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Since this thread's been resurrected (no pun intended), I'll throw my 2 cents in.
Most of us who've played in church for any appreciable length of time have gone through similar things with various "church ladies" and busybodies. At my prior church, a lot of that was obviated by having 2 separate services, so the "devil's music" camp could go to a trad organ-only service.
Unfortunately other things came to a head when we had a pastor transfer out and a brief power vacuum that brought out the worst in a number of people. We stuck it out for several months until it became clear that it was turning into a downward spiral and staying would not be a good thing
We "floated" for more than a year and went to several different churches. At one really big one they asked for musician volunteers at one service so I went to see the praise band director, but it turned out they didn't really in fact need people. It was just a standing request for volunteers. They gave me like an entire CD's worth of stuff, with sheet music, to learn before even seeing whether I could play, etc. So I decided that place would probably not be a good place for me to play, way too structured for my skill level and abilities. They were really looking for sight-reader types and I would probably only slow them down.
It turned out that a really big church just wasn't a good match for us anyhow, so we ended up at the sister-church of the one we'd been going to (same denomination, also medium-sized), just a little further away. Several of the members of our old church made the same move. I let the praise band director there know that I was available for anything he needed me for, but didn't push it at all. I'd already been not playing for over a year, and was slowly coming to realize that however much I enjoyed playing, being at the right church was what was important. I got asked to play at one special service in about 6 months. I was fine with that.
As it so happened, we recently got a new praise band leader. He divided everyone up into 4 "praise teams," who would play 1 Sunday a month. I was fine with that too, though I told him if any of the teams were ever short-handed I'd be happy to sit in on guitar or bass with other teams.
When summer hit, the director was having problems getting people to show up to play, so he told me I could just play every Sunday or any Sunday. So for the past month I've been playing most every Sunday. We may go back to strict teams playing once a month in the Fall, which will be fine also. It's taken a couple years, but I'm getting closer to letting the "me" aspect of it go, and that's a good thing.
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