Choir music is too hard. As schools have cut music programs, volunteers are typically musically illiterate, and the last choir I worked with was no exception. Out of a group of about 150 people, we had a handful of “choir people” who grew up in high school and college choirs and could sight read their parts (out of all the men in the choir, only one tenor could sight read.) Then you had a few who knew enough to sing higher when the little dots on the page moved up the lines. The majority just liked music and wanted to be a part of the group.
A four-part anthem would literally be impossible, so our music consisted of mainly unison with some two and three parts. The choir could then learn the music fairly quickly, so more of our limited rehearsal time could be spent on blending and better vocal production—and wow, did they sound amazing. Solution: Maybe your music is too hard—are you spending too much time learning complicated parts instead of working at sounding great? I’d arrange most of our music, but if I didn’t have time, I had a trick: I’d buy youth choir music! At your local Christian bookstore, you can find youth choir books with simple unison, two- and three-part harmonies for most of the popular praise songs.
Choirs are performing, not worshiping. As my friend pointed out, it appears congregations today (remember, Contemporary is the new Traditional) love contemporary, participatory praise songs and aren’t interested in a half-rehearsed choir performing dated choir anthems.
Visit one of the few ministries around the country with a real praise choir and you’ll be blown away by their power. A true praise choir not only leads the congregation vocally, but spiritually as well—they function as a small group, and spend time together in prayer asking God to bless their worship services. What a loss to today’s celebrity-driven churches. Solution: Learn more about Dave Williamson—read his blog, read his book and have him at your church for a praise choir workshop: WorshipLeadingChoir.com. His speciality is helping traditional performance choirs transition into worship-leading praise choirs.
Bottom Line: Since choirs are repeatedly mentioned in the Bible, my guess is that instead of dropping them, maybe we better figure out how to make them work in our modern world.
