Worship in song

Door Creek Church tried out a song called "Sing Alleluia"

It was syncopated, had irregular meter, had irregular rhyme, and there was no music supplied--just lyrics.

For some reason the congregation didn't sing it very loudly. Funny, that. They sang fine on other pieces, so it wasn't for lack of desire to worship together through singing.

You'd think it fairly obvious that congregational music has to be somewhat different from the average songs. A congregational song has to sound good when sung by a large group of untrained voices. The singers need more support, in the form of easy melodies and straightforward meter (and normalization for the pitches). If you're going to get fancy, show them the notes.

One song leader I knew could take fancy Christian songs and massage them until the congregation could handle the tunes. He made it look easy, but it probably isn't.