Making the Most of Rehearsals

Hey guys. It's been a while since the last post (no, not that last post - musical joke). I'm going to try and give some hints and ideas to make rehearsal times more productive.

Rehearsals are usually that limited time before the service, sometimes during the preceding week, sometimes right before the service, where the goal is to be 'ready' for the service. But what does it mean to be ready?

Being ready can really be broken down into two facets: being musically ready and being spiritually ready. Musical readiness is fairly simple. You will want to know how the songs go and what your part is, so that you can effectively lead the congregation. Spiritual readiness is more complex, but includes having the right attitude, the right focus of heart, the right love for those we serve and those we serve with, and a desire for God's glory.

This seems an awful lot to accomplish in an hour or hour and-a-half, but it is possible. Rehearsal time is more about quality than it is about quantity. Here are some bullet-points to help you have quality rehearsals.

Be Committed. No rehearsal is going to be worth it if everyone is not committed to being there, spending the time in hard work. Encourage your team to be regular and punctual.

Bible. It's always a good habit to let God have first word when Christians meet together, for whatever reason. Perhaps just a verse from the passage that the pastor is preaching on during the service, or maybe a text that one of the songs is based on. It's a great way to disarm all those other ideas and attitudes we come to rehearsal with.

Pray. This ministry only happens with God's help, so we should spend time before we begin and after we have finished. We should never forget that we are not just gathering to rehearse for a gig where we play the dots on the page and then we're done. Rather, we are Christians gathering to prepare our service to God. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 18, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them."

Fellowship. Build Christian relationships, so that you may minister more effectively. If music is all you have in common, it will quickly become the focus of your time together. If Jesus is what you have in common, the same follows.

Reflect. Talk and think about the songs you are rehearsing. What are they saying? What Bible texts are reflected in the lyrics? How does the song challenge your relationship with Jesus? Are you able to mean what you sing?

Prepare. Come to the rehearsal having warmed-up (this may mean arriving earlier). Having the song titles before the rehearsal enables the team to anticipate the rehearsal and be more engaging. Personally prepare your heart by praying before the rehearsal. If you are leading the rehearsal, come with a rough idea of how you want each song to run -starts, finishes, instruments, dynamics, etc. This gives a skeleton which can be finalised during the rehearsal. It avoids the, "How should we do this?" question that often wastes time.

Set-up. If you need to set up your gear (drummers, guitarists - you know what I mean), do it before the rehearsal. Same goes for sound system. "Go ahead and I'll catch up when I'm ready" is bad ministry.

Starts and finishes. The most important thing in leading songs is showing the congregation where to come in, and where they should stop singing. For this reason, if you can get your starts and finishes tight as a cyclist's shorts the middle of the songs often take care of themselves. By all means practice songs all the way through, but then spend time just doing the intro and outro of each song to get it spot-on.

Melody. Make absolutely sure that the singers know how the song goes. Singers who are confident with the melody will make them better leaders, and the band will be able to play to their lead and be more effective in supporting their lead. If they need tightening up, get your pianist to play the just melody slowly while the singers sing it. This will help them to hear exactly how it goes, and they will be able to hear immediately if they depart from it.

Music. Have the packs of the correct music ready, in the right key, ready to go straight into the hands of the musos and singers at the start of the rehearsal. The rehearsal time will be wasted scratching around in files and trying to decide on the best key for a song.

Sound Operator. Have your sound operator present at your rehearsals. This gives him time to set up the sound ready for the service in an unpressured environment, and avoids wasting rehearsal time with the leader running to the back to adjust your drummer's monitor mix after each song. Ensure that you include them in your times of fellowship and prayer so that you can all minister as a team.

Service Leader. If you have someone leading the service from the pulpit, encourage them to join the rehearsal. This will help them and the music team connect with each other, and lead the service better together. The service leader will know the songs and how they go, and the music team will get to know the guy whose directions they need to follow. It always helps a service to be more focussed if everyone involved has met together.

Lots of stuff, but if you get this right you will have more productive rehearsals.

Altar-call Alternatives

How [can we] uncover new talent without having a musical "altar call" ... volunteers are often very poor judges of their own ability!

This was a question in response to a recent post. I'll agree, it is very difficult to find musicians to join in serving in our churches. And once we find them, it is often even more difficult to get them in the ministry team! And precisely for that reason, because volunteers are very often poor judges of their own ability.

This runs both ways, however. Some volunteers with poor judgement of their musical abilities tend to overestimate themselves, and then become difficult to get rid of.

In a church music ministry team, the desire is often to create our idea of a good 'worship band' as quickly and easily as possible. This is why we might have 'musical altar-calls.'

Perhaps a better way is this: build personal, Christ-centred relationships with people. Basically, what I am suggesting is that we disciple people, which is what Jesus actually commands us to do (Matthew 28v19). Getting people into God's Kingdom is far important than getting them into the worsip team! This way you build into their lives and encourage them in their faith, which is far more valuable than standing before God saying, "I played tambourine in the worship band every second Sunday."

Now this approach is very slow. When you start discipling one or two people who you know are musicians, you might only have two new people in your music team in 6 months. But I can assure you that those people will find it easier to love Jesus first and their music second, and to see themsleves as humble servants of God. It will also help you to understand where a person is at with God. Perhaps they are a brilliant musician, but they wouldn't be the right person to be serving in this ministry.

So ask around and find out who the musicians are among the congregation. Then approach them and suggest you start reading the Bible and praying together regularly. Talk to them about their music. It will become obvious to you whether or not they would be a valuable addition to the music ministry team.

But even after you have brought them on board, continue to be concerned about their love for Jesus. Keep talking to them and praying with them, and reading the Bible with them, so that your relationship is based around Christ, rather than music. This also makes it much simpler to deal with issues in the music team, if everyone is there for God's glory first and music second.

This is a slow way to build a music ministry team. But the team that is built on Christ as a foundation will be the team that really serves the congregation by pointing them to Jesus, and truly serves God by giving their best for his glory. After all, that is what we're really here to do.

(for ideas on discipling and one-to-one ministry, check out Sophie de Witt's book One to One: A Discipleship Handbook)

South African Songs

In response to Nils' comment on What Do YOU Want?, I thought it would be a really good idea to get the ball rolling on collecting and transcribing a resource of South African songs in various languages, which contain good theology and good music, for use in our increasingly multi-cultural churches.

If you are interested, or if you know anyone who would be interested in such a project, please send an email to clint.lombard@gmail.com

We would need

• people who love Jesus,
• are concerned for the truth of God's Word,
• have experience of ministering in multicultural churches
• are African-langauge speakers,
• and are excited about such a project!

What do YOU want?

I suppose there's lots of opportunity to write about bunches of stuff. After all, the way music and the Bible relate is a broad landscape of varying categories.

But what do you want to discuss, or know more about, or bring the Bible to bear upon?

Let me know and I can direct my efforts in ways that would really help the readers of this blog. God has put us all in different places, with different circumstances and different challenges. I would love to know what those are, and at least attempt to tackle them.

So please give me your ideas!

(And perhaps give me some ideas for a future book on church music...?)

Know Christ and make Him known!

Hymns and Things

What is the mix of songs that your church sings? Do you sing hymns? Modern praise songs? 70's and 80's choruses? Mix of everything? What are your preferences?

When it comes to singing in church, we must always remember what we're doing. We are responding musically to God's revelation of himself in his word. As God speaks to us, and as we know him more, we sing his praises and declare his greatness.

This immediately puts a slant on what we're doing when we sing. We're not a chart show, where we have to keep up with the latest tunes. Neither are we a music museum, where we carefully maintain and preserve historic church music. Nor are we an appreciation group, who holds tightly to a certain era of Christian music because that is what we like.

John Frame very helpfully in his book Worship in Spirit and Truth speaks of peoples' "language of worship". What this means is that in the many and varied people that make up the church, there are found different expressions of sincere worship. For some, the latest Tomlin stuff might be the best way for them to worship God. For others, it was the classic hymns that they learnt as children. And Frame counsels us to be sensitive to this.

After all, God's people are many and varied. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2v19: "So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."

The solution, then, is to sing everything. Don't create unnecessary categories in your worship. Our faith has a history, which makes older songs relevant, and God is active in the present, which makes modern songs relevant. There is no need to have one category at the expense of the other.

Of course, the difficulties present in this approach are twofold:

1. Though may need to be put into the arrangement of songs in order to make them accessible to a diverse congregation. This may mean playing the hymns in a traditional way, on the piano or organ, and slowing down to a stop after each verse. Or it may mean driving those hymns with a drum-beat and single chords for each bar, while keeping the same recognisable melody and traditional words. Perhaps more modern songs need to be played simpler to make them accessible, or they need to be rocked out. Know the people you're ministering to.
2. Love. This is probably the hardest thing to achieve when ministering to a diverse group of people. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4: "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." We need to love each other, humbly, gently and patiently. We have been joined by God's Spirit, in peace. If you are a musican, serve humbly by playing what is needed, and doing it well, rather than what you like. If you are in the pew and you don't like the songs being played, learn to love those for whom this is their sincere worship of God, and perhaps learn to worship with them, as you expect them to worship with you in the songs that mean something to you.

Jesus has loved us with an immeasurable, unending love. If we have been loved like that, how we can we not show love to those around us? It is a miracle that Jesus loves so many different people. In fact, it is a miracle that Jesus loves you.