Sing! has grown from Keith and Kristyn Getty’s passion for congregational singing; it’s been formed by their traveling and playing and listening and discussing and learning and teaching all over the world. And in writing it, they have five key aims: • to discover why we sing and the overwhelming joy and holy privilege that comes with singing • to consider how singing impacts our hearts and minds and all of our lives • to cultivate a culture of family singing in our daily home life • to equip our churches for wholeheartedly singing to the Lord and one another as an expression of unity • to inspire us to see congregational singing as a radical witness to the world They have also added a few “bonus tracks” at the end with some more practical suggestions for different groups who are more deeply involved with church singing. God intends for this compelling vision of His people singing—a people joyfully joining together in song with brothers and sisters around the world and around his heavenly throne—to include you. He wants you,he wants us, to sing.

Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes--concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations--Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice--in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

This book is a study of how congregational song developed and has been used in the worship of Western churches in general and specifically churches in the United States. Beginning with the worship of ancient peoples, the Hebrews, and early Christians and continuing to the present, the author examines historically how song has been and is used as an intentional sacred ritual action, like prayer or Scripture reading. Written primarily as an introductory text for college and seminary students, the overall goal is to make a historical journey with the people, events, and ideas from which have evolved the various types of song we have in American worship today. To help readers think more deeply about the material, study questions are given at the end of each chapter.

Wren discusses the thorny issues involving congregational singing today: the indispensable nature of public worship; contemporary worship music; the lyrics of different types of congregational songs, such as choruses, hymns, chants and ritual songs; and the importance of using hymn lyrics as poetry. He shows why hymn lyrics are altered throughout time and how they illustrate theology.

"This book constitutes the author's effort to provide a biblical foundation for answers to questions regarding congregational singing. The present work is broader in scope than the author's smaller book, Volumes of Praise for a Vanishing God, and unlike the earlier volume, contains full documentation and end-notes, many of which pursue topics of interest that are mentioned only briefly in the text proper. Each chapter of this book ends with a brief list of questions to spur further study and discussion. It is hoped that this book may be useful as a text for a seminary course on congregational singing, a course that the author believes to be great need for the church of the twenty-first century. Special attention is given to the issues raised in the "music wars" of the past fifty years."

Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, literature, and cultural anthropology, present interdisciplinary perspectives on a variety of congregational musical styles - from African American gospel music, to evangelical praise and worship music, to Mennonite hymnody - within contemporary Europe and North America. In addressing the themes of performance, identity and experience, the volume explores several topics of interest to a broader humanities and social sciences readership, including the influence of globalization and mass mediation on congregational music style and performance; the use of congregational music to shape multifaceted identities; the role of mass mediated congregational music in shaping transnational communities; and the function of music in embodying and imparting religious belief and knowledge. In demonstrating the complex relationship between ’traditional’ and ’contemporary’ sounds and local and global identifications within the practice of congregational music, the plurality of approaches represented in this book, as well as the range of musical repertoires explored, aims to serve as a model for future congregational music scholarship.