Kjersten;

 

I find, I know you probably already know this, when the repertoire is challanging, of high quality and rehearsed well to provide an exceptional "product" on Sunday morning people will often gravitate to it. I, too, face your dilemma and am always looking for the "hook" to get more involvement. I also think that with such a fractured and fast-paced society in which we live it is hard to gain the long-term commitment from many to be a part of something that demands such focus and consistency as a church choi, particularly the younger families at church. Best of luck and I would like to know about any responses you receive that have strong merit. Thanks and God bless.

You might try "short-term" commitments - 4-6 weeks prior to Xmas or Easter.  That works against people's fear of being trapped into the choir. 

Hi Kjersten;

 

My numbers are about the same and I have a few similar problems, but I think yours sound largely like they're more related to communication and administrative issues.

 

1) Choir members forgetting the schedule: I create a schedule for my church choir at least a month or two in advance (and try to do as much in the summer beforehand to plan for the entire year). I send the schedule for the next month or two to the choir by Email and put a copy in their folder slots. Each Wed, I write the rehearsal order on a blackboard and put a box around the anthem that we'll sing the upcoming Sunday with the time of our warmup (this reminds them if we're singing at the early or late service too). I've never had a single person forget when we're singing for an upcoming Sunday. We sing all but one Sunday a month and sing about 2x a month at the 11am service and once a month at the 8:30am service, but it varies every month, so believe me if anyone should have trouble with choir members forgetting when to sing, it should be me, but between these monthly Emails and reminders on the Wed beforehand, forgetting has never been an issue.

 

2) Conflict with other volunteer responsibilities: Do you have a regular staff meeting or even a regular monthly newsletter? I publish the choir/music schedule for each month in the newsletter so absolutely everyone knows when the choir sings. Ideally other staff members or volunteer coordinators could be helping you make sure they're not conflicting with the choir schedule. When does the choir sing in the service? If you have lots of people helping with communion, you may simply need to not have the choir sing at communion. In many traditions, the collecting of the offering is when the communion rite begins, so singing a communion anthem at the offering could still fit the flow of the service?

 

3) Bringing in younger singers: This is easier for me because we have a younger congregation and I also have a budget for Choral Scholars (2 paid college students). The problem I've found with families isn't having child care available, it's that they want their kids put to bed by 7pm, but choir doesn't even start until 7:15pm. You may want to experiment with your rehearsal time. An earlier start time, might allow parents to come to rehearsal before they have to put their kids to bed and would also allow older adults to not have to drive home quite as late at night. For us, this doesn't work because a number of choir members don't get off work early enough, but a different day or time may be worth discussing with the choir.

 

If paying a nursery attendant really is the issue, then doing some creative thinking about how to find the money for this may be helpful. Is there room in the budget to propose adding it (maybe not for the entire year, but for some of those short term commitment periods when you want everyone there)? Is there a way to have any kind of yearly fundraiser for the music program? Does the choir share your goal of bringing in younger singers and would they consider paying "dues" (or whatever you want to call it) to help go towards a pot of money that could be used to pay nursery attendants? If nothing else, maybe the few families who might be interested in singing would be willing to work together to share the cost of paying for a nursery attendant (people value things more highly if they are making a direct sacrifice themselves to make it happen).

 

Paul