Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community

Singing the Congregation observes how contemporary Christian music plays a critical role in worship and community-building for North American evangelicals. Resisting a common assumption that worship only occurs in Sunday church services, Monique Ingalls expands her observational field to include five “modes of congregating”: church services, music concerts, conferences, public spaces, and online sites (4). In these modes, music is the process through which individual participants form social constellations referred to as “congregations” (4). Ingalls argues that when North American evangelicals congregate to engage in worship, their musical activities within any particular mode illuminate both shared and conflicting practices (17).Similarly, multiple overlapping and even conflicting activities are encompassed by the term “evangelical.” “Evangelical” is no doubt a contested, far-reaching, and dynamic term used in religion and politics, especially in the United States (12). Perhaps because of the term's inclusive and blurry boundaries, Ingalls chooses to use it as a necessary descriptor of her research subjects, as she states, “There is no other more suitable term to delineate the large religious coalition whose musical practices [she] seek[s] to interpret” (14). What coherent “evangelical” practices unite groups as disparate as Pentecostals, mainline Protestants, and self-proclaimed evangelicals in North America? Rather than situating a workable definition in theological understandings, Ingalls bases her use of “evangelical” in how participants collectively perform a distinct kind of community through participatory music-making (17).The similarities and differences performed by worshippers within varying modes of congregating are usefully detailed in Ingalls's ethnographic encounters. In the book's introduction, for example, Ingalls describes how the worship song “How Great Is Our God” by contemporary Christian music celebrity Chris Tomlin is performed in three distinct modes: (1) in a parade in Toronto, Canada; 2) at a worship concert on a university campus lead by Chris Tomlin in Nashville, Tennessee; and 3) in a YouTube video Ingalls plays from her laptop in Cambridge, England, while chatting with its content creator over Skype (2–4). In the Toronto parade, Ingalls sees a band sail past on a float with banners containing both Cyrillic and English scripts. While she cannot understand the lyrics, she recognizes the melody. As the band sings in their native language, marchers behind the float join in, singing the song's chorus in English—the two groups simultaneously engaging with the song in their preferred languages (3). In Ingalls's account of the Nashville worship concert, there is an order of engagement when singing “How Great Is Our God.” The venue is completely dark except for a single beam of white light on Chris Tomlin sitting at the piano initiating the song. Additional band members feather in and, lastly, the concertgoers “join in a loud unison in the song's chorus” (2). In this vignette, while different groups audibly participate at different moments, the visual and audible presence of Tomlin is arguably most important. In contrast, the YouTube video of “How Great Is Our God” by a California-based webmaster illustrates a very curated interpretation of worship for a global internet audience in which the song is accompanied by “moving background images, song lyrics, and Bible verses” (3). Rather than broadcasting this video in a moment of time (as in the other two vignettes), this artifact has garnered eight million views over the course of three years, and its creator regularly engages requests from church leaders around the world to use the video for various worship events (2–3). While the webmaster intended the video to be a way of evangelizing in the YouTube space, it also attracts participants to repurpose the video for their own worship needs.Online spaces have been crucial to continuing conversations about congregational formations. Ingalls's final chapter, “Worship on Screen,” examines digital technologies used for what we now commonly describe as a hybrid format—including both remote and in-person worshippers. Arguably the two biggest creators and facilitators in this space are Hillsong and Bethel, megachurches with influential contemporary Christian music record labels offering ranges of membership access from free subscriptions to “all-access season pass[es]” (199). Ingalls writes, “In this new kind of religious networked sociality, individuals can choose the networks with which they want to be affiliated and their level of commitment to these networks” (199). Ingalls conducted research for this book from 2006 to 2013. Considering our postpandemic world, I wonder how changes to modes of worship and interaction have impacted in-person practices of congregating, especially the quality of participation experienced by individuals opting in/out of various networks.From the acknowledgments to references, Singing the Congregation engages a rich network of evangelical worship scholarship. Working with academic researchers, worship leaders, and theological practitioners, Ingalls captures a vibrant array of perspectives on the relationship between North American evangelical congregations and contemporary worship music. This book expands the notion of “contemporary worship music” as a musical genre or Sunday service programming category to illustrate its interconnectedness with multiple, often previously overlooked, modes of congregating.

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