The hazards of church music...

…aren’t necessarily what you think. My left ankle and leg has been very sore for the last two days. Why? Because I had an hour of music practice on Saturday, followed by an hour of practice and then two church services on Sunday morning. And because I play the keyboard while standing up, and I pedal with the right foot, which means I end up doing a lot of standing and flexing on my left leg.

Do they have special workouts so I can prepare better for this type of strain? This is not the way I thought a commitment to playing in the worship band would wear me down.

Building a worship team

One of my big initial tasks for Imago Christi is to figure out the worship team situation. Music is going to be an important part of our church “feel”. I had to select a word carefully there. Music won’t be the most important part of the church, not by a long shot. Nor will it be the most important part of the worship service. But music sets the tone, the “feel”, for the service and the congregation. Our music at Imago needs to draw from both ancient and modern, to be current musically while capturing the richness of two millenia of church tradition, wisdom, and teaching.

With that mental framework in place I start to look for musicians and vocalists. In the end I picture a small band; drums, a guitar or two, keyboard, bass, and a few vocals. But we’ll start smaller than that. It looks like our inaugural service will be keys, (conga) drums, and maybe an acoustic guitar. Three of us on vocals. We’ll see where it goes from there. I’m a lousy recruiter. I hate asking people to do things. I want people who are self-motivated and want to participate on the team. When God brings them, we’ll add them in. Am I being naive about this?

First practice is Thursday night. I can’t wait.

One last time...

This Sunday will be my last Sunday to lead worship at Noelridge for a while. It has been a while since I made the official announcement, and I think in the interim some good strides have been made to get things organized and prepared for my departure. I’m sure there will still be some kinks to work out, some things I’ve forgotten and the like, but they’ll get the figured out, and I’ll be available to answer questions.

I’m looking forward to the break. Suddenly my Monday afternoons are free from staff meetings (though I may still attend from time to time), my Tuesday nights are free from planning services, my Wednesday nights are free from worship team practice, and my Sunday mornings are now flexible so I can attend one service of my choice. There will definitely be some schedule adjustment, I think for the better.

So, this Sunday is the last one. We’re celebrating the church’s 50th anniversary this week. We’ll have a few of the former pastors in attendance, and a bunch of old-timers. Should be a neat time.

reasonable theological concern, or overly picky?

I was thinking through some songs that we haven’t sung for a while in church, and this issue came to mind, so I thought I’d share it here. One of my main criterion when selecting songs for the church to sing (and I plan the music for almost every week) is that they be theologically sound. This manages to disqualify a substantive number of modern praise songs, and a surprising number of older hymns from our hymnal. I might go so far as to say that this is my primary criterion. Certainly there are others; singability is right up there. But theological correctness has got to be at the top of the list.

So we come to today’s topic: the old chorus “Create In Me A Clean Heart”. The text is pretty much straight from Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Thy presence oh Lord,
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,
And renew a right spirit within me.

My theological nit is with the fifth and sixth lines. When David penned these words some 1500 years before Christ, the threat of having the Holy Spirit taken from him was quite a real one; he had seen a similar thing happen to Saul when Saul rebelled against God. At that time the Holy Spirit didn’t indwell all those who believed in God, but God specifically directed the Spirit to rest on certain people at certain times. But now we’re after Pentecost, and so those that believe are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit remains as a seal of our salvation. We’re not in danger of having God take it away.

So on to my theological question. While I love the submissive attitude of the first part of this chorus, I have real questions about singing those two lines, because I think they represent a fear or concern that we shouldn’t have. Is this an appropriate distinction to make? Or am I being overly picky? Your thoughts are appreciated.

a good weekend to be off

Yesterday was my first Sunday of just taking a break from leading the worship team. David Green did a very respectable job in my absence. The Lord used this weekend to remind me once again that His plans are so much better than mine. He knew I would need this weekend off.

Laura was difficult all weekend. It’s not really her fault; she’s teething, which makes her cranky anyway. It was combined with a cold this time (a cold that I have too), so in addition to the drooling, her sinuses are perpetually clogged, and she’s been running a 103 degree fever. Tylenol or Motrin will bring the fever down for a few hours and turn her back into her bubbly self, but about 4 hours into the 6-hour dosage, the fever comes back and she gets owly again. She’s not sleeping well, either; she’s been in our bed the last two nights, which is a last resort for us. We don’t sleep well with her in the bed; she’s a restless sleeper and snores. However, it’s better to lose sleep to a snoring baby in your bed than to a crying baby in the other room.

Sunday I made it up in time to get to the second service at church, so I did get to hear the sermon and the worship team. Like I said, they were pretty good, David’s got a good musical sense. Mostly they were just lacking a clear leader. Somebody on the WT has to know where you’re going, when you’re going there, and then just grab everybody and take them along. That just takes practice, and time doing it. As long as people are willing, I’ll be happy to provide them opportunities to practice, and any coaching that I can do along the way.

Now it’s Monday. Becky reports that Laura is still feeling bum this morning. Please, Lord, can this teething get done with?

worship team follow-up

So we did two services this morning after the great WT practice on Wednesday, and the services went really well, too. Nice to be back in the groove. I did an Andrew Peterson song for the offertory: Faith to be Strong. I think it was well-received.

worship team stuff

We had our first WT practice in about a month on Wednesday night. It was good to get back to it. I don’t know what was up on Wednesday, whether I turned the monitors up higher than usual, or what, but we sounded really good vocally. Harmonies were tight. Everybody sounded nice and even and balanced. What a nice sound. I’m looking forward to Sunday… hopefully we accomplish something similar then. Hate to leave your best stuff on the bullpen mound in warmups. But the glory goes to God either way.

One of the good things that’s come out of my sickness over Christmas and my efforts to weed out my schedule has been several people coming forward to help out with leading the worship team. For much of the six years I’ve led the team, it’s been hard to line someone up for just the occasional Sunday I had to be gone. (Just a few times a year!) But things are changing. One woman who has attended for a long while and has led worship other places in the past wanted to start participating. So we got her involved. Now the gal who volunteered at a moment’s notice when I was sick back in December has indicated she’d like to be available to fill in from time to time. And then earlier this week our bass player (a phenomenal all-around musician) said he’d really like to lead some services and he could do that playing either the bass or the piano. Praise God for his supply!

I distributed a WT schedule for the next two months that includes me having one Sunday off each month and another Sunday where we are more informal and don’t have a WT. (That was the pastor’s idea, not mine… but I don’t mind it.) We’ll see how it plays out, but I think this is the start of some easing off of my WT load… and that will be very nice.

Worship Team changes...

We had our first worship team practice using individual microphones last night.

Currently, we just have one condenser mic on each side of the stage and 3 or 4 people gather around it. The sound quality is terrible. Thanks to Nate Hines who graciously loaned us 4 SM-58’s, we now can practice using individual mics. We’re going to split into two worship teams, each with 3 vocalists and some instrumentalists. The start date is Sept 11, so we’ve got some work to do pretty quickly. I think it’ll turn out OK, though.

Practice last night went about as well as it possibly could have; the singers really noticed how much better things were with handheld mics - better sound, you can hear everybody… good stuff. It was kinda funny - I told Janice “sing louder, we can’t hear you”… and her reply: “I thought if I can hear myself then I’m singing too loud…” Welcome to real sound with monitors! :-) It’ll take some ironing out, but in the end it will be a huge improvement over our current configuration.

I've been replaced by a machine!

At least for Sunday, that is… I was unable to wrangle up a musician for the Sunday service, so my next option is to record my piano-playing on the electronic keyboard, so they can just play it back on Sunday. How lame is that? (I am humongously opposed to using recorded music in a church service, pretty much just because it can cause so much trouble for anyone who loses their place, it seems artificial, etc. Live accompaniment is always better.) Anyhow, it’s a nice Roland keyboard with a disk drive built in, so I’ll be recording the tracks and then they can play them back live… it’s at least better than recording on audio tape and playing it back. :-)

I’m sure it’ll end up uncoordinated and kind of lame on Sunday, but unfortunately I can’t really help that. We need more musicians!

I need a musician...

…any musician. One of the downsides of being the music leader at a small church is that it’s hard to find a replacement when you’re going to be gone. I have a couple people who are on the usual list to back me up… one guitarist and one pianist. Usually at least one of them will be available. Well, I’m out of town this weekend for my sister’s graduation. The guitarist is also out of town this weekend. The pianist is watching 4 of her grandkids all weekend and doesn’t have the time she needs to practice. Our bass player who might be able to fill in on guitar in a pinch is also out of town. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do… they may be singing a capella on Sunday.

There’s one other possibility that someone mentioned - a recent attender who is rumored to be a piano teacher. However, I’ve never talked to her about playing for a service, and I’m not sure of her skill level, (or even if she’s actually a piano teacher). So, I’m fairly uncomfortable making a phone call that will go something like this: “Hi, I’m Chris from Noelridge, remember me? I know you haven’t been to church in a couple weeks, but I heard a rumor you might be a piano teacher and so I’m wondering if you’d like to play the piano for church this week and by the way practice is tomorrow night…” Not a real good option in my book. Well, it’ll work out somehow. I will get out of town this weekend.