Report on “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference
Report from Greg Scheer from the “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference at Notre Dame University this past weekend:
What is good congregational singing? How do we train leaders to lead the assembly’s song well? These were the questions that occupied forty church musicians and scholars—including the CICW’s Bert Polman and Greg Scheer—at this weekend’s “Singing God’s Song Faithfully” conference.
Some of the presenters approached the question as music educators, laying out the principles that have guided their own church music programs. Paul Westermeyer, Carol Doran and Quentin Faulkner’s sessions addressed the power of liturgical music, the lack of music education in the larger society, and the splintering of the modern church’s song repertoire. Willem Speelman,
Frank Burch Brown and Tom Zelle used the fields of aesthetics, philosophy and communication theory to shed light on congregational singing. Especially compelling was Speelman’s comparison of verbal and musical communication. Music is vital to worship because it is a shared communication, in contrast to verbal communication, which is “oppositional discourse.” (It’s
complicated, but it is one of the few sound arguments I’ve heard for the value of music in worship.) We were also treated to a presentation on church architecture and its impact on congregational singing and an introduction to Jeanne Logan’s fabric art, which was beautiful even though it had little to do with congregational song. Conference host Charlotte Kroeker completed the
presentations with the initial findings from a survey she is conducting, which focuses on nine churches known for their healthy worship.
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