409 East Baldwin St.
Hackettstown NJ 07840
Supporting Smaller Choirs
While we can all agree that the church choir is an important component of Lutheran worship, many of us who plan for music and direct choirs have struggled with dwindling numbers of participants. Recruiting younger voices can be difficult, so not only are our choirs smaller, they consist of aging voices and unbalanced voice parts. What can we do to keep our choirs viable, support our singers, and encourage new members? How can we ensure that we are offering our singers interesting and meaningful repertoire that they can sing with confidence?
This workshop will offer opportunities to share our successes and suggestions to maintain and grow our church choirs. We will address several topics, discuss our techniques and possible solutions, and look at methods and music to meet our concerns. Join us! And bring your ideas, songbooks, and anthems that you have found to be effective as you work with your small choir. Together, we will explore ways to keep our choirs active and to enhance the worship in our congregations.
Schedule
9:00 Registration and Refreshments
9:15 Devotion and Prayer
9:30 Singing Together
At this session, participants will consider the challenges and opportunities of leading smaller choirs, make a list of concerns to talk about during the day, and talk about how to grow participation.
10:30 Break
10:45 Choral Success
This session will center on the many and various ways choir directors can set up their choirs for success.
12:00 – 1:00 LUNCH
1:00 Show and Tell
Bring an anthem to sing through with other participants. Explore how to adapt or enhance what is on the page to work for your group.
2:00 Break
2:15 Feedback, Takeaways, Closing Prayer
Revisiting the list made at the beginning of the day, we’ll examine what challenges still remain and which ones might be helped by the topics of the day.
