Prep: Part 2- The Band

How do you prepare for a Worship Set? In this post I will focus on preparation for leading worship as it pertains to the Band members.

 

Prep: Part 1-The Leader

How do you prepare for a Worship Set? In this post I will focus on preparation for leading worship as it pertains to the Band leader.

Overdrive Truth

I got this quote from the Guitar For Worship Blog:

“You’ve sold your Fulldrive for a Tim, your Tim for a King of Tone, your King of Tone for a Jetter Gain Stage, your Gain Stage for a Wampler Ecstasy, your Wampler for a Rockett Flex Drive, your Flex Drive for a Pearl, your Pearl for a JHS Double Barrel, and then end up using your stock TS9 most of the time.”

 

 

Think Outside The Box

One of the main reasons I started this blog is that other blogs about worship leading didn’t seem to cover the issues that I had dealt with over the years in ‘average’ churches. It makes sense. Most of the guys who put up these blogs have the time to do so because they are on staff at churches that are large enough to have a full time Worship Pastor, which generally means they are large enough to have more than one full band, and quite often have several fully staffed bands.

My background is both in large and small churches. I grew up at a church in Seattle that was around 2,500 people back in the 80’s and 90’s that (not surprisingly for Seattle) had an abundance of talented musicians (some of whom are in nationally known bands today). That church never had trouble putting a band together. Then when I was 18 in 2000 I was asked to leave Seattle and move to the UK to lead worship at a small church of 40 people. I was the only musical person in the church. Since then I’ve lead at churches of all sizes. Even at my last church which was around 800 people with a lot of musicians we often had trouble putting together a full band because of availability with work and we were sharing a lot of musicians with the youth ministry.

We can either see the challenge of staffing a full band as a problem but as an opportunity to think outside the box.

Seasons

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven– Eccl. 3:1”

To everything there is a season the Bible tells us. What season is your church in? What seasons is the music ministry in? What season are you in?

The Electric: Cutting Through The Mix

I try and address different aspects of the practical side of playing electric guitar in church music.

This week we’ll talk about Reverb, Reverb Pedals, and how that works in a church band.

Let’s be honest. Sometimes the sound guys don’t understand us. Sometimes the sound guys are not our friends. Sadly, sometimes the worship leader isn’t our friend either. This week I’ll want to talk about where we sit in the mix on a Sunday morning and what we can do about it. What do you do when you’re turned down so much you might as well not be on stage?