Music Survey Results 

In April a survey was presented to the 10am congregation at St Mark’s, in order to gather feedback to influence decisions concerning the music used during the liturgy and worship more generally. 

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey. All the comments we have received have been acknowledged and appreciated, and your feedback is very valuable to ensure we can continue to enhance the congregation’s worship in the ways you are best able to receive it.

We received a total of 77 responses and based on the demographical information we gathered, we believe the respondents are broadly representative of the makeup of the regular 10am congregation. 

Key Findings and Next Steps

There seems to be a roughly equal appreciation of both traditional and contemporary music. There were also a similar volume of comments for- and against- having more of each type. On balance, it seems like maintaining the status quo when choosing hymns is most likely to please the the most people! There are, however, other factors to consider, like the clergy or PCC’s longer term vision for evolving worship. 

There were a few negative comments about “evangelical” songs or worship. It was not clear from the comments exactly which elements of “evangelism/evangelical” we should be avoiding, as it’s clearly a loaded term which means different things to different people. We would like to engage in a wider conversation about this with anyone who has specific concern, but we are not anticipating any radical shifts to the worship or musical framework which is already in place.

We will be responding to the survey results in how we plan the music and in how we choose  hymns and songs. We will be thinking more carefully about how to include folk songs and songs from around the world in an authentic and respectful way. This may mean varying the instruments used to accompany them where appropriate. We are thinking through how to develop our music for our all age services to ensure they are accessible to everyone and especially to the children present. We will continue with the current format for music during the administration of communion, and consider how else we could use Taize´ (and similar) music during worship.

There were a few comments about the organ being too loud. We are looking into whether this is a wider problem or how the balance sounds from certain areas of the church. 

Generally people seem happy to keep learning new music, and appreciate having the tune on the screen, and the choir singing it beforehand. We will continue to project the tune where we can, and where appropriate will sing the first verse with just the choir to let the congregation hear it before they join in.

We would love the music to be as accessible as possible to anyone, whatever their instrument, standard, confidence or commitment level, and are always willing to have a conversation about how we can incorporate the skills of an individual into our communal worship.

The full set of results can be found here. 

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey.

All the comments we have received have been acknowledged and appreciated, and your feedback is very valuable to ensure we can continue to enhance the congregation’s worship in the ways you are best able to receive it.
You are welcome to continue to provide feedback on particular hymns or arrangements we’ve done, suggestions for new things we could try, or comments / concerns on the wider direction of music in the liturgy.
 You can speak to or email David Willington (music@stmarkssheffield.co.uk) or any member of the clergy, and we will ensure your feedback is considered during our liturgy planning sessions.