How to Become a Professional Church Singer: What It Asks
Churches in many cities pay singers. Some hire a quartet or a section leader to anchor a volunteer choir, some hire a cantor to lead the congregation, and many hire soloists for services, weddings, funerals and special music. The work is weekly, it is mostly classical, and it asks for more than a good voice.
Kathryn Z. teaches voice at Tunelark. She is a classical soprano with a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and she sings as a soloist and ensemble member for several churches in Manhattan while also writing and performing indie music with her own band. We asked her what the church work involves from week to week, how it differs from a concert or a gig, what it asks of a singer beyond the voice, and how someone who wants that work gets started.
What a church singer’s week involves
Kathryn’s church work is not one job. “Mostly, the church singing I do is a bit more classical in nature, be it singing in an ensemble, leading song or singing a solo piece,” she says. She also plans and performs the music for a contemporary folk service at one church, playing guitar for it, “which demands different repertoire”. Add the band and, in her words, “so I run the gamut!”
Those are three different roles, and a working church singer may hold all of them in one week. Singing in an ensemble means holding a part in a choir or a small professional group, often the soprano line in a quartet that the volunteer choir follows. Leading song means cantoring: singing the psalm or the responses from the front and bringing the congregation in with you, which is as much about clear cues as about tone. A solo piece is the anthem or offertory the music director has chosen, learned that week and sung once.
The schedule follows from holding several of those jobs at once. “Sundays are an endurance test, though, as I can sing from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.!” Kathryn says. Her one break comes in the middle of the day. A morning service at one church, a late-morning service at another and an evening service somewhere else is a normal Sunday for a singer who works for several congregations, with a rehearsal before each one.
That schedule is possible only because of how she sings. “That’s where good technique comes in handy… I couldn’t do all that singing if I wasn’t doing it healthily!” she says. Ten hours of singing on one day is a stamina question before it is a musical one, and the voice that lasts is the one that is not being pushed. Our guide to vocal stamina and what singers can learn from athletes covers how that kind of durability is built. In this lesson, Kathryn shows how she uses the breath while singing, which is where a long Sunday starts.
Skill video · Using Breath While Singing
Kathryn teaches voice on Tunelark. View Kathryn’s profile
How it differs from a concert or a gig
A concert is one program, rehearsed for weeks and sung once for people who came for the music. A church service is a new anthem most weeks, learned in one rehearsal, sung for a congregation that came for the service, with the music serving the liturgy rather than the other way round. A gig with a band is a third thing again: amplified, your own songs, an audience that talks back.
Kathryn moves between all three, and she describes the difference as nuance rather than as switching voices. “I have very strong interests in all of these areas of music, enough for me to realize the nuances in each style that are different, and then I have a desire to achieve that nuance,” she says. Nuance here means the concrete choices that change from one setting to the next: how much vibrato a line carries, how open the vowels are, how the words are weighted, how loud the whole thing is when there is no microphone.
The instrument does not change. “But, I still use MY voice! It’s never in my head to mimic some other sound, I sing the songs with the voice I’ve been given… the songs tell me how to sing them,” she says. A singer who tries to become a different singer for each setting ends up with three imitations. A singer who keeps their own voice and lets each piece dictate the delivery ends up with one voice that works in three rooms. For the other performing career on this blog, our guide to becoming a cruise ship singer describes a singer who changes shows nightly and keeps the same constant.
Beyond a pretty voice
Asked what church work asks of a singer beyond the voice itself, Kathryn starts with musicianship. “You can’t just have a pretty voice, you need to have the musicianship beyond that. By that I mean, you need to be able to read music (sightread), interpret the music and imbue it with meaning, and you have to be able to function in choral repertoire as well as solo repertoire,” she says.
Each item is a skill of its own.
Sight-reading. Most church music gets one rehearsal, often an hour before the service, and the anthem changes every week. A singer who can read a line at sight learns it in that hour. A singer who learns by ear is still finding the notes when the choir moves on. Reading also covers the service music that does not get rehearsed at all: a psalm tone handed over before the service, a hymn descant, a last-minute change.
Interpreting the text. Church music is sung text, much of it sacred poetry, some of it in Latin, and a cantor or soloist is there to deliver meaning to people who are listening for it. That means knowing what every word says, where the stress falls, and which phrase the whole piece is built around, and shaping the line so a listener in the back pew gets it without reading along.
Choral and solo repertoire. A quartet singer holds a part, tunes to the chord and blends with the voices around them, which means less vibrato, matched vowels and no solo projection. The same singer may step forward an hour later to sing an aria from an oratorio with full voice. Moving between the two in one service is a skill, and our guide to moving from choir to solo singing explains what changes when a singer steps out of the section.
Motets to spirituals: the styles the job covers
Church choral music is not one style. “Usually churches do a variety of styles in their choral music (medieval motets to spirituals to contemporary pieces),” Kathryn says. Her advice follows directly: “the more you can sing in a choir and expose yourself to all those different styles, the better!”
A medieval or Renaissance motet asks for independent lines, a straight and even tone, and exact tuning between parts. A spiritual asks for a warmer, weightier sound, rhythmic freedom and a feel for the text’s dialect and history. A contemporary anthem may ask for a pop-influenced delivery over a piano or guitar. A singer who has only ever sung one of these will be asked for the others within a month of starting church work.
Classical training is what makes the range manageable, because it builds the breath, the vowels and the reading that every one of these styles draws on. Our guide to the benefits of classical vocal training for singers who never plan to sing opera explains why that foundation transfers.
What to build in lessons now
A singer who wants this work can start on most of it in voice lessons long before anyone hires them.
Reading comes first, because it is the skill that most separates a singer a director can use from one they cannot. Lessons can include reading new material each week, sung rather than studied, until a new line stops being an obstacle. The useful version is not naming notes on a page but singing an unfamiliar line in time, at pitch, the way a rehearsal demands it, and a teacher can set that at whatever level the student is at: a hymn tune one month, an inner part of a four-part anthem a few months later. Learning music quickly is a related habit, and our guide to how singers learn a song sets out a process that works just as well on an anthem as on a pop song.
Technique for endurance is the second thing. A Sunday of three services is survivable only on a voice that is not being forced, and a teacher hears forcing long before the singer feels it. Our guide to a daily vocal health routine covers the habits that keep a working voice in shape between heavy days.
Range of style is the third. A student can bring a motet one week and a spiritual the next, and a lesson on each is a lesson in what that style asks of the voice, which is the preparation Kathryn describes for a job that will ask for both.
How singers get this work
Kathryn’s answer to how someone gets started does not begin with an audition. “Get involved in church singing! I bet there is a place for you in whatever church you attend, if you do,” she says. “Often there will be children’s choirs or volunteer choirs, and involvement in those could lead to cantoring or solo opportunities, etc.”
That is how most church singing careers start, and it is also how a singer finds out whether they want the work: the early service, the one rehearsal, the anthem learned by Thursday and sung by Sunday. A volunteer choir is where a music director hears a singer week after week, and a director who needs a cantor for a Saturday evening service, or a soloist for a funeral, asks the person already in the loft who can read, blend and show up. Volunteer work turns into occasional paid work, and occasional paid work turns into a section leader position or a regular solo role. Directors also talk to each other, so a singer known to one church tends to hear about openings at others.
Her closing advice is to stop waiting to be ready. “Just jump in, I know your participation will be appreciated,” she says. A singer who joins a choir now, with the reading and the technique still in progress, is learning the job in the place the job happens.
About Kathryn
Kathryn earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska and her master’s at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has taught private voice lessons in New York City for more than ten years and sees her vocation as equal parts teacher and performer. Her band performs and releases new music, and a first lesson with her starts with the question of what brought the student to singing, because the answer shapes the repertoire and the vocabulary she uses. She teaches students of all ages, backgrounds and levels. Here she sings “Extremist”, one of her own songs, on a New York City rooftop at sunset.
Performance · Extremist
Kathryn teaches voice on Tunelark. View Kathryn’s profile
Ready to start building a church singer’s skills?
Kathryn is accepting new voice students at Tunelark, and a hymn or anthem you have sung in a choir is a good thing to bring to a first lesson, along with a recording of yourself singing it. You can also find a teacher for another instrument across the rest of the roster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do church singers get paid?
Many do. Churches commonly pay section leaders, cantors and soloists, while the rest of the choir sings as volunteers. Pay and arrangements vary by church and city, and the path in usually runs through volunteer singing first.
Do you need to read music to sing in a church professionally?
Yes, in practice. Most church music gets one rehearsal and changes every week, so a paid singer is expected to read a line at sight. It is the skill Kathryn names first, and it can be built in lessons.
What styles do professional church singers sing?
In Kathryn’s experience, everything from medieval motets to spirituals to contemporary pieces, plus the solo repertoire of oratorio and sacred song. A singer who can only sing one of these will be asked for the others soon.
How many services does a church singer sing on a Sunday?
It depends on how many churches they work for. Kathryn sings for several, and her Sundays can run from 8:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening with one break, which is why she treats healthy technique as a job requirement.
How do I get started as a church singer?
Join the choir at a church you attend, or a volunteer choir nearby. Directors hire from the singers they already hear, so cantoring and solo work tend to follow once you can read, blend and turn up reliably.
Looking for an online voice teacher? See our full Online Voice Lessons page for everything you need to know about getting started.
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About Jennifer Heath
I'm Jennifer Heath, VP of Operations at Tunelark and a lifelong singer. I joined the company in 2020 and oversee much of what makes Tunelark work for students and teachers: hiring, training and supporting our instructors, student support, marketing and day-to-day operations. I started voice lessons at 7 and sang with touring choirs through my teens. Music belongs in every life, for the self-expression, the discipline, the comfort and the simple joy of it.
