Spend some time with members of a Khosa church in South Africa, and you will quickly discover how wonderfully they sing. No instruments. No microphones. One individual leading, the rest following. Many hands clapping. And how they join their voices in full-throated praise!
This article is not written for them. It’s written for a traditional Western church. Westerners are accustomed to professional-quality and performance-oriented music. And for better or worse, this affects what Christians expect musically when we walk into the church gathering. Unless a church deliberately pushes in an alternative direction, we expect the music to demonstrate the same quality of performance as what we hear on the car radio or through our Mp3 ear buds. Anything less can sound clunky, tacky, even embarrassing. Keep reading
This article is a re-post. I first posted the article in May of last year--almost nine months ago. With the discussion of the importance of congregational singing on the Internet I thought that I would post it again. Rereading an article is not a bad thing. Sometimes we catch something that we missed the first time we read the article. Reading an article may also help to crystallize our thoughts and prompt us to take action. Any ideas the article has sown have had long enough time to gestate. Now is the time to give birth to them.
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