Singing at church

Do you go to church?  Do you sing with the others there?  Or do you find that culture too strange?  The songs to unusual?  The practice of singing with the congregation too awkward?

I stumbled across David Murrow's blog post on this subject a few days ago.  I found it quite thought provoking.

Apparently, church used to be such that professionals would sing in a foreign language (Latin), and the congregation didn't.  Then the Reformation happened.  People began to read the Bible for themselves, and there became a movement to express their worship themselves also.  Hymns were written.  When printing became popular, the hymn books were published and circulated and everybody was able to sing together.  Such became the culture of the church.

Then came the days of the projectors.  Song books became less used, as people projected the words on screen.  At first, the projected words were the songs that were in the hymn books and other song books.  But, as people came out to write and sing newer songs, these were no longer circulated in the song books at churches.  Then song leaders would get excited to introduce newer songs so often that the congregations do not sing the new songs often enough and do not learn them well enough to join in.

So we are back to the pre-Reformation age where the song-leaders sing, and the congregation doesn't.

Do you find this phenomenon at your church?

What do you think about it?

Why should/shouldn't we sing at churches?  What is the singing all about?

Are we at an age of information overload?  I mean, while there were too few songs, it was boring.  While there are too many, it becomes impossible to learn.  Have we passed the ideal stage of having roughly the right number to not be boring, but yet able to learn?

What do you think?