Thoughts on Volume in Worship Services

This morning at our staff meeting we read an anonymous comment card from someone in the congregation that said that the sound of the music was too loud in the worship service.

Just as a quick aside to this post: Don’t write anonymous comment cards. It’s thoroughly unbiblical since Matthew 18 implicitly exhorts us to deal with our concerns with someone else (or anything dealing with relationships) face to face. God is in the business of love, and wants us to love each other. Anonymous comment cards undercut the possibility of learning and growing together simply because we don’t’ know who the person is that we need to communicate with. Take the risk of love and talk to someone that you disagree with face to face! Pragmatically speaking, I have almost always seen that great spiritual fruit is bore when we believe and obey God's way of doing confrontation.

I am also perplexed as to why one small comment from among 1000 people can garner so much attention. It’s probably just a matter of “the squeaky wheel getting the grease”, but we need to remember that for every negative comment there are probably 50 people or so who think the opposite and just didn’t’ write it on a comment card. Unfortunately, most of us (myself included) are quicker to complain than we are to praise.

On to the sound issues…

How do we discern what is appropriate volume levels in a church service? Like most issues in New Testament worship, we don’t have a large amount of prescriptive material to work with, thus we are called to use good wisdom to ascertain was is appropriate.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Some would argue that the sound of our voices in worship should be primary. “People need to be able to hear themselves and others around them singing”, they might say. These folks might argue that amplified music detracts from worship because of the potential of our voices becoming drowned out by loud guitars, etc. I would submit that the opposite could also be true in the case of those who are not as musical or confident in singing. My wife, for example, would readily admit that she is not the greatest singer in the world and when she can hear herself and she knows that everyone around her could potentially hear her as well, this may cause her to sing softer due to insecurity. I believe that music that is louder (within reason) can bring an energy to a worship service and in fact encourage people to sing with passion. I was recently at a conference where it was clear that the leadership was very cautious of “loudness” in worship. There were many musicians on stage attempting to play in a pop-rock form, but it lacked so much energy that it was simply awkward and distracting.

2. Along these lines we need to be careful that we do not emasculate the genre that we are using (which is what I thought they were doing at that conference). All art forms have a history and we need to be careful to respect and not redefine the form too drastically. If I were to play polka music I would seek to figure out what polka music is usually defined as and do that. If I am going to play be-bop music, (jazz from the late 40’s and 50’s) I would need to figure out what one needs to “say” to speak that musically language and then seek to communicate using the right “words” to be true to the language. In the church where I lead, we use a pop-rock form for much of our music. The leadership hired me partly because they knew this is what I would bring. Rock music inherently needs to be played with a certain visceral energy and can’t be “felt” apart from a relative degree of volume that communicates this. If we are going to continue to use this form then we need to seek to do justice to the form, or else find a new form.

3. As with most issues, the issue of volume in worship is a subjective one. Who defines what “loud” is? We can go round and round on these types of discussions. What I come down to is that ultimately our people have to trust our leadership and those that the leadership has enabled to oversee ministry. If they don’t, they need to find a new church. Our soundperson can’t always be trying to please every sonic whim of the people in our congregation. This would be utterly paralyzing. He (or she) needs to be freed up to mix the sound in a way that he/she deems is appropriate (if he is way off then why was he hired in the first place?) and if he is not consistently doing a satisfactory job at this then the leadership needs to find a new soundperson. Fortunately for the church where I serve, I feel as though our soundperson is doing a great job and consistently accomplishes a good mix for worship. My suggestion for our church is that our soundperson should report to one or two key people in leadership to “check-in” and see what their perception is of the volume level. After that, basically our soundperson doesn’t need to listen to the opinions of anyone else. This seems to be the mode of operation for every other area of ministry in our church. Ministry leaders don't receive direct evaluation from the whole congregation, they get evaluated by the elder board of our church and more specifically by one or two key people from the elder board. This doesn't mean that those men don't listen and interact with the concerns of others in the church that might pertain to an area of ministry, but at the end of the day "success" in a job is defined by those men and not the whole congregation.

4. Keep in mind that a perception of loudness or what is too harsh for the ears is more complex than just one simple volume knob that you can bring up or down. This discussion far exceeds the scope of this post, but just know that things such as sound equalization, hearing on the part of the soundperson, type of speakers and other auxiliary sound gear, etc, all contribute to what one considers to be “loud”. It’s not just a matter of turning one knob up or down.

5. Keep in mind that oftentimes (but not always) “it’s too loud” are the words that are used, but what a person is really saying is something like, “I don’t like it”. The problem is that they just don’t know how to articulate this, thus they blame it on the volume. Think about it, if I loved the sound of the violin, then I would want to be sure that I could actually hear the violin in worship. If I didn’t like the sound of the violin, then I wouldn’t want to hear it. Simple right? Put another way, imagine an elderly couple who would rather be subjected to Chinese water torture than go to a rock concert. This same couple loves to go to the monthly performance of the symphony orchestra in their city. What they don't know is that the raw volume of the orchestra probably at times exceeds that of an average rock show, but the sounds are very different. The latter is preferable (to them) and the former isn't. Thus I think we have to admit that at times our musical preferences are more the issue than just volume levels. Certainly this is not always the case and a sound has the possibility of just being too loud (or too soft) regardless of how I feel about it's inherent sonic value.

The issue of volume in worship is a very complex one and as a result needs to be handled with humility and grace. I hope that these thoughts can help to guide the discussion in my church and yours. Let me know what you think.