In the early days Churches were generally full and there were no microphones. Speakers learned and practiced projection of the voice. Now communities of very few persons seems unable to hear a word without amplification. Seems something of a learned dependency to me.
You have nailed part of the problem. But only part of it.
I remember at one of my former churches, there was one lady that I scheduled quite often to read one of the readings. Her voice was soft – she was 90 years old after all, but she took the time to pronounce each word clearly. The result is that we could hear her well, as long as there wasn't someone making noise around.
Today, we have a few problems :
– Voice projection. Many people don't know how to do that, are too shy, etc. My parents (86-90 years old) had "speaking clubs", but only for those who wanted to develop their speaking skills. I (60 years old) went through high school at a time when we had 5 or 10 oral presentations to do in class each year. My children (19-23 years old) had 1-3 to do each year. So some people don't even know they will be shy.
– Speech (elocution) vs room properties. That's an even more serious issue. Young people typically speak way too fast for public speech, especially in a church. Younger folks have always spoken faster because, well, they are young. But apart of that, they are used to professional recordings (radio, movies, Youtube, etc.) recorded in a non-echo environment. (If you want to hear what I mean, just listen to a CBC broadcast when they are broadcasting from city hall or a metro station rather than from their studio.)
People need to take the time to speak clearly. And in most churches, you... have... to... speak... like... that because of the echo (feedback). And an empty church has more echo, hence one needs to speak more slowly.
– Many modern buildings are not well designed to carry voice or music without amplification. They are dead spaces. And in old buildings, we have often removed or stopped using the pulpit. Those high pulpits weren't the best for vision, especially if you were sitting in the first pews, but they were ideally located for voice projection. The Roman Catholic mass and Anglican Eucharist used to be celebrated with the priest's back facing the people; yet in many churches, the acoustics were actually better for that than for the priest standing at the altar and facing the people.
– Our liturgy has changed. The Roman Catholic mass was in Latin. The old Anglican rite was using the
Book of Common Prayer (old English), with a much more standard repetitive form than the current service. And quite often, many prayers were sung by a choir. So the only spoken parts of the service were the readings and the sermon.
– People and people's expectations have changed. It used to be normal to lose some parts of the service. We were ok following more or less the service the book. The bell was rung at both elevations to warn people so they would stop whatever they were doing (or daydreaming) and would watch the elevation. And if you were deaf or hard of hearing, it was just too bad. Nowadays – shocking – people want to hear it all!
– We have people sitting everywhere, alas. Even if there are only 50 people in a building that could sit 500, people will sit all over. Maybe we should turn on the lights in only the first rows of the church to force people to sit in the first 5 or 10 rows!
I would say I have done lots of public speech (church, work, community) with and without microphones and I can do both equally well for up to 150-200 people, depending on acoustics. Still, I generally find that using the microphone improves on the listeners' experience, especially if the sound system is decent.
