When you imagine the summer attendance slump at church, you most likely picture empty pews, not an empty stage.
But with around 20 percent lower turnout in the course of the vacation months, the seasonal slump also affects the supply of the volunteer musicians that many churches depend on for worship each week.
In the midst of vacations, camps, conferences, and other activities, assembling a worship band—especially over a vacation weekend like Memorial Day, Independence Day, or Labor Day—is harder when more people head out of town.
In Owosso, Michigan, it’s not unusual for people to spend almost every weekend between May and September at cabins on the Great Lakes.
“Many of our volunteers either go up north, or simply don’t need to commit,” said Glenn Rupert, pastor of worship and inventive arts at GracePointe Church, a Wesleyan community of roughly 200. “If we don’t have significant depth on our team, certain times of 12 months are hard. Sometimes it’s just me and a piano.”
Megachurches with multiple bands or large teams of musicians can normally make it through the summer with none noticeable interruptions, but small and mid-sized churches like Rupert’s can find themselves scrambling to place a band together or to search out another—possibly even skipping corporate singing altogether.
On Memorial Day weekend this 12 months, when Rupert went out of town, GracePointe opted to skip live worship and play instrumental music (William Augusto’s album Soaking in His Presence) during a “Come and Go Communion” service.
Members could come and take part in a written guided meditation on Joshua 3–4 (the story of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River and constructing a stone memorial) and receive Communion from a church staff member.
For the church staff and volunteers, the week was a welcome respite from struggling to place together a Sunday service without enough help. The drop-in service took minimal planning, and there was no scrambling to practice with a skeleton crew running sound and leading worship.
In terms of the music, Rupert said, “It’s very easy. One person must be there to open the doors and switch things on and off.”
Some music ministers imagine foregoing congregational singing needs to be a final resort, even when there are priceless and edifying practices that may replace it.
“There are so many resources churches can use to substitute for live musicians,” said Kenny Lamm, worship ministries strategist for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. “[Congregational singing] needs to be an amazing priority. There are only so many other options we now have now, there’s really no excuse to go without singing together.”
At Global Outreach Church, a nondenominational congregation in Virginia Beach, Virginia, everyone knows that in the course of the month of August, there won’t be any live musicians to steer worship.
“In August, we dial back every part,” said pastor Chris Cunningham, who has led the church for 13 years.
“We only have seven people on our worship team in all, they usually are all volunteers who receive a small honorarium. We rotate leadership, and not less than one person all the time gets the week off.”
The church of roughly 75 members has a long-standing commitment to worship in an array of languages. Each week, the church sings in not less than one language aside from English and prays for a special country by name—preceded by a brief lesson in regards to the country, its culture, and its people.
For volunteers, leading means practicing not less than one song in a special language, along with the 4 other songs for the service, which could include anything from a Hillsong favorite to a reggae tune.
Recognizing this time-intensive commitment the volunteer musicians are making, Cunningham gives the entire worship team per week off every quarter and invites musicians from other churches to steer for the week. And because summer is already a difficult time for scheduling, they take the entire month of August off and depend on recordings and videos to steer the congregation in song.
“People like it,” said Cunningham. “The congregation gets to request songs, and it’s a break from the standard. Everyone knows it’s only for the month of August, so people stay up for it and plan which songs they need to request.”
What might sound like a final resort to some church musicians has develop into a much-anticipated a part of church life in the course of the summer.
“Someone will need to hear Andraé Crouch, so we’ll discover a method to make it work,” said Cunningham. When possible, he tries to search out quality videos of live performances with lyrics on the screen. But sometimes a lyric video is all that’s available.
“We do every part. Literally every part. Southern gospel, which we don’t do often. We do popular songs from Elevation and Bethel. One favorite is the Nigerian song ‘Imela.’ We don’t limit what people can request, because we’re all the time going to need to do the editing.”
Singing together with a lyric video requires some adjustment for a church that’s used to worshiping with live musicians, however the willingness to embrace something different in order that the musicians can rest has been good for the health of the church.
Likewise, Rupert has found that flexibility and an open hand with the Sunday service at GracePointe has helped him and his congregation take rest more seriously.
“Even if we now have individuals who could serve every week, we should always still give them rest and space,” Rupert said. “Choosing to do things in another way every from time to time says we value rest and we value the people here in our ministry.”
Even greater churches, he suggests, would profit from taking weeks off of doing every part— giving full bands and full tech teams regular breaks. It’s a chance to permit the congregation to note just how many individuals it takes to make a Sunday morning worship service come together. It’s also a method to invite people into spiritual practices that don’t normally fit right into a business-as-usual Sunday.
“Most of us don’t do plenty of quiet reflection and meditation, even on Sunday mornings. If rest and reflection really are values for us, we now have to create space for them.”
In the case of Global Outreach Church, there’s a commitment to weekly congregational singing, even when it means singing along to “canned” music. This puts some constraints on the service—it will probably’t be livestreamed due to music licensing, for instance. Song selection can be limited by the lyric videos and recorded performances which might be available. And taking congregational requests means having to sometimes (kindly) say no.
“We make sure that that we don’t let anybody person’s requests or preferences dominate,” said Cunningham. The relatively small congregation also makes it possible to wade through music requests without getting overwhelmed.
Sam Hargreaves of Engage Worship, also a lecturer on the London School of Theology, suggests that churches might consider alternatives to band-led congregational singing, and even music altogether, during seasons of intentional simplicity or restraint, like Lent.
“We have 2,000 years of Christian heritage to attract from here, where in lots of cases people have worshiped without music,” Hargreaves points out. He offers “15 ideas for worship with out a band,” equivalent to taking a prayerful walk, chanting, making a collage, or sharing a communal meal.
For Lamm, who trains and consults with worship leaders and churches of various sizes and worship styles, there’s no substitute for corporate singing, and maybe an unwillingness to embrace fully acoustic or a cappella worship is an element of the issue churches are facing.
“I welcome those times when the band is gone,” said Lamm. “I can lead from the piano. You can sing a worship song a cappella. Those might be the sweetest times of worship, when the congregation can really hear their voices ring out.”
There are quite a few Protestant traditions which have long embraced a cappella singing or quite simple service music. Members of the Church of Christ have all the time sung without instruments. Many Mennonite churches chant without accompaniment as well. And unaccompanied psalm-singing is a staple of the Reformed tradition.
GracePointe Church’s “Come and Go Communion” lets go of corporate singing entirely, if just for per week. For some churches, that’s a nonstarter. But Rupert suggests that the trepidation at foregoing congregational music for per week could also be rooted in too narrow a view of what it means to worship because the body of Christ.
“Worship is greater than just music. And I’m a music guy, born and raised,” said Rupert. “But worship isn’t nearly corporate singing or preaching. Those are critical components, but we will offer a special sort of service. And it still counts.”
Whether a congregation is willing to have an occasional service with no corporate singing comes all the way down to the culture and commitments of that individual church. This is a conversation that many churches needed to have in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the very act of community singing might be a health risk. That was an extreme case, though, said Lamm.
“The Bible strongly points out how vital singing is, and we will’t ignore that. Singing is the easiest way of putting the Word of God within the hearts of our people. If we truly need to see lives transformed, singing our theology is our primary method to do this.”
The freedom to try latest types of congregational worship might be hindered by an overreliance on a specific setup or number of individuals on stage. Whether a church sings with a full band or a YouTube video, it’s still to the glory of God.
“God is sweet, God shall be glorified,” Rupert said. “And he can work whether there’s an electrical guitar or not.”
