"Now if you're a practitioner of the true oral tradition, the folk process, and you're learning a song in a public setting and not off of a page, then you're listening and learning and singing along, but you're not leading the song. "

If you are a TRUE practitioner of the "true" oral tradition (whatever that could be), then you would be singing in "true" settings and not in a group that gets together once a month in a church basement.   

If you want an analogy, what we are doing is nothing different from Civil War re-enactors who spend a weekend sleeping in a tent playing with toy guns and then driving home in their BMW's for the rest of the week. It's great fun and should be encouraged, but it is not the "true" experience.