Choir?

[Classical Presbyterian]

I have a couple of questions about the use of a choir in worship. Without getting into too many details, I need to have a good, Biblical rationale as to why I am reluctant as a pastor to implement our congregation having a choir. Here are the questions:

1. Does your church have a choir? Why or why not?

2. If you DO have one, how are they used in worship on the Lord's Day?

3. If you do not have one, are there other options for singers to sing apart from the whole congregation in worship on the Lord's Day?

4. What are the pros and cons of having a church choir?

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

 

[Knoxienne]

I have a couple of questions about the use of a choir in worship. Without getting into too many details, I need to have a good, Biblical rationale as to why I am reluctant as a pastor to implement our congregation having a choir. Here are the questions:

1. Does your church have a choir? Why or why not?

2. If you DO have one, how are they used in worship on the Lord's Day?

3. If you do not have one, are there other options for singers to sing apart from the whole congregation in worship on the Lord's Day?

4. What are the pros and cons of having a church choir?

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

I believe the congregation should be the choir and that we should all lift up our voices as one. If I want to hear people sing or sing in front of people, I'll go to a performance or sing in a performance. Bill and I have sung in Handel's Messiah and it was wonderful, but it was a performance, not a worship service.

I'm not trashing churches with choirs or people who sing in church choirs.

This is just my

 

[greenbaggins]

In my opinion, speaking as a musician and a pastor, I would say that one can have choirs. Even if temple worship is obsolete (as I do believe it is obsolete), the "performance" objection could also be levelled at the OT temple worship. I don't believe it was performance there (unless one wants to say it is a performance to the glory of God and not for the glory of the performer), and I don't believe that it has to be performance now. Are many choirs turned into a performance? Yes indeed. And that is wrong. However, if carefully instructed, the congregation can enter into praise of God through the singing of a choir or a soloist. It does not have to be entertainment. There are a couple of things that have to be remembered. There should be no applause. Choirs work best if they are in the balcony in the back, or in some other place where the attention is not drawn to them. The congregation should be instructed about what this is supposed to be. I don't disagree at all with the idea that the congregation is the choir. However, I would just argue that such a fact does not mean that all have to be singing when anyone is singing. I dare say there are many on this board who will disagree with me on this issue. I do not wish to debate them.

 

[Scottish Lass]

I have a couple of questions about the use of a choir in worship. Without getting into too many details, I need to have a good, Biblical rationale as to why I am reluctant as a pastor to implement our congregation having a choir. Here are the questions:

1. Does your church have a choir? Why or why not?

2. If you DO have one, how are they used in worship on the Lord's Day?

3. If you do not have one, are there other options for singers to sing apart from the whole congregation in worship on the Lord's Day?

4. What are the pros and cons of having a church choir?

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

!. Yes, we currently do. It fluctuates, though. Sometimes it's so small that we dont.

2. They lead the congregation in the introit, hymns, and psalms. They also sing an anthem during the offering.

3. Sometimes when we don't have a full choir, we'll have duets or trios during the offertory.

4. Pro: A naturally talented and/or trained choir can lead congregations through music that is hard to sing (many of the ARP psalms fit this!)
Pro: They can give glory to God through their talents.
Pro: It's an opportunity for people to get involved. We have a new member and soon-to-be member in our choir.

Con: Can become a showpiece that actually detracts from God's glory and worship.
Con: Choir practice can become just one more thing on a lengthy list of busy people's schedules. (Our choir simply practices for about ten minutes before worship rather than adding another event during the week.)

 

[ADKing]

As has been alluded to, choirs appear to have been a part of the ceremonial law. It was the Levites (and a certain subsection of them at that) that were appointed to this purpose. It is the people of God as a whole who are commanded to sing in the NT.

However, if people want to gather during in the week and learn/practice the songs to be used in future services so they can sing them much better and in a manner of speaking help others, I am not sure that is objectionable. What need is there for them to be set apart for this purpose?

 

[JBaldwin]

I have a couple of questions about the use of a choir in worship. Without getting into too many details, I need to have a good, Biblical rationale as to why I am reluctant as a pastor to implement our congregation having a choir. Here are the questions:

1. Does your church have a choir? Why or why not?

2. If you DO have one, how are they used in worship on the Lord's Day?

3. If you do not have one, are there other options for singers to sing apart from the whole congregation in worship on the Lord's Day?

4. What are the pros and cons of having a church choir?

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

I am a church musician and have led numerous church choirs and ensembles over the years. I'm currently director of music at my church. Even so, I've doubted the value of having church choirs. Coming from that perspective, I'll answer the questions.

1. Our church does not currently have a church choir, and we most likely will not have one in the near future, because we still have a very small congregation, and there are not enough people to make a good-sized choir.

2. If we did have a choir, it would be used to help introduce new music, or in combined congregational/choir anthems (i.e choir sings, congregation joins at certain points), or the occasional special service.

3. Since we do not have a choir, we have other opportunities for singers to sing. We have a small worship team with singers who rotate out. Their purpose is to help encourage the people to sing and to carry the melody.

We also (when it is appropraite), we have singers or a small group of musicians which are used as a call to worship, a lead-in to the sermon or during communion.

4. Pros: If there are no other opportunities for singers, it gives people a place to exercise their musical ability.
Appropriately done, a choir can help encourage worship along. As a choir director, I am a big advocate of printing words to choir anthems in the hands of the congregation, so they can follow along.
Choir anthems can help teach scripture, if the music is carefully chosen.
Cons: It can become a place for musicians to show off their skills.
It can easily become a fill-in or entertainment rather than worship. (I find this to be even worse for choirs than for small praise and worship teams.)
Choirs can become very clickish.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this a few years ago when I was asked to take over the choir program at a PCA church. After a long time of praying about it, talking it over with the pastor, and studying the Scriptures, I became convinced that no musician or group of musicians should participate in worship unless the music was closely tied to the rest of the worship.

At that point, I began choosing music that would help to teach the Scriptures being taught in worship. That immediately cut out about 90% of the choral music available on the market, and it cut out about 50% of what was in the church's choral library.

At the same time, it became apparent to me that choirs should help the congregation worship better. If the music was strictly for entertainment, then it should not be used. This cut out so much of what we were doing, and in the end, the choir didn't sing every week, only when we could find something that helped worship.

Where I am now, I rarely use special music, because I find it is distracting. Even so, now and again, I come across a piece of music which so clearly teaches a truth, that I find someone (or "someones") to sing it for the congregtion.

I recently wrote a goals/philosophy of music for my church which was approved by our elders recently. It's based on Colossians 3. If you are interested, let me know, and I'll be glad to email a copy to you.

 

[ww]

As I stated in another thread I do not believe having a choir violates the RPW. As far as practicality and focus I do like the way some Lutherans do Choir behind the congregation or in a loft behind the congregation so as to not place any visible emphasis on anyone but God Himself.

 

[Augusta]

I agree with Toni and Adam, the congregation is the choir and there should be no partiality in the assembly.

 

[NDHSR]

I have a couple of questions about the use of a choir in worship. Without getting into too many details, I need to have a good, Biblical rationale as to why I am reluctant as a pastor to implement our congregation having a choir. Here are the questions:

1. Does your church have a choir? Why or why not?

2. If you DO have one, how are they used in worship on the Lord's Day?

3. If you do not have one, are there other options for singers to sing apart from the whole congregation in worship on the Lord's Day?

4. What are the pros and cons of having a church choir?

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

Our church has a choir. They sing an intro(prelude), anthem during the offering, and response at the end of the service after the pastor gives the benediction.
One of the pros to our choir is that they are seated behind the congregation in a loft which takes the performance element out it, in my opinion

 

[A.J.]

Again, I'm looking for theological, practical and Biblical reasons here. And your experiences with choirs and the dynamics of Reformed worship would greatly be appreciated!

Rev. Brown, I know of a church (Reformed Baptist) which faithfully practices the RPW and has a choir-like singing group. The members of this group would practice on Saturday night the songs to be sung the next day. In the morning of the Lord's Day, the singers would not come together and stand like the choir as we know it. They would sit on different chairs. Some would sit in front, some would sit at the back. Others would sit in the middle. In short, the members of the group do not separate themselves from the congregation. They would sit and stay beside their families all throughout the worship service.

The effect is two-fold. No attention is drawn to the choir-like singing group. Visitors may not even know that it exists since the singers are scattered all over the congregation. Additionally, the fact that such a group exists is a guarantee that there will be people within the congregation who will sing the notes properly on the Lord's Day. This is especially helpful if the church does not use any instruments at all. The members of the church and/or visitors who don't know the song being sung will be compelled to sing, and will be assisted in their singing by the man or woman (who is a member of the choir-like singing group) beside them. The overall result is that the entire congregation sings, and not just the choir-like singing group.

 

[Ex Nihilo]

As a purely practical matter, I enjoy being in a congregation with no choir, because then the good singers are all around me instead of in the front. I feel more comfortable singing a bit when others around me are singing. I've been in too many churches where people in the congregation barely sing at all.

 

[Dearly Bought]

1. No. I can't speak for the consistory, but I would suspect that this is related to the RPW.

3. No.

4. As others have mentioned, the big pro is that strong vocalists can help to lead the congregation in song. I am strongly in favor of a gathering of singers outside of public worship to learn the psalms in order to help the congregation as Rev. King and Albert have mentioned.

In terms of cons, I will defer to the excellent essay, "The Few on behalf of the Many: An Examination of Choirs in the light of Scripture, Church History, and Practical Theology," by Rev. Cliff Blair in The Worship of God:Reformed Concepts of Biblical Worship (Christian Focus, 2005). To quote Blair's conclusion,

"...the case for choirs in public worship is no case, but a mere assumption. It cannot rest on the precedent of Levitical choirs without partaking of a sacerdotal theology that is completely at odds with the priesthood of all believers taught in the New Testament. Church history has shown that choirs have been advanced at just those times when sacerdotal theology was waxing (in the medieval period and in connection with the Anglo Catholic movement of the nineteenth century). Further, those seasons of Church history that have been the most vigorous and fruitful (i.e., the early centuries and the Reformation) have been those most distinctly marked by congregational singing in the worship of God's people."