How do I teach this anthem to my choir?

It's a question we've all asked ourselves at one point or another. And truth be told, the rehearsal process for a church choir can be a bit ambiguous. It's sort of like working with a school choir, except they're volunteer adults and you probably have a mix of ages and levels (some might not even read music). Oh, and you need to have something ready to sing every Sunday.

What's a choir director to do? How can you teach something effectively and meaningfully in a short amount of time?

My secret weapon? Start early. I try to give myself plenty of time to introduce, rehearse, and polish an before singing it in worship, so I often introduce it at least four weeks in advance.

I like to spend several weeks working on an anthem in rehearsal - not because it takes the choir a month to learn something new but because it allows us to focus on different elements each week. You'll notice below that my process for rehearsing the anthem is different each week. This keeps our rehearsals varied and interesting - working on several different anthems (in different stages) in rotation each week.

This fall, SD and I are starting an intergenerational (youth and adult) choir at our church. The church has a strong children's choir program (through 6th grade) and a good size adult choir (30-40). Our program is a short, 8-week session designed for people who love to sing - no prior experience necessary. We meet once a week for an hour and at the end of the session, we'll combine with the adult and children's choirs to sing an anthem in worship.

We created this group for people that like to sing but feel uncomfortable jumping right into the adult choir, those who can't make Wednesday night rehearsals or don't feel they can make the year-long commitment, and those who've never formally sung in a choir but want the experience.

It sounded good on paper.

We gave the invitation by email, print mailings, and the weekly bulletin. We made an announcement in church one Sunday. We shook hands with people we didn't know at Coffee Hour.

One week before our first rehearsal, we had four people signed up.