Song-Leading Heresy

In a recent Methodist Musicians' Listservdiscussion on directing congregational singing, someone wrote, "I sing in a community choir and the director constantly has to say 'hold your music up, look up' or our heads are buried in the paper. If my choir cannot be taught to look up without constant reminders, then I'm very skeptical that a congregation (many of whom don't want to sing!) can be taught to do so."

I'd like to challenge a few commonly-held assumptions about this and perhaps, in the process, skirt the boundaries of church music heresy.

In choral singing, there is a real need for singers to constantly shift their gaze from music to director. It is better to memorize as much of the music as possible to free the singer to be led by the director. Only by so doing can a choir come together to make the performance the best it can possibly be, unifying all of its efforts at tempo, volume, tone, attack, cut-off, phrasing, and so on. Most of us would agree that this is a given in choral singing.

Church music directors and song leaders have brought this "given" into the church and applied it to congregational singing. Many of us insist that our people watch us for direction as to how to sing the hymns for the same reasons the choral director has the choir watch him or her. And in situations where there is no song leader physically directing, the task of leading goes to the organ, piano, or other accompanying instruments. It is the accompanist who determines how a hymn is to be sung, and this person leads the congregation accordingly.

I want to reconsider that determining role of the song leader. I want to question whether song leaders should even be interpreting a hymn and then leading the people to follow those determinations.

Hymns are the people's music. My responsibility as song leader should not be to impose my interpretation on the congregation. My responsibility should be to, as best as I am able, ascertain the congregation's voice and then help the people maximize it. Congregations differ. Some enjoy loud, fast, energetic interpretations; others will be more moderate. Some like gospel songs, traditional hymns, cutting-edge alternative styles, contemplative chants. Others don't. That doesn't mean we shouldn't lead congregations into new songs or new interpretive territory. That is also part of our job. The determining role of the choral director is primary. The determining role of worship song leader is secondary to other considerations.

If that is true, and I believe it is, then there must be some freedom of interpretation for the congregation— as a group as well as individual singers—to express the hymn in their own voice within the communal act of singing. How do we do that? How do we allow and promote that individual freedom within the community's constraints? Here are six suggestions:

• Listen harder as you lead the congregation and allow youself to be led by the people, even as you are leading them.
• Learn the idiosyncrasies and music patterns of your congregation— what are they accustomed to—and include them. Affirm them. You don't have to be slaves to them, but don't make the same mistake some new pastors make during the first month of a new appointment by completely trashing everything the last pastor did and making all things new.
• Pay more attention to the meaning of the text, the mood of the music, and the overall expressiveness of any particular phrase or verse.
• Work VERY closely with the accompanist(s) in rehearsal.
• Spend considerable time rehearsing these things with the choir prior to singing them with the congregation in worship. Let the choir in on what's going on—that this is how THEY serve as worship and song leaders.
• If you are using a stanza or two of a hymn as a choir warm-up, or if you are quickly singing through Sunday's hymns during choir rehearsal before you get down to the REAL business of rehearsing the anthems for the coming weeks, then change your emphasis and give much more time to the hymns. Many of us give lip service to the idea that the congregation is the FIRST CHOIR, while giving our budgets and choir rehearsal time to choral music.