How to Be a Successful Worship Band

After years of working with band players in various churches, participating in numerous worhsip services in various churches, hearing worship bands at conferences, and evaluating worship leaders and worship bands, I have begun to assemble a list that aspiring worship bands may find useful in order to be successful. There are some thoughts in this list for most members of the band, though I'm sure I could have given more thought to the Dobro player.

1. Pick keys that are too high for guys to sing, and too low for women to belt out.
2. Show off your chops by jumping the octave at a repeated phrase. Make sure no one else can possibly match you.
3. Shout out "Christianese" phrases between songs. They don't have to fit the context, they just have to sound good, amen?
4. Work hard at crafting all of your vowels so that you sound British or Australian.
5. Never sing any melody the same way twice, especially when teaching a new song to the church.
6. The only dynamic build you can ever use is repetitive eighth notes.
7. Make sure you rush those eighth notes.
8. Dynamics only exist in layers. "Quiet" is achieved mainly because only the acoustic guitar is finger picking at the moment.
9. If you're a keyboard player, try to duplicate the exact rhythms the guitar players are playing, in the exact same register.
10. If you're an electric guitar player, be sure to use all of your pedals at least once in a set, so as to disguise as much as possible the actual sound of your instrument.
11. Be sure that your stage volume is so hot that you cannot be effectively mixed in the house.
12. The form is ALWAYS V, V [add band], C, V, C, C, B, C, C, C, C [drums only], C, Tag.
13. Never change keys in the middle of a song.

Alright, I've got us off to a good start, there's more, let's add to this list!

Our services are out of control

This is a screen shot from my phone via the PlanningCenter app a couple of weeks ago. Made me chuckle

Worship at Providence

Here's a video edited by Tim of our services over the last couple of months. It's just a taste. We get to work with some very talented people--all of whom love to serve and love the Lord! This is on the church web site, but I thought I'd spread the love here.

Worship@Providence 09 from Providence on Vimeo.

"Made Me Glad" Made ME glad.

I will not divulge my list in its entirety, but one of the songs in my "five star" list for a very long time has been Travis Cottrell's arrangement of Made Me Glad. Part of it is the song, part of it is the arrangement, part of it is just that it is fun to play.



I'm still processing our time from Fusion Conference this last weekend. One of my personal highlights was playing "in the band" for Travis and his singers. If you've never heard Travis, he's more than a gifted singer, he's a great leader of worship. More than that, he's great a shepherding a group of worshipers into understanding more about God and declaring truth. He's a real encourager.

One of the other great things about having Travis here is that he brings some really great singers with him. They were all so gracious, putting up with long days, teaching a couple of sessions on vocal techniques, and singing in a Friday night concert and leading Sunday morning services. I think we just about wore them out.

One of his singers was Julie Goss. I've decided I'm a forever-fan. She can sing so passionately and warmly on songs like Revelation Song, but she can also open it up.

She creates the highlight for me in the midst of the weekend's highlight when she lets it rip on Made Me Glad, especially in the chorus return on the key change after the bridge. I couldn't get enough of that every time we played it, and fortunately we did it four or five times this weekend. We could have done it a few more times as far as I'm concerned!

We worked hard at being the best band we could for these talented singers. In some ways, they made it easy. In other ways, I felt at times like I was on the edge because I ceded musical control of my "domain." I normally know what to expect. How many times of this, how to end that, when to start the next thing. In this case, it was a lot more wait and see, or maybe more of "get-ready-to-loop-that" But it all worked out great.

Thanks once again to Travis and the gang (Seth, Nirva, Julie and Lici) for making Fusion weekend such an enjoyable and entertaining one! You guys are talented and humble servants!
Thanks to Alan for the photos!

Worship Matters: Book Review

Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God by Bob Kauflin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you follow Bob Kauflin's blog, you know that his routine of answering people's questions about church music ministry is done very deliberately. He doesn't rant. He encourages right relationships first. He emphasizes biblical principles, and in the end he'll get around to answering the question, an answer that usually seems more obvious once he cuts to the heart of the issue, and what is really important. It is no surprise then to see his book written in the same style, and with the same patience we've come to expect from him. Worship Matters is more than just another book about worship, and it is more than a little commentary and list of suggestions on how to "do music" better.

Summary

Bob Kauflin's book Worship Matters is a very useful guide for church music volunteers to music directors to worship leaders, to senior pastors. The book's primary focus, however is on worship leaders. He takes his time patiently addressing each topic, even sometimes repeating himself, but not to anyone's detriment. The book serves as a healthy reminder to those who would lead worship-musical or non musical, as to what is important and what should be remembered, and what can safely be discarded.

The book is divided into four main sections. The first deals with the worship leaders in five short chapters. What is important, what should be important? what are the things the leader should love? what are things the leaders believe? what are the things leaders practice? what are the things leaders model?

It is a great centering area of the book for worship leaders to ruminate on even before proceeding further along in the book.

Part two of the book deals specifically with what a worship leader does. Here he presents his definition:

A faithful worship leader
magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ
through the power of the Holy Spirit
by skillfully combining God's Word with music,
thereby motivating the gathered church
to proclaim the gospel,
to cherish God's presence,
and to live for God's glory.

He spends the next several chapters exegeting his own statement, exploring and giving insight phrase by phrase. Here Kauflin gives a nice mix of scriptural, philosophical, and practical teachings and suggestions for understanding the worship leader's role.

The third part to his book explores what he terms "Healthy Tensions." Using the following principles, 1. Do what God clearly commands. 2. Don't do what God clearly forbids. 3. Use scriptural wisdom for everything else.

Even though he spends time expanding on these tensions, I find that the most insight is gained by pondering the existence and identification of the tensions alone. Not meant to be a comprehensive list, Kauflin lists the following:

• Transcendent and Immanent
• Head and Heart
• Internal and External
• Vertical and Horizontal
• Planned and Spontaneous
• Rooted and Relevant
• Skilled and Authentic
• For the Church and Unbelievers
• Event and Everyday

The fourth part deals with Right Relationships: Church, Team, and Pastor. It is always good to be reminded of healthy relationships, and their importance, particularly in church leadership. This section of the book was probably the most meaningful to me, as with great humility Kauflin framed healthy church leadership relationships in light of submission to the pastor, seeking to give encouragement, seeking biblical steps in resolving conflict, nipping personal pride, and seeking evaluation and reproof. Proverbs 12:1 "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid."

The end notes to this book contain a robust annotated bibliography, short on music sources and heavy on theology. This is no surprise as his writing is rich with scriptural references and one of his fundamental perspectives is that the worship leader, just as all followers of Christ, should first seek to be a theologian.

Some favorite quotes:

A worship leader who barely knows the Bible can't be a faithful worship leader.

We're good theologians if what we say and think about God lines up with what Scripture says and affirms. We're bad theologians if our view of God is vague, unbiblical, distorted, or based on our own opinions.

Misconception: We know God better through music than through Words.

When we're dodgy about our theology, we're really saying we want our own Jesus.

[God] never gets tired of hearing believers' almost-in-tune, somewhat together, faith-filled offerings of worship.

If our doctrine is accurate but our hearts are cold toward God himself, our corporate worship will be true but lifeless. Or if we express fervent love for God but present vague, inaccurate, or incomplete ideas of him to those we're leading, our worship will be emotional but misleading-and possibly idolatrous. Neither option brings God glory.

If you have a role in leading worship in church or parachurch, this book will be well worth your time. Whether you're the primary worship leader, a "chief musician," a volunteer, or a senior pastor, I highly recommend this book and it's valuable insights to you.

View all my reviews.

Philosophy of Orchestration (part 1)

I had a lot of fun gearing up a for a little presentation I did today at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's orchestration class. The professor, Joshua Waggener, asked me to give some perspectives of "real world" church orchestration and techniques for writing for rhythm sections.

I blew it all out in a matter of fifty minutes. So much to say, so little time. Those poor students.

The following represents the beginning of some things we discussed related to orchestration and your orchestra. The context was specifically church orchestration since that is generally the orientation of the music program at SEBTS.

The first question to ask yourself when considering orchestrating a hymn, chorus, or other song for your church orchestra:

Does the song need an orchestration?

Here I could write almost an entire blog post in response to this question. (in fact, it turned into one!) As music staff we probably don't wrestle with a bigger question: just because the orchestra is sitting there, does that mean they should play? Or asked another way: What is a reasonable amount of material to expect an orchestra to play on?

The tension here lies in the "worth it" factor. If you have three services in the morning, as we do at Providence, is it wise to ask your orchestra volunteers to come and make themselves available for all three services in order to accompany one anthem and a hymn? As servants, we would say, yes, they should be happy to come in and play only the refrain of just one hymn and be glad they got a chance to serve.

A steady diet of this, however would strongly affect their morale and before long, there would be very little orchestra left for whom to orchestrate!

The flip side of this coin, and frankly the side we error on more than the other, is to make a programming decision based on the fact that the orchestra is scheduled to play. An observer might perceive this as the tail wagging the dog. Honestly, this is sometimes the case as we occasionally are forced to change what we felt was an already strong service plan in terms of flow in order to satisfy the "worth it" factor for the orchestra volunteers.

Being forced to make decisions like the one above is wrought by everything from bad planning on our part to an overall lack of quality arrangements available to us. Sometimes, however we are blindsided by another factor: partial orchestrations.

On a day in which the entire orchestra is scheduled, we may plan a service and congratulate ourselves on how frequently we managed to involve the orchestra. Upon closer examination, however, we realize that on song A, B, and D, only the strings play, while on songs C, and E, only the brass play, and on song F, the lone orchestrated hymn selection, the woodwinds get to play.

Planning well requires answering the original question: Does the song NEED an orchestration? If it is decided a song could be enhanced by an orchestration (another subjective decision), the project needs to be set into motion weeks in advance of the service, not only for the sake of the arranger, but for the sake of rehearsal.

But let me just be clear about this one thing: Some songs in the pop world, Christian or secular or not bettered by the finest orchestration. Some band-led songs often need to stay that way. Any attempted horn lick or string line can diminish the pathos of the song in it's original state and derail the emotive qualities of a song. Again, a subjective call, perhaps, but would we really want to try to add to All the Saints Join In, or This is Who I Am? Great skill would be required both by the arranger and by the performer!

Upon answering the question in the affirmative regarding the need for an orchestration, we have several more to answer. (Stay tuned)