FCAP.
      But, nonetheless, my next wonderment is whether certain PTB contributors believe that RotR (only a convenient term) folks are slope-headed misanthropes, and thus not worthy of deliberation. Very sad, very sad.

      Reply
      1. Paul Inwood

        @Charles Culbreth:

        Sorry for getting the wrong end of stick, Charles. Sometime I do find your prose a bit confusing. And you did mention the Dutch duo.

        I also have the impression that you might not know that the original Italian of Tra le Sollecitudini uses the word attiva when talking about partecipazione, a word that was translated into Latin as actuosa and not activa. So no, we don’t all agree that actuosa means “actual”. We know it means “active” participation. But once again, I was not sure if you were arguing for or against “actual”….

  16. Paul Broderick

    With regard to people not joining in, I have an interesting anecdote.

    In 2012 I was interning with a charity and organising our supporters to sing carols at several major rail stations in London to raise money.

    When singing at Paddington station one member of the public actually came, took a booklet and sang with us for about 25 minutes as he waited for his train. So, for someone at least, the spectator/consumer attitude has not prevailed.

    I generally find that I sing a lot quieter in a group than alone because I lose confidence that I am on key. I went to get water and sang out to the rafters on the way back, but on joining the group could barely be heard. Even singing gregorian chant with no possibility of switching from tenor to bass line etc I become very quiet.

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