Mark Condon says: yes!

“Do We Still Need Choirs? I am asked almost every week in my travels about choirs vs. praise teams. Is choir still relevant? Should we keep working to make this happen? Are we behind-the-times by having a choir?

My answer in short is YES, we still need choirs!!!! Keep working for these reasons.

1. Although I admit keeping people committed can be a challenge, it is a healthy way to involve many people in your church where they would possibly just sit and become unengaged and not have a place to belong.

2. There is nothing like a full choir loft with an army of worshipers leading your church in passionate worship. It just speaks loud to every guest that this church has a lot of very committed people who love to worship!

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Zac Hicks wonders if modern evangelicals are looking more like medieval Roman Catholics than Protestants:

I was at a worship concert a few years ago with a friend who remarked that the leader up front was singing in such a beautiful and un-follow-able manner that all my friend felt encouraged to do was to sit back and enjoy the leader’s worship of God. “Why do I need to worship? He’s worshiping for me, and he’s looking like he’s having quite a moment!” My friend was saying that sarcastically, but fairly, to point out precisely what von Allmen here is illuminating. Sometimes we, as leaders, can get so caught up in either our own special “worship moment” or in the glory of the music or service-structure that we fail to realize that we’ve left on a train that no one else is on. Sometimes, the worship band can either be so amazing or so loud (and I honestly believe, from experience, that these thresholds are context-specific and case-sensitive) that they become, in effect, the only ones worshiping in the room. The rest (the silent majority…the congregation) become passive receptors and spectators.

The irony, especially for modern evangelicals, is that in these moments we end up looking more like medieval Roman Catholics than Protestants. Suddenly, we’re dialed back a half a millennium where Christians were trained that their sacrifice of praise was to sit and observe priests doing their priest-thing up front, elevating the host and chanting their indecipherable “hocus pocus.” Worship, then, was largely watching the priest “worship for me,” and we may be at a similar impasse now as we “observe” our worship bands do the doxological heavy-lifting.

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Shelly Johnson on struggling with your set list:

It’s the age-old question that perhaps every worship pastor and worship leader wrestles with at some point in their ministry. A question with no clear-cut answer, no formulaic solution. It’s up for debate and strong arguments could be made on all sides.

Actually, it’s not just one question. It’s several questions:

How often should we introduce new songs to our congregation?

What should those new songs be?

How do we know which songs are connecting and which ones aren’t?

How do we know when a song is becoming “burnt-out” to the point it’s time to give it a rest?

How often should we repeat or rotate songs from week to week?

The list goes on. I know I’m not the only worship leader who wrestles with this. In fact, I wrestle with it so much that I’ve analyzed it to death. I’ve built spreadsheets and tables and charts listing every song we’ve used every week, kept a tally of how many new songs we introduced this past year, and how often each song was used in services throughout the year. What can I say? There is an inner nerd in me who loves details and data and information and finding ways to use all that wonderful research to improve what we do and how we do it.

On any given Sunday, our church will host approximately 6,000+ worshippers at our three north-Atlanta area campuses. That’s a huge responsibility, but the fact of the matter is, whether it’s thousands, hundreds or tens of people gathered, this is a responsibility that should never be taken lightly. And that is why I am driven to ask such questions.

Our worship staff has had many meetings, conversations and group discussions about this whole “song usage dilemma”, and while there is no clearly defined answer to any of the questions listed above, I have come to my own personal conclusion:

Let the people sing.

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David Gibson lists the crazy things pastors do to draw a crowd:

A California pastor made headlines this month when he announced that he will live like an atheist for a year to see what it’s like on the other side of belief. But Ryan Bell is actually just the latest “stunt pastor” to use unorthodox means to draw attention to his message.

In recent years, other church leaders have challenged congregants to have sex (with their spouse) for 30 days straight or have dressed like homeless people or lived in a tiny box or on a spacious roof in order to gin up attention, attendance or funds.

This kind of reality-show piety has a history, of sorts, especially in Christianity: A fifth-century ascetic, Simeon Stylites, achieved great fame by living — subsisting, really – atop a pillar for some 37 years.

But the rise of the entertainment industry, combined with a focus on marketing techniques to preach the faith or build up a church, have sparked a penchant for ministry gimmicks that go well beyond the old dunk tank:

1. ‘Homeless’ bishops

Last Thanksgiving, David Musselman, a Mormon bishop in Utah, disguised himself as a homeless person and hung out around his church before the service. Several people asked him to leave, some gave him money, and most were indifferent. “Many actually went out of their way to purposefully ignore me, and they wouldn’t even make eye contact,” he said. Then he walked up to the pulpit, asked to deliver a message and revealed his true identity. Message received. Former Rhode Island Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf did much the same thing a decade earlier, and for an entire month.

2. A month of sex — no ifs, ands or buts

In 2008, Paul Wirth of Relevant Church in Ybor City, Fla., challenged couples in the congregation (married, of course) to have sex for 30 days in a row – just as he and his wife did. Wirth cited a study showing that 20 million married Americans had sex just 10 times a year — and he said churches should do something about that. Hence the “30-Day Sex Challenge.” The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. “It’s been great,” congregant Doug Webber told the Tampa Bay Times as he and his wife finished up their month of sex — despite being parents of a newborn and a toddler. “We’re definitely sleeping better, and it’s really brought us together as a couple. I’m surprised it worked as good as it did.” The church periodically renews the challenge.

3. A week of ‘congregational copulation’

Later in 2008, the Rev. Ed Young of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, urged couples in his 20,000-member megachurch to follow him and his wife in a “Seven Days of Sex” plan, a week of “congregational copulation,” as he called it. In a follow-up gimmick in 2012, Young and his wife, Lisa, set up a bed on the church roof and pledged to spend 24 hours there together in front of God and everybody. But he suffered a sunlight injury to his eyes and had to cut this sexperiment short.

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Bob Kauflin encourages us to choose singable songs for our congregations:

I’ve read a number of posts and articles about how to determine what’s best for your congregation to sing. Kevin DeYoung did a two part series a couple years ago here and here that was excellent.

As the new year began three thoughts came to me about the kinds of songs we should be leading in our churches or ministries. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but it might serve as the bare minimum for how we choose our songs.

1. Choose songs people CAN sing.

This should be obvious. But important things often are – obvious and neglected.
In one sense people can sing just about anything. I’ve been in concert setting where crowds are belting out high Gs, complicated rhythms, and obscure lyrics with unbridled enthusiasm and gusto. Even though it might not sound that pleasant, there’s no question that they’re singing along. But it’s because they’ve listened to it a gazillion times.

In the church (and even at a conference), we shouldn’t assume people have the same songs on their iTunes. Or that everyone even uses iTunes. That’s due both to our individualized musical culture and the multi-generational nature of the church. In the church, we haven’t gathered to use the key that makes the leader sound best, because the entire congregation is singing!

So here are some suggestions for how to know whether songs are “singable.”

• They can usually be picked up after the first or second hearing, primarily due to melodic or rhythmic repetition.
• They typically fall within a range of a low A to a high D. You can get by with higher or lower if the song doesn’t stay there long.
• They don’t have melodies with a lot of unexpected twists or ones that are so bland no one can remember them.
• The leader sings the melody consistently and doesn’t add stylistic variations every other bar.

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Bobby Gilles brings to light an interesting quote on musical complexity:

Kristen and I have written often about the need for theologically sound, gospel-centered lyrics in our worship songs. It’s important that our songs enable us to “teach and admonish one another” (Col. 3:16) as we praise the only true God. But we shouldn’t be dismissive of contemporary songs that are simpler than famous, old hymns. From John Frame, Worship In Spirit And Truth:

“New movements in hymnody tend toward simplification at first, and as they develop further, they produce more complex poetry and music. (This is also true to some extent of the history of music in general). Thus, at any point in history, the older style of hymnody will appear richer than the newer style. However, there is a legitimate place in worship for both complex and simple hymns: compare Psalms 68, 69, and 119, on the one hand, with Psalms 23, 117, 131, and 133, on the other.”

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