Kim Gentes

The last 20 years has changed the church music landscape drastically. But do choirs need to be a casualty of this change? Dave Williamson, one of the most respected voices influencing modern choirs in the last 20 years, says an emphatic "no". His brilliant new book, "God's Singers", reshapes the vision of the church choir from performance group to a God-centered, worship leading troupe.

The book alternates between both heart and practical issues of choirs, helping you move into gradual change of developing a choir that can be good technically and in its motives. You will be challenged, encouraged, and wisely taught from one of the best minds and practitioners in church music.

The book is divided into 2 main parts-

●     A “What & Why” section

●     A “How” section

As you can guess the first section deals with biblical and philosophical foundations of Dave’s thesis. And what a clear thesis it is. Even before the book proper begins, Dave lets the cat out of the bag when he lays out his premise: "the choir is potentially the most powerful worship leader in any congregation."  The naysayers won't be long in hearing the what and why of Dave’s statement, as he lays out the facts for about 140 pages of insightful, loving, wise and even humorous dialog about why this is important and what we should hope for in a choir. What's more, Dave doesn’t spare himself in the dialog. In fact, many of the stories contained in the book are examples both of Dave’s failures (and learning from them) as they are times when God brought success through his grace. I love this about the book, because Dave sounds like a real person and we aren’t talked down to by someone who’s “made it”.

The second section jumps immediately into the fray of building and developing your choir with everything from helping pastoral leadership to understand and support the choir (for churches adding choirs for the first time), to transforming existing choirs, how to do interviews of choir members (prospective and current), how to organize a choir (including excellent job descriptions), how to creating a transformative choir retreat weekend, head-chart harmony, singing techniques, how to introduce a new song to your choir, leading a rehearsal, memorization, planning a service, sound check, working with praise teams, and on and on. Dave has packed this book so full of material, the only thing I caution is trying to go through it too fast! It’s rich and deep and helps on so many levels. In addition to all that (and I've skipped a lot of other things too numerous to mention) the back inside cover of the book comes with a full audio CD of exercise, samples and workout materials related to the book sections. Fabulous!

Whether you are thinking about starting a choir in your modern church or need direction for moving it forward from its current languishing, I can't urge you more strongly to consider Williamson's new book "God's Singers". Every church pastor and worship leader should read this book! You won't be disappointed!

Amazon Book Links (Dave's book is available in two forms)

Director's Edition: http://amzn.to/JOHHbt (Amazon)  or CBD (much cheaper)

Singer's Edition: http://amzn.to/Nc1Ed5

Review by Kim Gentes

NOTE: you can watch a video interview with Dave Williamson about both the book and his wisdom on worship leading choirs. The video is located here.