Church | Our Rising Sound

April 22 2009

Poll: How many songs are in your current worship rotation?

Tagged Under : church, poll, worship

I use about 30 songs in my regular rotation. This is probably on the low end for being the only worship band at our church. I would imagine most churches in a “praise band” setup would have a larger rotation, but I guess we’ll find out in this post. Our vision at LCC is to raise up multiple bands that have small rotations so we aren’t overlapping and if we are they are different arrangements. This results, hopefully, in a few things

Tighter set - bands are playing fewer songs so they have more opportunity to experiment and perfect their arrangements.
Familiarity - Congregation gets to connect with songs better and have a chance at memorization so they spend less time staring at the lyrics and more time focusing on Jesus.
Freshness - when new songs come in, older songs are getting pruned instead of an ever growing rotation. This takes the pressure off the band for introducing new songs so they don’t feel like their work load gets larger and larger.

The last point is important because we want to keep bringing in new songs but typically it’s at the expense of an older song that just doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore. That’s not to say we don’t play any old songs, because we do. I’ll bring back older songs, hymns that bring diversity to the set and a freshness to the set as a whole.

So how many songs are in your rotation? And it would be great if you could describe in the comments what kind of worship band organization you use, praise band, multiple bands or something else.

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Encouraging story of True Love loop used in another church

Tagged Under : church, Easter, loops, Phil Wickham, worship

I released my True Love loop less than a week before Easter so I wasn’t sure if anyone else was going to have time to use it for their Easter service. Then I received this really encouraging and humbling email yesterday from Chris Johnson, worship pastor at East Coast Christian Center in FL, and he had this to say:

We also did “True Love” in our service this Easter and I modified your beat loop to fit what we were doing… We had a HUGE cross laying flat on the stage, kind of creating tension as people wondered what this enormous item was laying on our stage floor… we got to the song True Love, and just as the 2nd chorus dips down and starts into the celebratory bridge build of, “Jesus is alive, Jesus is alive….” the Cross was hoisted into the air by a winch in our ceiling of our auditorium - as the music climbed in intensity, so did the Cross and the lights and it was a relatively simple yet IMPACTING production element. People freaked out in celebration as we sang the closing choruses and we truly felt the sense of victory in Jesus’ resurrection. We couldn’t have done it without your beautiful drum loop. It’s probably one of your all time best.

It’s really an honor to think that my little loop assisted anyone else’s worship service on such a huge day. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on this loop and for the others that used the loop I hope it went well. When I started releasing these I was skeptical anyone else would even be interested much less consider using them, so this really encourages me.

If you did use the loop I’d love to hear how it went and if you modified the loop I’d love to hear what you did as well, any video or audio of your performance would be killer too. Here is what Chris did with it:

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Sunday Set List: “In spite of the band”

Tagged Under : church, Hillsong, John Mark McMillan, Kyle Campos, Ryan Delmore, Sarah Reeves, Sunday Set List, Twila Paris, Vineyard, worship

Train wreck Yesterday was rough from a music point of view. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know I’m pretty critical of myself and the music. Well you didn’t need to be very critical to know there were some major problems. So much so that I really wasn’t looking forward to this post at all and was considering skipping it. In short we just had problems hearing the click and our time was all over the place which led to some meltdowns. There’s several things we need to fix to make sure this never happens again and it’s on top of my priority list for this week to fix. Need to turn down the suck asap.

So as we walked off stage I’m feeling really frustrated and wishing we could just have a do-over. I take my 10 minutes to drink some water, cool down a bit and try and get re-focused back on service. I walk back into the sanctuary and Pastor Aaron is preaching on Jesus, who Jesus is, who he is not and who we worship him as. Straight up gospel. One thing you have to understand is we have a lot of new Christians and then some churched folks and I’m not sure which one of those groups has heard less about Jesus or who has a more messed up Christology.

It rocked people to the core and as I walked up at the end to play Lamb of God for the alter call, I was humbled more so than I can remember. People are coming up to give their lives to Jesus and I realize how small I am and how unimportant my “gift” is to the kingdom. And it was GREAT! It was less of me more of you Jesus, played out in front of me. I was crying in the back of the stage because it was almost like I tried my best to screw things up and God showed so much grace that he moved powerfully despite my best efforts.

So worship leaders remember that when you’re thinking that one magic ministry song is really going to usher in the spirit. We don’t boss the spirit around by playing sweet music. Don’t get me wrong, let’s play good music, nobody wants to hear crap…but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking music mediates the presence of God, cause I just saw that it surely doesn’t.

The World Can’t Take It Away - Ryan Delmore
Skeleton Bones - John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
How I Live - Kyle Campos (loop available)
So Near - Vineyard UK (loop available)
With Everything - Hillsong (loop available)
Lamb of God - Twila Paris / closer to Sarah Reeves arrangement (end of service)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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How to sync two live bands

Tagged Under : church, click, how to, live, music, tips

Bryan Nelson at Vertical Resonator recently did a post showing how his church actually syncs two live bands in 2 different rooms for their worship service. He leads worship at Topeka Bible Church and is really doing some great creative stuff. The two bands play the same set, at the exact same time in 2 different rooms and are forced to do this due to the bleed through in the rooms they are in. It’s a really awesome and interesting setup. Here’s the full diagram showing the setup.

Syncing two live bands

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Sunday Set List: “Challenges all around”

Tagged Under : church, Delirious, Hillsong United, John Mark McMillan, Merchant Band, Sunday Set List, worship

Early Sunday morning I got a text from my pastor saying he was up all night sick and that he wasn’t going to miss service but needed prayer. I got the sense at that point this might be one of those “challenging” days. Sure enough during rehearsal we had plenty of technical issues. Cords failing, shortage of cords, piano was sounding awful out of the house, the hits just kept coming. Then service started…

The set was going good, but I felt some disconnect in the worship and was battling in the middle of the set how to address it. We got to the last “ministry” song, Our God Reigns, and I snapped a string at a terrible moment. It was a good time as far as point in the set(last song) but not a good point in that song. Although I’m not sure what a good point to break a string would be. I haven’t broke a string in a looong time, I think Delmore infected me with his string snapping disease.

I did my best to recover and plow through, I finished the song on piano, but I wasn’t happy how that sounded either. Mostly because I’m a terrible piano player and I haven’t played in a few weeks, which showed. Through it all I think God showed his grace and he was glorified. We avoided a complete train wreck of a distraction. The message was awesome and people really responded. Amen!

You Love Me Forever - Merchant Band (loop not yet available)
Skeleton Bones - John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
Lead Me to the Cross - Hillsong United (loop available)
Come Thou Fount
Our God Reigns - Delirious (loop available)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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Sunday Set List: “Skeleton Bones kickoff”

Tagged Under : church, Delirious, Hillsong, John Mark McMillan, New Life, Sunday Set List, Taylor Sorensen, worship

This Sunday was a big day for our church. We announced to the church the new leadership structure with our elders(which I’m part of), the leaving of one elder and addition of another. It really is an exciting new chapter for LCC, we are better positioned to do what God has given us vision and gifting for than ever before. We have an incredible team of leaders ready to execute and I can’t wait to see what this next year has for us.

Worship went really well, got many compliments on the sound (great mix Dave!). We had a few timing issues today, click track wasn’t as loud in our in ears as I would have liked, but from what I hear it wasn’t noticeable to the congregation. We just never seemed to settle in on the click on a song or 2. Haven’t had that problem in a long time, I blame the monitor mix which we’ll fix. We also played the full “Skeleton Bones” by John Mark McMillan today. I recorded an acoustic and shaker loop to go with it and it went really well. It’s an incredible song and I’m excited to have a new high quality fast song in the rotation.

Rain Down - Delirious (loop not yet available)
Skeleton Bones - John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
Hosanna - Hillsong (loop available)
Everlasting God - New Life (loop available)
(Gloria 34 - Taylor Sorensen - got cut)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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Father stabs son after he refused to take off hat in church

Tagged Under : church, funny, news

When I first started leading worship in high school I led worship with a hat on backwards once. It was the nineties cut me some slack, plus I was an idiot. Anyway someone left the church because of that. Now reading that this guy stabbed his own son for just being in church with a hat on makes me feel soooo thankful that all that person did was leave. To add insult to injury, the dad stabbed him in the butt.

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Top 5 things I dislike about being a worship leader

Tagged Under : church, leadership, Top 5, worship

I’d like to start by pointing you to my post on Top 5 things I love about being a worship leader. It truly is an incredible honor, responsibility and blessing to be a worship leader and something I am forever grateful for. It’s really difficult for me to come up with 5 things I dislike without immediately feeling like they pale in comparison to the incredible blessing it is. Even in the trials I hold firmly to James 1:2

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds

That being said I don’t pretend that there aren’t trials and that there aren’t difficult moments. Here are what I see as the top 5 negatives about being a worship leader:

1. You become #1 or #2 reason why people leave the church

You and the preaching pastor will be the alpha dogs as far as reasons people leave the church, in most cases. As much as I joke about this, it does bother me. I understand that there are plenty of churches, better churches than ours for some and that I have to be true to what God’s called and gifted me to do. But when I hear of people leaving because they can’t stand the music, as much as I try to roll with it, it does sting. Not from an artistic standpoint, that rolls of me quite easily. I know lots of people will dislike my music, that’s not what’s important. But I do have to pray a lot about have I failed as a leader to reach out, teach, relate with, minister to these people that are leaving.

On another level I’m glad I’m not immune to some disappointment and hurt when I hear of people leaving because of me. I don’t want to be some ministry zombie. It doesn’t change the truth, vision and mission I’m charged with, but I don’t want to ignore or neglect what I can do to become a better minister and worship leader.

2. Managing creative types can really stink

Artists, and I use that in the broad sense, are the most sensitive, emotional basket cases on the planet. Heaven forbid you tell them they need to practice more, or that they aren’t in tune, or their song isn’t very good. Who am I to judge them and their God given talent? How dare I quench the spirit! *sigh* I am sooooo blessed to have a team of mature Christian men and women who are all leaders in our church in many more ways than music. For me those days are behind me, although once we start building some more teams, there may be more of those days ahead. I’ve been in some pretty awful situations and lemme tell you, they are all too often the norm in the modern church.

There’s a lot to be said about how you organize and run a worship team and develop artistic talent and spiritual maturity. We’ve done polls on this blog about letting non-christians in on worship bands and such and I’ve learned a lot from my past failures on this topic. I could write a valuable e-book on all the ways not to put together a worship team.

3. As you excel in music, you get accused more of not “getting” the heart of worship

If I were to go up on stage with a junky acoustic, with an average band in support, sing in and out of key but do it with passion, nobody is going to accuse me of focusing on music and idolizing it. But if I practice, prepare, write and do all the things necessary to have a tight great band, get up on stage, sound great and do it with passion. There will be a lot of people that say I don’t really understand the heart of worship and that I emphasize musical excellence to a point of idolatry.

I just find it so ill-conceived that the measuring stick for some looks like, poor music quality = band has a heart after God, great music quality = worship leader wants to be Christian celebrity and doesn’t truly get worship. Let me be clear that I just want to be a good stuard and faithful to what God has placed in my hands. The conviction I feel from God on being lazy, inattentive and wreckless with the gifting and gift of this church body placed in my hands far outweighs your weak accusation, so you’ll have to excuse me while I ignore it.

4. Inability to have a single focus in worship

As a worship leader there’s a lot of responsibilities and trains of thought you have to manage in your head while you are leading a song. From song arrangements, to time management, to engagement of congregation, following where the Spirit is leading, taking cues from the sound booth, signaling your band, the list goes on. When you are the primary worship leader for a congregation and leading 99% of the time you can quickly miss being able to be in the congregation worshiping instead of in front leading worship.

Taking breaks is important and we’re working towards multiple bands at LCC.

5. Walking away feeling completely satisfied

This has less to do with being a worship leader and more about my personality. But I wish I could go through a Sunday, drive home and just feel like,

“Man what a great worship time, sounded great, God moved, the body was united and everything went well.”

Instead, no matter how good it goes I go home feeling like,

“I can’t believe how bad I butchered that one song. The mix sounded like crap today I know it. Lots of strange stares on that new song.”

I wrote a post about the mind of a worship leader the day after that explains a lot of my thought process.

It’s something I’m trying to get balance in, but I am super critical of myself and it’s not often I leave with a satisfied feeling and I’m never completely satisfied. But I do rest in that God will accomplish what he wants to accomplish through these weak hands, I have confidence that His faithfulness, not my talent, is my shield.