Riverside Church's late great Rev. Laubach explained, in one of our sporadic talks, that "church" has three connotations: an institution, a particular building, and members of either--as in, being a member of this or that faith (the institution), or, going to church (the building).
The culture of Choir is a sub-stratum, like the culture of the deaf, or AA, or dog walkers: there’s an outcry when a college for the deaf wants to appoint a hearing president, or operation is perfected to make the deaf hear. They have their own culture that the hearing don’t know, and they don’t want it taken from them.
Choir culture is like that. We share the intimacy of being inches from other people’s faces, breathing at the same instant. We know music unknown outside the church. We know hymns, and have share a vocabulary: anthem, narthex, introit, cotta. There’s a chorus walk: the determined stride on the way to rehearsal. Much more, obviously.
When a church cuts a choir, the culture goes with it. And it’s not even the choir that’s the problem: it’s the relevance of what goes on at the core of the service, by which I mean the preaching. No one walks away from a sermon or service having decided to do what they’re talking about, and then doing it.
One of my first NYT Metro Diary entries was the one with the switchboard guy’s response when I said something about being our brother’s keeper: "I don’t read the Bible, ma’am, I just work at the switchboard." That comes to mind because the church where I presently sing has this campy guy at the phone, who insists on knowing everyone’s name--whether he knows them or not--before he connects to a voicemail. If you prefer not to give a name, he slams the phone. What kind of front is that for a Christian church? He's much more part of the problem than any choir.