A cappella is going down hill

I nearly cried tonight while I was singing with my church's youth group. Because the singing was so beautiful? Nope. Far from it. It's gotten horrible. And there's not a dern thing I can do about it.

I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but the Churches of Christ I've been to recently have a serious problem. The singing is TERRIBLE! When I'm at school I go to the Palmetto CoC, and I listen to 300 people singing the soprano part. That business started when they replaced the songbook with those nice, big screens where they project all the song lyrics. But instead of projecting the actual music (which IS available, you know--it's called the Paperless Hymnal), they put the lyrics up against nice, pretty backgrounds like (moving) waterfalls or (moving) crosses that scream out, "Look what we can do with all this nice technology!" And then, what do you know? People are too lazy to pick up their songbooks, they eventually forget all the harmonies, and you get this mess.

At my home church, the singing has deteriorated rapidly. I mean, it got worse immediately after we moved into the new building two years ago, but we assumed it would get better as we got used to the new acoustics. Well, it didn't, and let me tell you, it was a shock when I got home for the summer and realized just how bad things have gotten. Unfortunately, much of it can be traced to our song leader, who for these purposes I will call...lessee...Chad.

See, a few years ago, the elders got together with the deacons on one of their retreats, and after much discussion about this new, wonderful screen, they ended up "firing" all the song leaders that wouldn't use it--which, most regrettably, included two of the three that actually knew what they were doing. The one other guy that DOES know how to conduct never gets a chance, though, because the elders gave Chad a monopoly. So every Sunday morning he gets up there and either a) pitches the song too high, b) takes it so fast that no one can sing it, c) changes key for no apparent reason, c) leads a song the congregation doesn't know, d) leads a song HE doesn't know, or e) all of the above. It's enough to drive anyone with a single drop of musical blood batty.

I'm saying all of this because I need to vent. Badly. I am a very musical person, and much of my worship is focused on music. When the music sounds terrible my thoughts aren't focused on God! They're preoccupied with things like, "This sounds awful" or "I wish I could kick our song leader into next week."

Every second I spent singing with my campus church group or with Palmetto, I wished that I could hear at least one or two people from my church youth group singing harmony. But then I get back home and find out that the wonderful singing I left behind is gone...and it's not coming back anytime soon. And that is why I almost cried--because no matter what I do, nobody else cares enough to fix the problem.