Until March 2020, I took for granted that nearly every Christian congregation would offer a weekly in person worship experience that would include congregational singing and musical worship leadership by a choir, orchestra, and/or a praise band. Starting in March 2021, I began to learn experientially about the many ways congregations are moving toward a "new normal" or "next normal." During the first two months Mainline Protestant congregations in the Dallas - Fort Worth area were Read More …
choir
How Worship is Evolving (#1473)
Data from the third wave of the National Congregations Study just became available last week. While the first academic paper using the data won't be published till December, a number of blog posts have appeared in recent days focusing on specific shifts that have occurred between wave one (1996) and wave three (2012). Highlights of the latest wave include: Decline in the number of average regular participants from 80 in 1996 to 70 in 2012, Increased acceptance of gays and Read More …
Reasons Not To Sing (#1430)
Thom Schultz, co-author of Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore and the director of the film When God Left the Building, recently shared his list of four reasons why fewer and fewer people are singing during worship services: worship is crafted as a spectator event, quality is emphasized, professional music is incredibly loud, and musical selections are unfamiliar, hard to sing, or just cheesy. So What? Schultz concludes his article with a confession: he has stopped Read More …