Why Your Singing Matters Even If You Think You Can’t Sing.

Do you avoid joining in with congregational worship in church because you think you can’t sing?

Perhaps you can recall an awkward conversation as a child when you were asked to mouth the words, rather than sing them; or when it was suggested that being a member of your school or church choir might not be the best fit for your gifts.

But if you can speak, you can physically sing. The truth is that God designed you to sing and gave you everything you need to sing. Moreover, He wants you to! He’s far less concerned with your skillfulness than your integrity. Christian singing begins with the heart, not on the lips (Eph. 5:19). Read More

In The Art of Public Worship, published in 1919, Percy Dearmer wrote:

Now there are two kinds of church music: in one the congregation is the artist; in the other, the congregation is the audience.

The art of congregational singing is a noble one. Stirring in its massive effect, attempted, because choirmasters have not realized that it is an art, and like all arts has its limitations—far less intractable, after all, than those of the sculptor—and that it triumphs by and through its limitations. It has also certain excellent and peculiar virtues, chief of which is that a congregation cannot sing out of tune, since the minorities above and below the tone correct one another. The art of choral singing is a different one; and the mistake of the last century was that the distinction was not recognized, whence comes the practice—almost Tibetan in its quaintness—of the congregation standing up to listen to a choir inadequately chanting psalms to inappropriate music. When the congregation sing, it is their business to sing for all they are worth; when the choir sing, it is the duty of the congregation to listen, and not to interrupt by making noises of their own, any more than they would interrupt a sermon—though indeed there is something to be said for this latter display of private judgement.

It is clear, then, that in the average small church the business of the choirmaster is to teach the congregation to sing. That is his art, and it is a delightful one. The choir, if it exists, will work merely to support the congregation, and will of course contain women as well as men and boys, since a musician does not select people for their sex any more than for the colour of their hair, but for their musical capacity. (pp. 86-88)

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