The diagnoses for why people don’t sing in church are many and varied. I tend to break these diagnoses down into three categories: strong opinions that I agree with, strong opinions that I do not agree with and empirically-verifiable scientific studies. Unfortunately, the last category is rare, which is surprising considering how many “labs” (churches) we have available to test! There have been some great studies on the benefits and effects of group singing — many with religious implications — but not many that tell us how to get people to sing.

That doesn’t mean that some of those strong opinions aren’t correct. Congregational music professionals can have some pretty good ideas on how to increase singing participation.

I’ve been a big fan of John Bell’s theories of how to get more people to sing. He writes about them in “The Singing Thing: A Case for Congregational Song.” At a workshop I attended, he said that he had been blessed “with a mediocre voice,” because when congregations heard him lead singing, they automatically thought, “I can do better than that, and I’d better help him out.” John has some practical ways to get people to sing, including teaching the songs to the congregation before worship (what a concept!) and using hand gestures to indicate pitch and rhythm.

One of my favorite scientific studies runs counter to a lot of conventional church wisdom. “The Science of Singing Along: A Quantitative Field Study on Sing-along Behavior in the North of England,” by Alisun Pawley and Daniel Müllensiefen, analyzed the participation of various patrons in English pubs. They found that people are more likely to sing along if

Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” The Village People’s “YMCA,” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer” all made the top ten list for most-sung songs in pubs. They are not exactly standard hymn fare for the church. (A summary article with samples of the music can be found here.)