Tiny church, big dreams

[wilkat1]

I'm the pastor of two small (< 50) United Methodist Churches in a rural area. We would love to have some more modern praise and worship music and contemporary sounding options. Who has experience with something like this?

Church #1: very traditional, excellent pianist, good organist, I play acoustic. No other musicians in the church.

Church #2: good keyboardist with Yamaha Clavinova, one electric guitarist (very soft, jazzy style), a harmonica player, and myself on Tele. We have some singers who might help but no bassists or percussionists.

Church #2 seems easier - the "drums" on the Clavinova aren't awful, especially for a small sanctuary where volume is an issue, and the music could be very pretty or lively with some work and rehearsal.

Church #1 is more of a challenge. I'm almost tempted to play the djembe or my cheapie Yamaha electronic drums there in order to liven up the music a bit. The pianist and organist are excellent and they like a lot of the more contemporary music, but it's not easy getting something different going with our instrumental options.

One solution for church #1 that some might suggest is "rock school" for the youth, but unfortunately there are no youth to speak of. We don't have the money to hire additional musicians.

Anyone have experience planting seeds for a lively music ministry in a situation like this?

[BuckyB]

You pastor both churches? Wow, busy boy. I would assume that they are within Sunday morning driving distance of each other. If so, one approach might be to keep #1 more traditional and develop #2 into the contemporary service. That way they'd each be a magnet for those that prefer one or the other.

Regarding electronic drums, I've had great success with the Alesis SR16, on those occasions when our drummer is absent. What's so cool about this unit is its implementation of the "Fill" function. I use 2 foot pedals, one for start/stop and the other for fill/tap tempo. As I start the intro with just my guitar, while tapping in time on the second pedal. I hit the start/stop pedal and it plays at the correct tempo. A bar before the chorus section, I hit the 2nd pedal. The machine plays a fill, hits a crash on "1" and switches to a variation of the pattern, now on ride cymbal intead of hihat and snare instead of sidestick. A bar before the next verse, I hit it again and the reverse happens - fill, crash and back to variation A (hihat and sidestick). Of course you can't do a ritard at the end, but the beauty is you're not locked into a precomposed order. You can add more choruses, etc. as you feel led. Plus, you're not stuck with a static, unchanging pattern. All this being said, a live human drummer is almost always preferrable.

[Pesty]

Originally Posted by BuckyB

Regarding electronic drums, I've had great success with the Alesis SR16, on those occasions when our drummer is absent. What's so cool about this unit is its implementation of the "Fill" function. I use 2 foot pedals, one for start/stop and the other for fill/tap tempo. As I start the intro with just my guitar, while tapping in time on the second pedal. I hit the start/stop pedal and it plays at the correct tempo. A bar before the chorus section, I hit the 2nd pedal. The machine plays a fill, hits a crash on "1" and switches to a variation of the pattern, now on ride cymbal intead of hihat and snare instead of sidestick. A bar before the next verse, I hit it again and the reverse happens - fill, crash and back to variation A (hihat and sidestick). Of course you can't do a ritard at the end, but the beauty is you're not locked into a precomposed order. You can add more choruses, etc. as you feel led. Plus, you're not stuck with a static, unchanging pattern. All this being said, a live human drummer is almost always preferrable.

Wow... I need to get one of those... I think my church's drummer would not be pleased... could be worth it.

A really good resource for you would be www.songselect.com They have chord charts and lead sheats for a pretty huge selection of Worship Music. Definately a good site, I've found them to be around 95% accurate, (occasional missed chord change, or wrong form) But the site transposes into any key for you. My church has an account, and I don't think it's a big cost, definately worth it if you use it.

Good Luck!

[AnthemBassMan]

-Don't pass up the djembe though. When we had our band together, we played P&W, our drummer used a djembe quite a lot. He would also use my bass stand and hang a tambourine on it. Almost a complete kit sound from those two pieces. But he also had a Pearl Session Master kit too. Very sweet sounding kit when we would play auditoriums.

-I go to a small country Nazarene church not a whole lot bigger than yours. On a good Sunday turnout we run about 120. Quite a bit of our congregation is 65 and older farm families too. I was fairly hesitant the first time I played bass in church there. But after the service one of the older ladies came up to me and said about how nice it sounded and we need more of that in the music. That about knocked me off my feet.

L8R,
Matt D.

[wilkat1]

I don't have a bass amp otherwise I would consider playing bass. Gotta put one on the old wish list I suppose.

[AnthemBassMan]

-I just use a small Hartke B30 combo amp. 30 watts and a 10" speaker. But it sure carries the sound. I also used it quite a bit on coffee house gigs. Once again it handled it just fine. If I remember right I spent $130 on it new. Sure I'd love to play through a big ol' Ampeg stack, but it's way too overkill for what I need. Plus my amp only weighs about 35 lbs.

L8R,
Matt D.

[ravindave_3600]

I've been in similar situations. The first question I'd ask is, why do you want church #1 to change their style? If they're happy maybe you should let them worship the way they like.

But if you have a good reason, you might want to check out some modern arrangements of hymns, the way Promise Keepers or Maranatha used to do. They're the same songs, but with a little rhythm added, and most people like them. Sort of opens thing up to more innovation.

[ChurchPlayer]

Church #1 sounds like the exact situation I was in when I started leading worship with another guitar player at our church almost 10 years ago. The church had piano, organ and choir. The other guitar player and I had been leading on Sunday nights and had been fronting a Christian rock band for the last year and a half until we felt the call to step in when our music director left.

First off, we didn't even think about going electric in any way. I was the stronger player and he was the stronger vocalist, so I became the rhythm guitarist. Yes, you read that right. My acoustic served as the rhythmic backbone of the band for the next 3 years. Strum patterns were agressive and percussive on faster pieces and on slower songs they were picked with deliberate melodic cues that would show movement from verse to chorus to bridge. Made the electric player in me nuts for a while but it's the only thing that worked, and it worked well. We finally had someone step up and play percussion (congas & bongos) intermittently and 2 years later (yes years) a 15 year old moved in who could play drums. The choir of 10 vocalists eventually weeded themselves down to 4 backing vocals. Our organ died 3 years ago (I like to believe that God took it home to be with him ) and we've now got the piano player on a multi-keyboard rack, we've got 2 drummers that rotate every month, a bass player who also plays fiddle, a pedal steel player and my buddy and I (I'm exclusively on electric and I'll play bass when a fiddle is required). Took 7 years to get this line-up, so what I'm saying is don't rush things - God will give you the right people at the right time if you ask Him for them.

Second, remember that it's the words and melody that people really love - so you don't need to do the songs they way they're used to hearing them. When we started out we would sit down with a stack of songs that we liked and work out a way to do them so that they sounded good with just the acoustics. That often involved removing fancy chord voicings, or removing certain chord progressions all together. It was like taking a great song and making an "easy guitar" arrangement. LOL As long as you could sing to it and it still felt right we went with it. Then we gave simple chord charts to the pianist and organ player, asked the organist to "play bass" with the pedals and told 'em to keep it simple. You'd be surprised what you can get out of that. With that formula and a good dosing of Vineyard songs we were able to move rather quickly out of the hymn and old chorus school and introduce some fresh songs. As the formula worked we were able to bring in stuff from the "young guns" who are now the backbone of modern worship music. For your situation I would think Chris Tomlin's stuff would be a natural fit and very doable. I've found that if you strip David Crowder's music down to just a chord sheet and rethink some tempos and feels that you can come up with some amazingly deep, yet simple arrangements (try it with "No One Like You" - it makes an extremely expressive slow worship song).

Just work at it and don't expect too much too soon. And as much as it hurts, keep the electric in your pocket for a while. The acoustic is your rhythm section until you get a real one that can live on its own.

[scooteraz]

I guess I am with ravindave3600. Don't know that I would try to change church 1 unless the option is no music. I would just make announcements in church 1 that there are more modern music services at church 2 (and make the reverse announcement about traditional services at church 2...I personally LOVE organ, and don't get to hear good players much any more).

Nothing wrong with traditional.

Now if you want to have a combination of songs in both churches, I would introduce music as Churchplayer suggested.

[hotraman]

The folks have to be open to change.
I bet that we know lots of stories of someone trying to change music styles and failing. A lot of this is timing as well. I, too, love hymns. But I'll introduce new chords and arrangements ala David Crowder, Chris Tomlin, etc.
I used to own a HR 16 drum machine as well. Its a great tool to help playing in time. Hand played percussion add a lot, too.
Just watch out for those tamborines players

[freeradical]

Tamborine should be outlawed.

[DMRoller]

Originally Posted by freeradical

Tamborine should be outlawed.

But we need more cowbell!!



Good luck and bless you in your endeavors.

[colonelrobert]

When my wife and I pastored a small neighborhood church in Memphis, I was the band. Once and awhile we'd have a visitor who played piano or flattop.
I pawnshop a small PA system, one piece at a time. I had a 66 key keyboard with presets. I worked up about thirty cover and original songs on it. Then I lead some songs with my flattop.
The most important thing is not what goes into the music but what comes out of it.
Having said that, I learned that a lot of folks are lead not by the spirit but by the music in church. And that's ok. Church is not just about christians but all people. And our church was in a wild part of town.

I commend you for what you are doing.

Here is Cordell Jackson at our church. That night we had a guest gospel band visiting. You can see our PA speakers on the poles.

[Trimmed&Burnin]

Originally Posted by colonelrobert

When my wife and I pastored a small neighborhood church in Memphis, I was the band. Once and awhile we'd have a visitor who played piano or flattop.
I pawnshop a small PA system, one piece at a time. I had a 66 key keyboard with presets. I worked up about thirty cover and original songs on it. Then I lead some songs with my flattop.
The most important thing is not what goes into the music but what comes out of it.
Having said that, I learned that a lot of folks are lead not by the spirit but by the music in church. And that's ok. Church is not just about christians but all people. And our church was in a wild part of town.

I commend you for what you are doing.

Here is Cordell Jackson at our church. That night we had a guest gospel band visiting. You can see our PA speakers on the poles.

This is the stuff Colonel,,,

[colonelrobert]

Originally Posted by Trimmed&Burnin

This is the stuff Colonel,,,

Thanks. I checked out your myspace page. Cool guitars and amps!

CR

http://www.myspace.com/tmhof

[Trimmed&Burnin]

Thanks Colonel!

[wilkat1]

It's not so much that I want to change church #1's music, they want to. It's just that the musicians are very trad (but willing to experiment a bit).

The djembe was a hit (with the vast majority) one Sunday as was a special I did using a backing track I made in Rifftracker (see my Twanger Central post, "Precious Lord," but I did vocals and lead guitar in church rather than play an instrumental).

At church #2, our Clavinova player led one song with the strings setting while the other guitarist and I played complementary parts and it was beautiful. I expressed my excitement and suggested to her that she should do more of that. One Sunday night I used it to program a backing track (drums bass and keys) for a special to accompany lead guitar and vocal - and it was well received. I can see us working together to make it work.

I'm reminded of an old story where a pastor tried several times unsuccessfully to move the organ across the sanctuary. Years later, he found that his successor was able to get it moved. He asked how the new pastor was able to get the new congregation to let him move it and the new pastor said, "Easy! I moved it one inch every week."

Anyway, it's working. And I agree on the acoustic at church 1 - the acoustic is the rhythm section while electric is the thing at church 2 (makes set-up easier too, I can just leave those guitars there!)