Darren wrote:

> I’m told at times our music is too loud. Part of the issue may be the

musos getting carried away and the mixing & speakers being too > high sometimes. But also we don’t have any carpet (since that was pulled

up a few years back), nor curtains (which means we can’t > see pictures on the overhead too easy either), nor any other sound

buffering on the brick walls. The worship sanctuary is quite > echo-ey.

Could the problem be not so much about the inadequacies of the building, but the expectations of the role the music plays in the service of worship?

There are two mains ways that the relationship between singing and instrumentation are understood in worship, and they lead to opposite conclusions about the acoustic design of our churches. Most of our older churches were built with the older understanding in mind.

The more time-honoured understanding is that the primary instrument used in worship is the gathered voices of the congregation. The space should therefore help people to hear one another’s voices, because if they can’t hear others, they will feel like they are singing into an embarrassing empty void and will drop their own voices accordingly. Therefore what is required is a space that rings with the voices, space that amplifies rather than mutes the sound. Things like carpets and curtains suck up the sound and make it more difficult for people to hear one another and feel free to sing without inhibition. In this understanding, instrumental accompaniment serves only to guide and support the voices of the congregation, and should be only loud enough to provide clear guidance without ever competing with it.

The recent understanding is that instrumental music in worship is primarily an evangelistic or marketing tool. The belief is that if people are impressed by the quality and style of the music, they will be attracted to attend more regularly. This view can be found both among classical organ loving congregations and contemporary band loving congregations, but it is usually the latter that gets the “loudness” complaints. In this paradigm, the gathered voices of the congregation take on the secondary role as backing voices for the band. Congregational singing becomes “singing along with the band” in much the same way we do when a favourite number is performed at a concert. Like at the concert though, it is the amplified performance of the song that remains to the fore and our participating voices are only the backing. Under this understanding, a deadened acoustic space works best. Natural resonance is removed so that the sound engineers have a blank canvas on which to produce a sound that can carry with clarity and power over all the other noises. This is not perceived as a problem for congregational singing because, rather than singing with each other, each individual is really singing with the band, and so only need to be able to properly hear the band. If you improve your space in this direction you will find that it will be absolutely useless if you ever want to have small groups who sing with little or no accompaniment (eg. a Taize service, or an acapella choir practice).

So my advice (as a maverick advocate for the priority of gathered worship over entertainment) would be that before you call in the sound engineers, you call in the congregation and open up a conversation about what role they want their voices to play in the church’s weekly self-offering to God. It maybe that your space is ideal and that your musicians need to reevaluate their role!

Peace and hope,

Nathan

_____________________________________ Nathan Nettleton Pastor, South Yarra Community Baptist Church Melbourne, Australia _____________________________________