The sound of.... music?

Throughout time has God has been incredibly good to the church.  One of his greatest gifts has been in the gift of music and musicians.  Singing is powerful, it lifts our eyes, instills truth and provides a vehicle for our expressions of trust, fear, joy, and so on in response to God's word, our lives and our hope.  A church without singing would be far poorer.

And yet I wonder if that is where we are heading.  Not wishing to seem apocalyptic but musicianship is on the wane.  If you're church has lots of gifted musicians my hunch is you are located in the city or in a locale with a university.  Be thankful, even though at times there can be tensions with having lots of musicians.

I am very grateful to God for the gifted musicians he has provided for us as a church over the last ten years.  Their faithful service has been of great benefit to us.  Yet here is my fear looking around about me and into the future about music and musicians in the church.  A fear that is especially true if you are not a university town/city church and that is exacerbated even more if you are in working class or deprived area.

Put simply there aren't many musicians and there is little prospect of there being lots of musicians n the future.  There are a number of reasons for this, one is that young people who head off to uni rarely return home.  But secondly and perhaps a greater cause for concern in the future is the sheer cost of music lessons.  Due to budget constraints our local school music service has put the cost of lessons up from £160 a year to over £400!  That puts music out of the reach of so many families.  It limits music and musicianship to the wealthy, because that is without the add on cost of instruments, music, etc...  And that will impact our churches, maybe not yours because you're church is largely middle class and fairly affluent, and so music will be an affordable priority, we ought to be thankful for that if that's us.  But for those in working class and deprived areas I wonder if it means many more churches without musicians.  There are ways around it, there are a growing range of apps, but we lose the sense of someone willingly serving the body of Christ, someone who has taken hours to craft and hone their skills.  It also means the next generation don't grow up to aspire to play and so the cycle perpetuates itself.

So what?  Ought we to be encouraging musicians to think about moving and serving in other churches, if we have a glut of them?  Could your musicians help another local church out by training their young, or not so young, people?  Are there musicians in your church who could provide free lessons to the next generation either in your church or in another to fill this void?