(RNS) — James Merritt spent years as senior pastor of an Atlanta-area megachurch that featured a mighty choir.
Then he changed his tune.
At 50, he left First Baptist Church Snellville to plant a new church — 200 people in a rented space at a high school 12 miles away — focused on reaching a young generation.
There was and is no choir. And that puts Merritt’s current congregation, Cross Pointe Church, right on trend.
The newly released National Congregations Study finds church choirs are on the downbeat in white Protestant churches across the theological spectrum.
Choirs stand strong in black Protestant congregations, where 90 percent of regular attendees say there’s a choir at the main service. The same is true for three in four (76 percent) Catholic worshipers.
But among white conservative evangelicals, only 40 percent of worshipers say they hear a choir at services, down from 63 percent 14 years ago.
For those who attend liberal or moderate Protestant congregations, there’s a similar slide to 50 percent in 2012, down from 78 percent in 1998.
Sales for the music for choral anthems slipped so deeply four years ago that the United Methodist Church’s publishing arm, Abingdon Press, stopped buying new anthem music, said Mary Catherine Dean, associate publisher.
Merritt, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is quick to say, “I’m not knocking choirs.”
A lot of thought went into eliminating the choir at Cross Pointe.
“Practically, if a choir is going to be top shelf, people have to come at least one night a week and rehearse at least two hours. Then, a top-shelf choir is going to want to sing every service and do Christmas cantatas and special events,” said Merritt.
“That takes staff, an orchestra, a big enough stage. That costs money. When we were starting up in 2003, we decided we would be better stewards not to invest in that.”
Philosophically, said Merritt, “We saw where the culture was headed. The younger generation doesn’t gravitate toward choirs.”
Today, Cross Pointe, with nearly 2,800 people in weekend worship, is “a very contemporary, very band-driven church,” serving a multiethnic, multigenerational congregation at two campuses.
Merritt’s reasoning mirrors that of experts who see choirs shrinking, if not falling silent.
People are reluctant to perform.
Mary Preus, choir director at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, blames “our culture of performance and expertise. We don’t sing anywhere else in our lives the way we once did. I grew up singing in home, in school and church every week. Now, people think they are not good enough to sing,” she said.
People move.
Alan Purdum, minister of music for Howland Community Church near Youngstown, Ohio, said, “Our choir survives because some of my friends and my wife are in it.” On Sunday mornings, eight to 12 people and a hired soprano sing for about 80 people at services where, 40 years ago, a choir of 30 voices sang to hundreds in the pews.
The recession was a blow.
“Music is an area that can be cut when dollars are scarce in the [offering] plate,” painful as that may be, said Terre Johnson, national chairman for music in worship for the American Choral Directors Association.
Thirteen years ago, when Joey Lott became been director of worship arts for Maples Memorial United Methodist Church in Olive Branch, Miss., there were 55 voices in the choir. “In 2008 when the recession hit, I lost 15 members of my choir in six months. They had to move elsewhere for work. That started the descent. From there, I am now down to about 25 people,” Lott said.
Yet choir leaders adapt and sing.
Preus has spent decades working to “revive the joy of singing” at Our Saviour’s. She does it with creative choices for music and staging. Choir members don’t sit or stand in a special spot. They don’t wear special clothes or robes, said Preus. “They just stand up wherever they are in the pews and sing.”
And because traditional choral music can be challenging for even the most talented of singers, she takes time to hunt down more accessible music, often drawing on music from Africa and Latin America.
Don’t count choirs out, said Eileen Guenther, professor of church music at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington and former president of the American Guild of Organists.
“Churches are struggling to find the style that is most engaging. But there’s a reason choral music is called ‘traditional.’ It’s been around a while. Contemporary music may not have as much staying power,” Guenther said.
It may be that what is fading away is the “performance choir,” replaced by choirs that lead the whole congregation in song, said Charles Billingsley, worship pastor for Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., and artist in residence at Liberty University.
“We are in the age of church planting, and a lot of these startups are small. But I see even some of these churches will throw up some risers and have 20, 30, 40 people sing,” he said.
Thomas Road, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, has “a loft full of singers, 300 people in the choir. But their main function,” he said is to “be an army of worship voices leading the people of God into the presence of God.”
— Cathy Lynn Grossman
© 2014 Religion News Service. Used with permission.
Posted Sept. 18, 2014
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So, the trends of an apostate church such as ELCA and what appears to be a non-denominational church matter to the LCMS and her worship? Actually, many in our synod believe that, and that is part of our problem. It’s more than a little odd that our synodical publication would run a story like this.
There are small congregational choirs in our synod that are very good, and they perform without costing their congregations any money at all. A volunteer choir director can work with an accompanist to deliver God-pleasing choir music during the Divine Service.
As for adapting, well, the true Church has never been good about adapting to the world, and it shouldn’t be; the Church is not the world.
Perhaps the Reporter should run a story titled, “Many congregations are embarrassed by Lutheranism–here’s why.”
I agree with Joel. I too would like to see a story with his suggested title.
And as talkshow host, Dennis Prager, is fond of saying, the secular has had a bigger influence on the religious, than the religious has had on the secular. Shame on us.
My congregation has a strong choir. We also have musicians that play the organ, piano, brass and handbells to enhance our worship.
A choir is good for leading the church to learn new hymns. I can say that at times, I wish that our choir would hold back and let the congregation sing. Familiar hymns, such as Thy Strong Word and For All the Saints, should belong to the congregation’s voices. As on this hymn and others, the entire congregation is the choir.
Our world’s rat race lifestyle is perhaps the most challenging aspect of staying involved in the church choir. There are newer LCMS congregations closer to the suburbs where we live. While those congregations offer the convenience of being close by, they don’t offer the sacred music that the Lord’s Church has historically sang. So, we sacrifice to drive to a congregation near downtown. This takes a toll on a working family, struggling to make ends meet in the suburbs.
In short, choirs are struggling for the same reason that inner city congregations are struggling. Many who love the church’s traditional hymns are persuaded by the convenience that their local congregation offers. I choose to remain a part of my inner city congregation. If our choir and congregation declines, we’ll worship in our home. We won’t go to an LCMS congregation that has embraced contemporary worship.
We will sing the sacred hymns of the Lord’s Church. They teach us the faith, by putting it on our lips, Christ Crucified for the Wicked. We will forever cling to him and his cross, which is so well presented by the choirs of the faithful congregations of the LCMS.
All a choir needs is a good accompianist. The comment about cantatas and orchestras confuses me. I conducted a choir of 8 at an LCMS church that worshipped 50 a week. Did we have a lot of SATB? No, but that group sang strong and contributed to the worship and he proclaiming of the Word. A congregation that is taught the hymnody does not need “song leaders.”
There we go again building up entertainment and experience! Since when did we have to have a Broadway production to sing choir music?? All I have ever sung in the few choirs I have been privileged to sing in was pretty much a hymn from our hymnal the choir worked on and sang. Usually we sang it acapella and it is beautiful. It is wonderful for those big mega churches who have access to all of that but most churches do not have a budget for something like that. Doesn’t anyone want to participate in worship any more but leave everything to be entertained??
The unfortunate aim of this article seems to be that the choir is a part of service to perform. Any time someone wishes to participate in worship to perform or be recognized is missing our scope of worship.
A choir seems to be best serving when they understand their role as leading and offering. Leading the congregation in their response to God’s grace through song and liturgy. And offering in response to gift of their ability to sing.