A simple online search for “congregational singing” will undoubtedly produce numerous links to blogs and articles stating reasons for the demise of congregational participation in church worship. Several common responses emerge among critics: congregants don’t know the songs, the melody is too high (or too low), the rhythm is too complex, congregants can’t hear themselves sing, and congregants feel more like spectators than participants.
While there are many reasons listed by critics, those reasons all boil down to two things: song choice and song presentation. Are the chosen songs ones that are congregationally friendly and are they presented in a way that fosters communal participation? If a song is one that was originally written for a soloist, it often has elements in the song that are not congregationally friendly such as complicated melodic rhythms and a large vocal range. However, even a congregationally friendly song can have presentational elements that do not promote communal participation such as overly-improvised melodic lines or excessive instrumental volume levels. Worse yet, if the song is theologically vague or incorrect, it betrays the entire purpose which is to corporately proclaim biblical truth through song.
One of the foundational responsibilities of the person tasked with leading the music and worship in a church (worship leader, worship pastor, music leader, music pastor, etc.) is to select the music the congregation will sing each time they come together for worship. To effectively carry out this responsibility, it is imperative that the leader think critically about each song, both in terms of lyrical content and musical factors in the song. This critical evaluation serves as the filter by which a song is either added to or excluded from the congregation’s repertoire.
The filter that a music leader utilizes works in much the same way as the air filter in a home HVAC system. The efficiency rating of the filter will impact how much air will flow through the filter as well as the amount of debris particles that will be sifted out. A filter with too high of an efficiency rating restricts proper airflow; a filter with too low of an efficiency rating allows harmful particles to pass through.
Some music leaders have an over-efficient filter, leading them to reject a song for reasons based on personal bias, such as the date a song was written or who wrote the song. However, the bigger problem facing churches today is music leaders who have an inefficient, and therefore ineffective, filter which allows songs to be added to the church’s repertoire that perhaps ought to be excluded. This ineffective filter results from a lack of adequate training, either theologically, musically, or both. If the church music leader lacks adequate theological training, the filter by which he or she judges a song’s lyrical content allows songs that have muddy theological propositions or even theological errors to be sung. Additionally, if the church music leader lacks adequate musical training regarding how music is structured and notated, the filter by which he or she judges a song’s musical factors allows songs that are not conducive to communal singing to be added to the church’s repertoire.
Prior to the internet age, there was a song selection filter system embedded in churches: the church hymnal. Songs within church hymnals were vetted by a group of theologians and musicians who critically examined each piece for theological accuracy and musical accessibility for congregational singing. An additional layer of vetting occurred when churches evaluated several hymnals before choosing one that best fit their doctrine and congregational culture. Almost any song in the hymnal could be sung without fear of doctrinal error and the musical presentation was accessible to the congregation as a whole. That venerable filtering system has been discarded in many churches today in favor of going directly to internet resources like SongSelect® and PraiseCharts® to select songs. Unlike a hymnal, there is no filter in place for online sources. There is no group of theologians vetting the lyrical content of a song before it is uploaded for distribution. Likewise, the default key of each song is the key sung by the original performers, not necessarily the best key for congregational singing. Fortunately, songs can be transposed, as long as the music leader knows how to determine what key is best suited for congregational singing.
Because there is essentially no filtering system for online musical resources, it is vital that today’s church music leaders be adequately equipped both theologically and musically in order to effectively select songs for corporate singing. In future posts, I will present some specific ways that church music leaders can increase the effectiveness of their musical filter.Editor’s note: This discussion is part of a larger research project by the author that presents objective, statistical analysis of a large corpus of songs currently sung in American evangelical churches. The findings from this analysis clarify precise musical changes that have occurred from traditional hymnody to contemporary worship songs and delineate the impact that these changes have had on congregational participation in singing. The larger research project can be accessed here and here.
