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5

'My life flows on in endless song… how can I keep from singing?' 1

Why do some people not sing?

Congregational song is intended, by its very nature, to include to whole assembly. Its effectiveness is diminished when a significant proportion of those present fail to successfully participate. In the church observations, an average of 65.5% of the young people present during any one hymn did not join in the singing. Why? There is no simple answer to this question. There are multiple and complex factors affecting a person's participation in song of any kind; familiarity with the song in question is only one, albeit an important one. Aside from the issues of familiarity and how that familiarity is gained, there are other factors that influence participation in congregational song. This chapter aims to offer an overview of such factors, starting with those that affect the assembly as a whole, and ending with those more specific to young people.

People don't sing because communal music-making is profoundly counter-cultural.
As previously mentioned, cultural changes since 1945 have altered the status of singing in the UK and the advances in technology have given rise to a society that expects to be entertained. 'In the "American culture" we rarely gather just to sing together. We prefer to be entertained by professionals' (Pottebaum, Freeburg & Kelleher 1992 p32). This is equally true of Britain - 'that we live in a performance culture is unquestionable' (Bell 2000 p113). Round the clock television and radio broadcasting, a baffling multitude of television channels, internet access and the advent of the I-pod combine to create a society in which people are surrounded by the performances of others. This media dominated world conveys a strong cultural message - we, the people, are consumers; our place is to listen 2. The performance standard has become the norm; the volks standard employed and enjoyed before this technological age has been all but lost.

People do not sing because this society has fallen victim to wide-scale vocal disenfranchisement.

The performance culture that dominates secular life has begun to debase worship in churches and schools.
The scourge of the performance culture manifests itself in worship in a number of ways.

The song of the assembly is disabled by worship bands that dominate the front of the church, hijacking the sanctuary and turning it into a stage. The song of the assembly is disabled by music played so loud that the assembly can't hear themselves sing (both organists and worship bands are potential offenders here) - the ego of the offending musician needs to be reduced along with the volume!

Sung worship is cheapened by singing along to elaborate recorded backing tracks (or, worse still, a recording of an already complete performance) 3 or by parading the efforts of children for the entertainment of the adult congregation.

One such example of the performance culture undermining worship was encountered at one of the Anglican churches observed for this study. After the first hymn, there was a 'children's song slot'. The children were not prepared for this in advance, but were invited to go to the front to face the rest of the congregation and take part in various action songs. Unable to see the words (displayed on an OHP screen behind them) the children had to copy the musicians leading the songs. Whilst not intended as a performance (the adult congregation was encouraged to join in both with the songs and the accompanying actions), the positioning of the children rendered it as such, inhibiting their ability to worship and reducing them to little more than performing monkeys. The performance model was further reinforced in this part of the service by the use of CDs instead of live music to accompany two of the three songs.

This was clearly an admirable attempt by the church to embrace music that they feel ministers to their young people within the main act of worship 4. It was obvious to the research team, however, that this part of the service made a significant proportion of the congregation feel uncomfortable, with the result that many of the adult congregation failed to participate, and many of the young people showed signs of embarrassment. A great many adults would not go to church if they thought they would be made to stand facing the congregation with just a few others, to sing a song that none of the group knew. The mere prospect of such humiliation would be unbearable for some. Why should children be expected to feel differently? This kind of scenario is destructive in liturgy, for where the assembly is ill at ease, true worship is impeded and far from feeling included, some young people may be put off church altogether.

Sung worship is meant to be just that. God's people must learn to sing to God, rejecting any practice that, intentionally or otherwise, turns all or part of the assembly into a silent audience. In the words of Virgil C. Funk, 'music for worship is for doing, not primarily for listening…we need to encourage congregational singing…and to oppose the cultural trend that will have us listen silently while others perform' (Funk 1991 p108).

People don't sing when their efforts are thwarted by unskilled musical leadership.

Likewise, people struggle to sing when the accompaniment is inappropriate in tempo, key or instrumentation. Many a worthy composition has been slain at the hands of insensitive and/or incompetent musicians. Successfully calling forth the song of the assembly requires not only a high level of musical skill, but respect for and sympathy with the assembly. As clergy are charged with the cure of souls, so church musicians must assume responsibility for the cure of voices.

Sadly, many church musicians are not sufficiently trained to successfully meet this responsibility, for whereas all clergy are required to undertake a lengthy specialist training, the 'extent and quality' of the musical education of church musicians 'is extremely varied' (Archbishops' Commission on Church Music 1992 p127). In Tune With Heaven goes on to report that,

The training available to professional church musicians is limited. Partly because of the paucity of full-time church music posts, conservatoire courses are designed principally to train performers and teachers rather than church musicians, though some do offer a church music pathway. Moreover, most of the institutions offering training at any level continue to focus upon the 'cathedral' ethos of worship that bears little resemblance to the less formal worship that is commonplace in so many parishes today (Archbishops' Commission on Church Music 1992 p132). The Royal School of Church Music, however, is currently overhauling its training provision, having recently launched four new RSCM qualifications 5 incorporated within the University of Wales, Bangor higher education and postgraduate programmes. These new qualifications offer some hope for the broadening of training opportunities available to church musicians, as 'study is based in and related to each student's own location' (http://www.rscm.com/education/awards_quals.html accessed 07/12/05).

People don't sing because they believe they can't.
Singing is a natural human capability. 'Like walking, swimming, snapping fingers, gargling, turning cartwheels and whistling in the dark, singing is a human potential' (Bell 2000 p13). Even in the most lovingly enabled assembly, however, there will be those whose participation will be hampered because they believe they cannot sing. Although 'there's no such thing as a bad voice' (Raybould 2002 p3) 6, one in four people believe that they cannot sing (Bell 2000 p13) 7. This means that a quarter of the population is hampered in their worship by a mistaken belief - usually a belief held on the basis of what someone once said. It is the job of church musicians to consistently say something different; to identify and reach such people, helping them to claim their status as 'apprentice angels' (Bell 2000 p104), and to raise their voices to God in song.

Young people don't sing because no-one ever said, 'Our song is your song…this song is yours to sing… please sing with us'.
There is an expectation within church worship that people will join in with congregational song; liturgy demands it. Some younger children, however, particularly those new to churchgoing, will need to have that expectation made clear to them. Relations between the worlds of adults and children often have a profoundly 'them and us' air about them. Most children's earliest experience of churchgoing will have included being told - repeatedly - to be quiet. Children are frequently admonished for speaking when an adult is speaking. How are they to know they are meant to sing when the adults are singing? If adults put as much effort into encouraging young people to sing (when appropriate) as they do into keeping them quiet, perhaps this entire project would have been needless.

Young people don't sing because they are denied access to the song of the assembly.
There is an expectation amongst many adults within the church that young people will not participate in congregational song. This manifests in young people being fed a diet of 'children's songs' (if they get to sing at all) as opposed to the standard musical fare of the congregation. In many cases young people are denied access to the greater part of the worship of the church as they are routinely segregated - albeit with the best intentions - into Sunday School programmes. There is a hysterical voice in youth work that insists that young people are unable to identify with anything outside popular culture, particularly where music is concerned. This assumption is false. It is the erroneous inversion of the well established fact that young people, particularly adolescents, easily identify with the popular music of the day. Of course they do - for popular music is a product of and relates directly to their time and culture. This does not mean, however, that they are unable to identify with, enjoy, finding meaning in, and worship through, other styles of music.

Why don't people sing?
This chapter has gone some way into explaining the multiple and complex factors affecting participation in sung worship. It is not possible to find one simple solution as to why people are not singing, but there is much that churches can do to improve participation in sung worship. Churches have a duty to examine their worship with a view to eliminating all practices that contribute to non-participation. Beyond this, actively encouraging participation in congregational song has to be the obvious solution. With this in mind, the rest of this work goes on to explore in greater detail the major impediments to young people's participation in congregational song uncovered by the practical research elements of this project.

Anon. My life flows on in endless song, in Worship in Song: A Friends Hymnal (1996) Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, no.245 Back to text
This constant media intrusion means that it is hard for people to find a quiet space to fill with their own music. Many of the young musicians I have taught over the years have complained of difficulties in finding time to practice as they are not allowed to play/sing when another family member is watching television. The situation outside the home is no better. Pubs and social clubs, once the focal points of community music-making, are nowadays filled with the noise of the jukebox or television, and recent changes to licensing laws have further impeded the making of live music in such places. Back to text
Such recordings are employed in seven out of nine of the schools taking part in this study, and in six out of ten of the churches. Back to text
None of the other churches observed in this study made any such attempts at including material specifically aimed at children into normal Sunday worship, and it is no coincidence that this particular church had the highest level of young people's sung participation of all the churches observed. Back to text
These are the RSCM Preliminary Certificate; CertRSCM; DipRSCM; and LRSCM. The first intake of students on these courses was enrolled in June 2004. Back to text
'…there's no such thing as a bad voice (you can have bad ways of using your voice and bad habits with your voice - and I don't just mean talking loudly during a romantic scene in a film - but your voice itself isn't bad)' (Raybould 2002 p3). Back to text
John Bell covers this topic admirably in his book, The singing thing - A case for congregational song (Bell 2000 p93- 112). Back to text