If I was in a position of one director for the multiple sites, it would be easier because I would just merge the choirs and follow the religious ed (and the donuts!). But, I'm only over the music at my parish site. My pastor is suggesting just run with cantors only on the Sundays when religious ed is at the other parish but I just really don't want to do that. I know I may have to do it but I really don't want to do that.

I have been an organist, though not a music director, at a parish with 6 locations.

There was a constant and unwarranted push to try and make all the churches do the same music and programs and ministries in the name of unity. It broke the communities apart. The leadership thought it divisive to have different choirs and hymn selections at the different churches.
Of course, part of the motivation was an ideological agenda to keep an exclusively chant, organ, and traditional hymns mass out of the rotation in the name of everyone doing the same thing. Except of course for the historically black congregation who were allowed to keep doing their catholic gospel soul music mass. Heaven forbid the rest of us get to sing the music that's our cultural inheritance...

The urge to suppress local variance and tradition is the antithesis of unity.

Let the community settle where it wants with a merger. Location is a part of identity. If people don't want to go to the other locations, that's fine. If someone only wants to cantor at the church they always sung at and not the new location too, that's fine. Trying to force the St "X" people to be St "X - Y" people will only create antipathy. People will cry disunity and call you sectarian for holding onto a single church identity while holding you hostage to a new hybridized church identity that is just as alien to the community.


Once you know how resources will shake out, just shape the program as best as you can with available resources.
If you only have enough choir to support a missa cantata at one location, promote that and make the other masses low masses
If your people are spread too thin at multiple locations, keep the good choirs and scratch the old.

Do not promote mediocrity at all locations in the name of making it "fair" across the board. Don't make your choir travel. Don't make every mass at every location the same flavor. The low mass people do not appreciate your traveling choir arriving once a month, and the high church people don't appreciate losing their good choir twice a month to St. Also-now-part-of-the-parish. St X will not appreciate that Dan the favorite guitarist sings at St Traddies once a month, and St Traddies will not appreciate that their reform of the reform efforts are being fumigated by Dan the guitarist and cantors who never learned to sing chant but now if they want to volunteer have to sing at all the churches.

4 parishes here. The traveling choir is comprised of members from just 2 of the churches, mostly from the Cathedral. We do our best to get to all 4 parishes at least once a season (September-December, January-June), but the 2 bigger parishes get the majority of the choir's Sunday Masses, which is limited to twice a month because I have multiple choirs to direct for Sunday Masses at the Cathedral. Each parish has its own separate choirs still so that they can do their own thing, for better or worse.

I echo liam about doing the same music. Don't force it. We are able to have everyone doing the Heritage Mass and Missal Chants and that's about all the more contemporary parishes can stand, so the hymn-selections are up to the local musicians. There's a bit of screw-twisting for one of the parishes because their accompanists are all coming from the Cathedral and playing Masses at both locations, so why learn 8 hymns instead of 4? Propers are required as well, and a certain rogue parish will do them, albeit the Sarah Hart way. It's better than nothing.

However we do get compliments when we visit these parishes, and people are grateful to have a choir, if only for a Sunday.

Just make sure you have your pastor's support and that he has a backbone.