Paix, I totally agree with that approach. Even ministry fairs do little in my neck of the woods. Word of mouth and personal solicitation seems to be the best method after bulletin ads, ministry fairs, etc. A lot of times people feel like church choirs are composed of groups of people who have been together for a long time and are against new membership, when, in reality, choirs are always looking for new people. A personal one-on-one invitation to come and sing through a rehearsal seems to work best.

Bulletin notices serve to reinforce, while they often do not have a direct result, they do get people talking...and that always pays off.

To answer Noel's question, why are people in choir? Because they want to be!

I've found that what you need to do is drag people in kicking and screaming. Give them a taste of it - let them sing for a Sunday. Form an ad hoc men's choir. Give a choral workshop.

At my church, we advertised "Amateur hour", where anyone could come and sing with the choir on the 2nd Sunday of Easter. We had 3x as many "amateurs" as regular choristers! Even if it doesn't pay off in numbers, it gives people an idea of what it is that the choir DOES, which will make them more supportive of the music program.

MT-
No need for your apologies about being passionate- I doubt anyone here disagrees with you. :-)

I announced here that I was looking for a choir, and another member took me on. Clearly, this is of limited applicability.

At my church, we advertised "Amateur hour", where anyone could come and sing with the choir on the 2nd Sunday of Easter.

I love this idea. I'm trying it as soon as it's reasonable.

I was a member of two different choirs in different cities here in Canada. In both cases, I was approached by people who asked whether I wanted to be part of the choir. There was nothing mentioned in the bulletin. It so happens that I have 10 years of piano, can sing and can read music. Those choirs were successful.

Maybe I should take the same approach in our parish and seek out those who would be interested. I'm still looking for an opportunity to form a new small choir that has a genuine interest in music ministry. Our existing choir is a complete disaster and consists of elderly people (not to knock down on them, but there's no one else, except the guitar and bongo drum people) who - I'm very sorry to say this - simply cannot sing and/or read music, and are extremely limited in what they sing. Imagine listening to O Come Emmanuel three times at every Sunday mass for one month during Advent, plus some 6 other pieces sung throughout the rest of the year, every Sunday, every year, for a decade. And the organ moans and groans with tired tones. I'm trying to resist the temptation to go to the new Extraordinary Mass that started up last year in our city. The existing choir and director are not genuinely interested in the music ministry, it's just a group that's there among friends.

Any suggestions or critical feedback is welcome.

I joined our choir upon moving to this lovely, very small town. I just always have been in choirs, since childhood. How I became to be DM is another story. I was the only person in the choir who knew how to count to 2, 3, and 4. NONE of them knew what a time signature was. Including the organist.

Our former DM didn't read music, either, nor played the organ/keyboard/piano. She was plucked from another parish because our pastor at the time thought she had a decent voice and offered her a very attractive contract (nothing like mine and I have a music education). God does work in mysterious ways, that's for sure.

How I became to be DM is another story. I was the only person in the choir who knew how to count to 2, 3, and 4. NONE of them knew what a time signature was. Including the organist.

How remarkable! That's how I obtained my first musician's position in a parish!

I think of the parish where I grew up on suburban Long Island: no church, just a school auditorium (because it was much more important to build a school than to build a church due to the decree of the Council of Baltimore...), and a little Hammond electric organ.The organists, all volunteers it seemed, played chord buttons and swelled and used the tremolo a lot; they mimicked the "churchy" sound they heard in the movies. When the folk group started in 1970, it was such a blessed relief; they were expert musicians by comparison. My Dad, coming from a German Catholic family that had founded (as trustees) a German national parish in Bridgeport, Connecticut, sang, so he was my model; he was very unusual among the men of the parish, shall we say.

Then, several years later, when I was finally given permission to go to Mass in the old parish 2 miles away (founded in the 1890s by German-American Benedictines, with a nationally regarded boy's choir and a small but fine pipe organ), I had some solace, but I was weird for my age group in preferring that environment....

Now we all want to know the story, Suze!

No one's story could be as bizarre as mine......tell, Tomboysuze!!!!!!

lol, would you ladies just spill the beans,, we are all dying to know

I'm working on it.....I did write it down, but it's too long.
Reader's digest version in process.....

Y'all comeback now, ya' hear?

This is better than Oprah! LOL

Or, as Secretary of The Navy Josephus Daniels recounted Woodrow Wilson's saying:

"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now."

Prospective singer: I used to sing, but I can't now.
Me: That's never stopped us.

There are three reasons why you should join the choir:

1. God gave you a beautiful voice, and you owe it to God to sing to his glory.
2. God gave you a voice that is good enough to be greatly improved and to enjoy yourself by singing in the choir.
3. God gave you a terrible voice, and at last this is your chance to get even.

CharlesW - at some point you'd have to remove the gag. :-o

The choir I work with is a small church choir in a small, expat Anglican community in Italy. There are no paid members and, as an expat community, people are often here for only a short time. Nonetheless, the choir has managed to uphold a certain standard - ranging from Byrd and Tallis to early 20th century works - through the years, and in spite of ups and downs - because it was recognized by the whole community as an important element of their worship. The choir paid for their own director through "dues" and the church paid for the organist at rehearsals.
A few years ago, the council decided they could only pay an organist for the Sunday service, not for rehearsals. The members were down to 7, we were no longer able to pay dues and we didn't have a director anyway.
So we decided to just hang on, do our best and trust that God would "do the rest". Though I do read music, I have no musical training other than being with this choir for several years and observing the directors we have had. So I was asked to keep the time while another did what she could with the keyboard. That year, we were able to do several pieces we already knew plus one "new" (to us) piece by Tye.
The hanging on was essential and sure enough, "the rest" came.
First one organist then others volunteered to help us at rehearsals, free of charge, while greatly supplementing my lack of expertise (which I welcome! I hope I never make the mistake of overestimating what I am doing).
We adopted an "open choir" format. In this city, there are many expats who are members of other choirs or are living their professional music careers here and happen to be friends of friends, etc. Many are willing enough to be roped in for occasional events such as Carol Services or Evensongs, as long as they don't need to make a permanent commitment.
Usually, all that our "core" members need is that occasional support. The happy outcome of this is that many of these "guest singers" have either decided to become regular members or at least have become available for more than occasional singing. Some are non-churchgoers or even non-believers who have become interested in more than the singing...
Another factor is that my personal lack of expertise is compensated by the superior knowledge, experience and "ear" of the choristers. For some reason, they have accepted my "leadership" and because they know what they are doing, it works.
Yet another important factor in the recruitment is the contacts. Emails informing even the most infrequent of our guest singers of everything we are doing and planning with a dropbox link to all the scores. We have a choir group page on our phones to keep up with everything, including asking who is going to show up and who isn't. Now we have opened a second one with the recordings of the SATB parts to whatever we are practicing.
Lastly, listening to people singing in pews is certainly helpful. For one thing, that is how we found our present organist, just because of his beautiful bass voice singing hymns.
All of this is a rather patchwork solution, but this is how we are managing recruitment issues.

If they truly cannot sing on pitch I prefer they give their voice back to God in another choir somewhere else or from the shower stall.

I Only had one person in my entire career That wanted to sing that could not hold pitch. Worse, They wanted to be a cantor. I worked with them week after week To see if I could remedy the problem. But I think the problem was psychological because they would get nervous and then go off pitch. Unfortunately the person was never able to Rise Above the problem.

I was a rock musician who went to a mission church every Sunday, and was tired of the lack of singing or the poor singing by the very few that were doing it. The "keyboard player" was not that good and the teens dressed like tramps and had no training whatsoever. So I asked if I could lead the choir with my guitar and my wife playing the keyboard.
We sang all sorts of ditties and the crowd loved it, until I figured, there must be something more to this music at mass stuff. It felt like we were just singing silly songs.
I searched and searched for music that made more sense to me and I found the CMAA and this forum. I have learned so much over the past 10 years and now that we are a full grown Parish with an organ (electronic, don't judge), and a nice choir, we seem to get a great response from the parishioners and the priests.

We recently have grown by 3 members, mainly because I joined a local choral group and asked if any of them would like to join my church choir.

Currently we have 4 Sopranos, 2 Altos, 2 Tenors, 2 Bass (I am one of the Bass, actually a tenor but we do what we must).

I hold note reading and sight singing classes as well as Gregorian chant classes every summer and get a member or two that way sometimes.

However there are unintended consequences of such a move. They now want me to lead it.