Your choir is likely larger than most NE churches! Thank God for for work of past evangelical missionaries, which is often part of why some areas are more open than others today.
Our choir is the entire congregation. With the exception of Christmas and Easter when we do have a "formal" choir up on stage to sing for the congregation after worship.
Today we sang two of my favorite songs -- both of which speak to my heart. The first was Kristian Stanfill's "Always." The second was Victory In Jesus which I don't think I've heard in almost 25 years, when I attended a different church. The words came back to me like it was yesterday and our church BELTED it out -- LOUDLY!
Not only did that catch me by surprise, our Pastor was caught off guard - happily so! As he began his opening remarks he commented how surprised he was that so many of us knew the song. "Must be alot of baptists out there today!" he said. Our Pastor is from Oklahoma so sometimes the things he says is pretty funny to those of us who live in Northeast Illinois.
Wish we had the video up of the congregation singing "Victory in Jesus" up on our website -- we normally post the worship and sermon videos but I don't see the worship video yet. Ahh well.