Sometimes I am struck by how odd and interesting my job is. Besides working as the opinion editor for this paper and hearing from fascinating and intelligent readers like you, I also work as a paid singer at a Dallas church.
Unless you are a professional musician or work closely in church administration, you might not know that my position even exists.
Basically, my job is to (nearly) perfectly sight read whatever music the director gives the church choir.
In most respects, I function like a volunteer choir member. Unless there is a solo, I sing with all of the other volunteers in the church choir. I am at all of the choir rehearsals and all of the services in which the choir participates. I am also present during all worship, and I take communion with the congregation.
For the past three Christmas Eves, I have worked all night singing at the church and returned home exhausted after 1 a.m. on Christmas Day. Easter, Ash Wednesday, Lent and various other religious holidays always mean more work for me.
However, even though I am so integrated into this sacred service, I do not necessarily have to believe what the church believes. I just participate in the services as a musician. In fact, during large portions of the services when I am not singing, I usually read The New Yorker.
It is this convergence of music and religion that makes my job interesting. People have long considered both religion and music to be above material, worldly concerns, but the fact is that everyone has to get paid.
When people find out that I sing at funerals, weddings, or church services, they are sometimes shocked that I am paid for these services. This has led to a variety of approaches to hiring musicians in religious centers.
Some churches keep their paid singers completely secret. How the volunteer singers manage to avoid noticing that a handful of their fellow choristers sound like professionals is beyond me. Most of the churches I have worked in call their paid singers “section leaders,” and I am pretty sure that the other volunteers eventually catch on that the section leaders are paid to lead and reinforce the choir.
A very small number of wealthy churches hire their entire choir. In this case, all of the singers are paid, so there is no need for secrecy because the musicians are separated from the rest of the congregation.
SMU’s Perkins School of Theology has a Masters of Sacred Music program, in which students take both theology and music courses in preparation to lead church music programs. In this case, an understanding of and interest in a particular religion is paramount to success. These people are very highly educated in religion and music. In my experience, they are also very religious people who take church very seriously.
But even religious church musicians have fun. In one of my former church jobs, I went out for dinner and drinks with my directors and some of the other paid singers. Over martinis, we discussed our personal lives and exchanged sardonic stories about the many odd problems a church musician encounters. There may or may not have been some gossip involved as well.
I find it fascinating that people still have this idea that people working in a religious setting would live fundamentally different lives than the rest of us. Do you remember when it first dawned on you that your kindergarten teacher actually goes home to his or her own family and house at night?
As someone who goes to a Christian church more often than most devout Christians and sees the inner workings of the business of religion, I can assure you that religious leaders also go home at night to their own families and houses. I can also assure you that the professional participants in your worship need money for food, clothing and shelter just like everyone else.
Similarly, businesses, churches have to get money too. It is no coincidence that during certain services and religious events with a high expected attendance churches often hire very expensive instrumentalists to play with their choirs.
Businesses find it profitable to invest in expensive Super Bowl advertisements because of the large audience, in a similar way, that churches calculate their spending based on congregation attendance.
In the end, I am not the least bit jaded by seeing religion as a business. Everything takes money.
If music did not help people reach a higher level of spirituality or increase the take from the offering basket, then I would be out of a job.
And even though I might not always agree with their opinions, the religious leaders I have had the privilege of working with have been excellent people who genuinely care about their church, congregation and message.
They are a force for good in the world, but even Jesus had to eat.
Paul is the Opinion Editor. He is a junior majoring in voice performance.
