These are some more random thoughts swirling around in my head about church growth as it relates to continuing Anglican parishes. These observations refer to a typical continuing Anglican parish like St. Francis: small, no choir (much less a paid choir), Sunday parish mass with hymns.
1) Most people prefer to come to church and do as little as possible and be entertained. Extremely clerical churches where the minister does everything (e.g. Presbyterian), or entertainment-oriented "game show" churches - where the service is like an episode of "The Price is Right" - appeal to the vast majority of people because of basic human laziness. Older services like ours (and maybe the Tridentine mass) service demand a lot of people, therefore there is a natural aversion to them. We clergy should simply expect this of people.
2) Most people prefer a service that is not only reverent but easy to follow. Ours is very complex, even in its lowest (straight Prayer Book) form. So we need to try to make our services as easy as possible to follow so as to make it accessible to the broadest number of people. I think we do that by sticking as close to the Prayer Book as possible. We clergy tend to become so familiar with the liturgy that we often get bored with it, so we are tempted to add, add, add. But we need to put ourselves in the laity's shoes. Sometimes adding all of that stuff (e.g. the minor propers, the extra collects, etc.) makes the service too hard for them to follow. (especially if they have to go from Prayer Book, to Hymnal, to bulletin, and back and forth)
3) Most people can only absorb a limited amount in one hour. Again, I think that adding all of the minor propers and extra collects is simply too much to absorb. It works in the old Roman mass because much of that mass was said in silence. But it doesn't always work with us. We forget that besides the mass we have: the hymns, the announcements, the sermon, coffee hour, and Sunday school. All of that takes a certain chunk of people's "spiritual absorption" quota. When we start adding tons of beautiful but verbose prayers people just begin to zone out after a while and the whole kit and caboodle becomes ineffective.
4) Too many hymns and too much singing can definitely be a bad thing. Unless you have a paid choir, or a good volunteer choir, we need to do less singing. Why? Time and taste: our typical mass music is pretty dreary (Willan, Merbecke), and adds lots of unnecessary time to the service. There is no rule that those parts MUST be sung, so if you have a small group just recite them and sing only the hymns. Why else? Our culture is becoming less and less musical. Average people do not sing much anymore, or even read music, so they feel awkward doing too much singing (especially of such alien music). Why else? Their voices get tired after a while from all of the responses and recitations; they are also tired from kneeling, and from it being so early in the morning. So I think the less music we have the better. I think it is best to try to get the biggest bang for your buck with the music - if there is going to be singing, let it be just the bare minimum of hymns, and just recite the ordinary of the mass (except maybe on special occasions). Too much music, especially when it is bad, just drives people away.
