Podcast Episode #226
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We welcome Mike Harland back to the podcast to discuss a trend we’ve noted before—the disappearance of choirs in the church.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- The church choir as we have known it historically is disappearing.
- Church choirs are doing less presentational music and more congregational leadership signing.
- The line between choir and praise team has blurred in many churches.
- The choir ministry should be a disciple-making ministry, not a performance ministry.
- Many churches don’t have choirs because they don’t have someone to lead the choir.
- In the early stages of a church’s life, the entire congregation is the choir.
- The largest choir in every church is the congregation.
The four areas Mike addresses are:
- What is a “choir?” and are we sure they are disappearing? (Role and function)
- Where did choirs come from? (Biblical and historical view of choirs)
- Strategy or necessity? (The leadership gap)
- The largest choir of every church. (Congregational singing)
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of I Will.
Dr. Rainer, as a pastor, I would find it extremely helpful if you and your most recent guest would dialogue in a podcast about the relationship between pastor and minister of music, or if you would devote a blog post to the topic. I realize that every personality is different, but I firmly believe most pastors truly desire to have a good working relationship with the music minister, and vice versa. Are there some general ground rules that can make the relationship stronger, and are there some general pitfalls both should avoid, so as not to overstep? How should pastors exercise leadership with reference to the music/worship ministry without coming across as micro-managing? Should a pastor ever put the proverbial pastoral foot down, and, if so, when and how? How does a pastor deal with “territorialism,” if it exists on the part of a staff person (with specific reference to the music ministry), and how does a pastor create a church staff culture in which the other ministerial staff people are open to dialogue and/or constructive criticism with reference to their specific area of ministry? These are just sample questions. Again, I believe most pastors and worship leaders truly desire to work well with one another, although I do recall at least one old joke about the pastor and music minister having a strained relationship. Your thoughts?
How odd. I just finished reading the book, “The Deliberate Church” by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander (2005) and they spend a couple pages (pages 116-117) saying much the same thing about choirs as performance rather than worship, saying the congregation is the choir much as your blog says,
Thank you for this great podcast. I love the concept of the choir becoming the praise team. That has truly been the shift within our organization. The only issue we are facing is that it is much more difficult to build a choir when you are not offering a “performance” opportunity regularly. Our choir attendance used to be around 125+ (about 10% of the congregation at the time) while now that we have switched to a “Worship leader” model to choir it has settled at about 50 (about 4% of the current congregation). We try to offer a quality program with all types of opportunities for our choir to thrive but have not been able to grow from there. I do think that we worship based rather than performance based gives you a better opportunity to disciple your folks but it also poses serious difficulties. I would love to hear your thoughts on that at some point. Thanks again for this great podcast!
Christian –
I always tried to keep a balance between “presentation” and “worship leading” for the choir. If you go all the way to non-performance choir, it will likely as you have experienced, cause the choir to shrink.
But, if the choir can retain the presentational aspect (choirs in scripture retained this element) while enhancing their worship leading responsibilities, it can be a “both/and” for the choir. At least, that’s been my experience.
Thanks so much!
For insights into the role of the “choir” I recommend Betty Pulkingham’s book, Sing God A Simple Song – Exploring Music in Worship For the Eighties. While it was written for churches in the 1980s, it contains much that is applicable for churches today as it was for churches then. Pulkingham defines the “choir” as a group that leads the congregation in the worship of God and which included musicians as well as vocalists. The purpose of the “choir” was to release the whole congregation into praise. She draws attention to the swinging back and forth between performance and participation in church music since the early days of Christianity. The book is available free in PDF format at: http://www.communityofcelebration.com/Books/sgass.pdf
Dr. Rainer,
I always appreciate your insights and the great work on these podcasts. From a slightly different perspective, I led two churches with bands / praise teams and am now leading a church with a choir led traditional service as one of our options. I have to say that the choir provides a tremendous opportunity for new, musically minded people to immediately begin to serve, where it took longer to get active in the worship band and praise teams I served with in the past. That has nothing to do with the reality that choirs are not as prevalent as they once were, but it is a reason to consider “keeping” a choir if a church leader is debating their value. (Obviously, the choir needs a quality leader, needs to have a discipleship element, and needs to actually be able to sing!)
Again, great work, as usual, in keeping relevant topics before us.
BTW – I’m leading our church through I Am A Church Member and everyone is loving it!
RP
Great to hear from you, Rob. Thanks so much.