October 2006
Promoting Young People's Participation in Congregational Singing	Show Menu

The effective leader of music in church will constantly seek how to engage those in the wider church community in musical acts of worship. Encouraging young people to participate in congregational song has to be part of this outreach. Elspeth Hannen is a freelance music teacher, church musician, animateur and liturgist and she recently published a fascinating and in some ways provocative study of children and religious song in schools and churches of all major denominations in a cluster of Buckinghamshire villages. Her practical research sought to answer two main questions:

1. Do young people who attend Sunday worship join in with the singing?
2. Does the repertoire used in schools' collective worship adequately prepare young people to participate in the sung worship of their church?

The research revealed (1) that the majority of the young people attending normal Sunday worship do not join in with the singing; and (2) that regardless of denomination, what is sung in normal Sunday worship rarely correlates with the repertoire and idiom of the songs used in school, Sunday Schools and Christian holiday clubs.

A number of recommendations, reflecting best practice, arose from the research and these are listed in the September 2006 issue of the RSCM magazine, Church Music Quarterly. Far from recommending that we 'dumb down' as soon as young people are around, Elspeth suggests that we need to be even more discerning about the content and quality of the repertoire we use. One challenging recommendation is that we should not make young people perform to the adult congregation. If 'children's songs' are to be sung, then they should be sung by the whole congregation and without making any kind of display of the young people. Another recommendation is we should not patronise young people with irritating ditties—there are plenty of songs short and simple enough to be learned and enjoyed even by very small children that can also comfortably be sung by adults.

Elspeth Hannen's research and guideline recommendations are published in full at http://www.songstoteachthefaith.co.uk/. There also is a useful list of songs that work well in worship with both adults and children.

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