Blame it on Glee. Singing, and especially singing in a choir, is cool again. I’m here to tell you that singing in a choir has always been cool. You have to be tough as nails to stand and sing for two hours. It demands all your wits and senses, it takes you to the heights and depths of emotion, it teaches you the basics—and many of the finer points—of major languages and religions. Plus, it’s a great place for romance.
Group singing is another matter. These days, use the words “Kumbayah” and “campfire” in the same sentence and you evoke a reverse nostalgia for some imagined bad old days of stale emotion and forced camaraderie, all to the sound of three chords on someone’s cheap six-string flat-top.
Last year my wife, Wendy, and I finally made it down to the local park in Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood for the annual carol sing. It was picture-perfect: a frosty night with a light dusting of snow on the surrounding trees. It was well organized: lots of people turned out; there were carol sheets and lights to read by; a really good Salvation Army band was playing, a choir was singing. I think there was hot chocolate.
It was picture perfect, but someone turned down the sound.
Okay, there was singing, but a crowd that size should have been singing. Feeble for the most part, the singing was broken up by patches of silence in some places, conversation in others. I know: everyone participates in their own way, and silence may mean that someone is listening, but as a whole, the neighbourhood was letting the band and the choir do the heavy lifting.
The well-documented and sad state of group singing in western culture is thrown into sharp relief at this most musical of seasons. Many of us have even forgotten what we’ve forgotten: the unselfconscious joy of singing together. Community singing is one of those ripe fields, ready for harvesting that Jesus talked about.
We need to be working to build a singing culture.
There are no short cuts. It’s like building a hockey culture: you have to get up early, day after day, and haul that kid—with duffel bag—down to the rink. It’s fragile and easily lost. In most churches, music is strictly a local affair, subject to the shifting sands of church politics and local budgets. It takes time, trust, patience, good humour, consistent teaching and consistent leadership. You have to do a lot of inviting, and you have to try out many ideas before you find the people and the ideas that work. Every Sunday, you are auditioning for the next participants.
Welcoming works; bullying or desperation don’t, nor do appeals to eat your broccoli because it’s good for you. In a church, it takes several “mini-generations” for a strategy to take root. For example, if you have a really interesting junior choir, the kids who are not yet ready for it will want to be part of it. If you have a good youth band, the pre-teens (or some of them) will want to work towards being ready to join in. Then, you have to be ready to make a welcome place for the next generation.
Here are some other ideas, and I am herewith inviting you to share yours. God knows we need them.
Use the children’s time to teach your church kids to sing together. Since they typically don’t haul their hymnbooks up for their time at the front of the church, this means that it will have to be rote: echo songs, call-and-response songs, songs with a refrain. Make sure that the songs are in a child’s range, not an adult’s; give them chances to sing by themselves, so they can hear themselves, and they’ll sing.
Make singing a part of your larger church culture, not just in worship. Find ways of allowing singing to have multiple uses and many meanings in congregational life.
Sing grace as part of communal dinners. I always try to find short songs that don’t have that musty sanctuary smell about them. Songs from the world church and the Iona Community (such as “We Will Take What You Offer”) are fresh, vital and effective. I don’t turn up my nose at silly camp graces (you’ll have your own favourites/unfavourites), but they can wear out their welcome pretty quickly. They also work like weeds in a garden, edging out more nourishing repertoire. (Just ask a 7-year old to sing “Jingle Bells,” and you’ll find what I mean.)
Sing the praises of someone at an event. Sing to thank the kitchen workers, or the clean-up staff. It doesn’t have to be a “thank you” song. Patrick Matsikenyiri tells the story of his choir breaking out into song in an airport while they were on tour and one of their number finally made it through customs and immigration. The song, “Iropa,” had very little to do with customs or immigration, but it expressed their hard-earned joy.
Hold regular ceilidh events—call them by a different name, if you want—and make singing together part of it. Use everything: world song, country music, or Broadway, or folk songs , but as a Christian community make them part of telling your church’s story of God-with-us. Then, after the event, use some of the songs on Sunday morning.
The Iona Community has long held events entitled “Big Sings.” More recently, congregational song activists such as Dallas hymnwriter, John Thornburg, have held these events to promote community singing.
Hymn festivals—singing events in which hymns are chosen around a central theme—are a staple of church life in the United States. Here in Canada, the Southern Ontario Chapter of the Hymn Society organizes them on a fairly regular basis.
Jazz Vespers. At Trafalgar Presbyterian, in Oakville, we made congregational song a part of the evening. We found that African-American spirituals and liturgical songs from the world church make a strong bridge to instrumental and jazz repertoire.
Have the choir work on “singing telegrams.” Okay, let’s keep it up to date: call them “YouTube Live.” Bring them to patients in hospitals, if appropriate. Bring these back to use in worship during the announcements.
At Trafalgar last year, we brought our choir and band to the local mall. We didn’t try to do it as a “flash mob.” We organized it through the mall management. Nor did we try to have sing-along but, if you choose your song carefully, that could also work, even in a multi-cultural, multi-faith environment.
Churches are places where practical things happen: the biblical witness is clear about that. They have always fed people, offered shelter, counseled, healed, worked for justice.
The Bible is also pretty consistent on another point: the church is a place where impractical things happen: praise, joyful noise, storytelling, singing…
What are you already doing?
