I didn’t real­ize it was an issue in some parishes — we tend to be a con­gre­ga­tional singing parish. Even me, who can’t sing, sings along (and sings along to Twist and Shout on the way home)

As a for­mer Charis­matic wor­ship per­son and then a Lutheran choir mem­ber, when I first started look­ing at Ortho­doxy this was a huge (I mean HUGE) issue for me and my fam­ily. Even though my parish is pretty diverse, we still only get about 1/2 the peo­ple singing with the choir and most of those seem to be up in the front. It seems the far­ther back I go the less par­tic­i­pa­tion I find (includ­ing bow­ing when being censed, etc.). I’ve come to accept it as the way dif­fer­ent peo­ple wor­ship within Ortho­doxy and it doesn’t bother me so much any­more. But, some­times I do wish more peo­ple would sing — espe­cially since I some­times feel a bit self-conscience with my boom­ing Ethel Mer­man voice.

I sing. It’s the one thing I miss in the Ortho­dox church — when a Protes­tant I used to SING!

The choir direc­tor who was at my church when I first came didn’t like the con­gre­ga­tion singing, but for some rea­son there were books avail­able with much of the music in it. I never fig­ured that out; just sang. I still do, although in a some­what quiet tone because I’m never sure when the choir is going to make slight changes and I don’t want to be singing loudly when that hap­pens. I have had many peo­ple say I should be in the choir, but I can’t read music and some­times jump an octave here or there if the music becomes too high or too low. They cer­tainly don’t need that!

Once I had a group of friends who belong to my husband’s church come to a ves­pers ser­vice. They picked up right away and sang their hearts out. It was won­der­ful! I wish more peo­ple would sing.

I couldn’t NOT sing. hehe… I get laran­gi­tis and I’ll stand out of the choir and Sean will have to remind me to stop singing.

That’s inter­est­ing. I think it’s impor­tant to have par­tic­i­pa­tion… but I don’t know it any differently.

Deb:
I’m with you. At the end of the day, I think I’ll have to just live with it. My parish is about one-third Ara­bic, and though these guys have incred­i­ble rich, full voices when they want to use them, it seems like a lot of them just don’t think they’re *sup­posed* to be singing in church. (sigh)

By the way, that’s not to say it’s quiet in our church. Loud-mouthed choir direc­tor (me) + out-there choir singers = Big, Happy Noise in Church. I just wish the con­gre­ga­tion would join the fun.

AC:
I’ve heard that there are choir direc­tors and even clergy who really dis­cour­age con­gre­ga­tional singing. In that case, the church is just out of luck, of course.

It’s inter­est­ing that you had a group that just joined in for a ser­vice. The incli­na­tion and abil­ity to join in with group singing is some­thing that runs in fam­i­lies, I’ve noticed, and in close-knit groups. But it’s hard to get it started before those guys show up. My fear is that if they DO show up, they’ll think that they’re not sup­posed to sing because other peo­ple don’t do it much. Argh!

Erica:
Well, thank heaven for bois­ter­ous red­heads! I love hear­ing peo­ple in the con­gre­ga­tion who just plain love to sing. And often, I’ll have other parish­ioners tell me hap­pily about so-and-so next to them who was singing so beau­ti­fully in the ser­vice. Their idea is that I should grab my choir director’s hook and nab them, I guess, but I’m always think­ing, “Hooray! Next week when they start in, YOU JOIN IN.”

Mimi:
Is your church just nat­u­rally like that, or have they done things to encour­age con­gre­ga­tional singing?

My old home parish of <a href+“http://www.christisrisen.org/index.html&quot; rel=“nofollow”>Holy Res­ur­rec­tion in Indi­ana DEFINITELY didn’t have any prob­lems with singing and con­gre­ga­tion and choir would darn near raise the roof. So I know these churches are out there. I just don’t know how you get from one type to the other.

I think it is true that for some of us it’s just what we do. I couldn’t *not* sing in church…it’s a part of who I am. Anam Cara reminded me of my daughter’s wed­ding. My husband’s sister’s fam­ily just joined right in on the “Lord Have Mercy’s”. They are a fam­ily of singers and lead their semi-liturgical church in wor­ship. For them it was nat­ural to do so, and I so appreciated.

My first DL was at Terry’s church in Linthicum. Found myself singing even though I didn’t tech­ni­cally “know” the words… and not just the “Lord Have Mercy’s”… so much is right from scrip­ture… it ain’t hard to fol­low along and join in. And FWIW, there were no hym­nals, and Terry IS in the choir… so singing is his deal, too. Deb’s church is great and has a great choir… but it’s not the only place where some folks will look at you as you sing along and your eyes are clearly say­ing, “Hey… aren’t we sup­posed to be singing?” and then one of the babushkas will whis­per, “We don’t sing here. We have a choir.” Got it.

Will admit that Terry hits that one on the nose: I think as a “inquirer” you tend to think if they aren’t singing… their minds (hearts?) are else­where. But it’s not JUST the singing… it’s the prayers, too, and whether everyone’s chim­ing in here as well. But then we sing a lot of our prayers… so the divid­ing line isn’t as clean as it was in protes­tant land.

Agree with Deb that this made a huge dif­fer­ence. One of the things I like about the Anti­ochian juris­dic­tion is we sing the Creed where some of the other don’t. Mission-size parishes have some­thing going for them in this regard in that every voice is really needed… and encour­aged. I think you’re the odd man out if you’re NOT singing.

And FWIW in the goofy West­ern Rite, every­one sings. I mean every­one. Even those whose…challenged by the bucket con­cept. And some­times these folks are espe­cially enthu­si­as­tic and off key. Lord help us. I actu­ally find some of the music less com­pelling in the West­ern Rite… but it may be the acoustics. ‘Cause when we get the right set­ting… it’s great. But in the mean­time, we have those handy old monk­ish say­ings about learn­ing to appre­ci­ate the off-key voice by focus­ing more intently on your prayer… by real­iz­ing that this, too, is part of giv­ing full praise to God… this is some­thing miss­ing in those more reluc­tant places.. or at least in part.

James, you men­tioned the bucket con­cept — is that the one that has a Han­del on it?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.…

If things were done to encour­age con­gre­ga­tional singing, it was before my time — it has always been the way it has been done.
But hav­ing read the com­ments, I have seen other parishes now that I think about it, where the choir or chanter is singing with­out the con­gre­ga­tion, but, blush, I always sing along even then.
Our parish is also Holy Res­ur­rec­tion — maybe it is just the name? Grin

(since I’ve been there — I left that part out)

It seems like one thing that helps turn a non-singing con­gre­ga­tion into a singing con­gre­ga­tion is just to have peo­ple that go for it. We def­i­nitely have peo­ple like that, but they tend to end up in the choir. Not that I’m sorry to have them, but I wish we could seed the con­gre­ga­tion with some ringers. Oh well. If we keep grow­ing, it’ll hap­pen by default. We’re run­ning out of room in the choir area, so they’ll just have to stay out in the con­gre­ga­tion. Ha!