Wednesday night was worship team practice as usual. It went really well. The team has been sounding really good since the addition of our bass player, David.
David is one of those guys who I severely underestimated on on first impression. He is short and kinda scrawny, has a littly oily ponytail, rarely shaves, his hands are shaky… the kind of guy I’d figure has a lot of needs, won’t contribute a lot. Not that I’m criticizing people like that; they need to be in the church, and we need to help them to learn and grow; but that’s just the impression I got from him. Then I heard he plays bass and wanted to join the worship team. So I said sure, come to practice… and boy was I suprised.
Ends up David plays bass with a jazz trio a couple nights a week, and he’s really good. The first night at practice he asked “how do you forsee using me here?” What a question on the first night from a guy I don’t know! So I asked him, “what are your talents?” Well, he likes to do arrangements. So I asked him to do an arrangement so we could try it out.
The next week he came in with a two-page jazz arrangement of “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”. Beautiful stuff. I stumbled through the sight-reading of the piano part (jazz has never been my forte), thinking he might be a bit disgusted at my poor skills. But he was more excited than the proverbial kid in the candy store. We have practiced that arrangement every week since then, and will be performing it for the first time this Sunday. I’m sure as soon as he’s happy with this one he’ll be cranking out another one. What great enthusiasm!
David has quickly become one of my most faithful worship team members. I’m looking forward to seeing how God is going to use him to help develop the group… I see lots of good things in store. He will serve as a constant reminder to me to look past first impressions.