I’d Like To Play More

Recently, the question was put to me: I’d like to play more at church but the worship leader seems to always be picking others over me, what can I do about this?

The truth is that this is a complex issue. I know a lot of worship leaders who really like someone personally but they aren’t a good fit for whatever reason and the WL doesn’t like conflict so they just use them as little as possible. Sometimes another person is being picked over someone for valid reasons. That other person is being raised up for long term leadership, or the worship leader has figured out that out of three players one really only has the availability because of work or school to do worship so they get a shot more than people who have the ability or time to serve elsewhere. Is that right or wrong? I don’t know, but it is a reality in many churches.

If you’re feeling overlooked or passed over or simply just want to play a little more, what should you do? Here’s some thoughts that will hopefully be helpful.

4 Ways To Make Your Worship Team Better

My friends over at The Church Collective have a new post up by Rob Carona that I think it worth your time called “4 Ways To Release The Potential Of Your Worship Team”.

I highly recommend this article to you.

The Electric: Signal Chain

In this series I try and address different aspects of the practical side of playing electric guitar in church music. This week we’ll continue the conversation about finding the best amp for worship.

 

How have I never written a Signal Chain post? It’s almost criminal. Signal Chain posts are the Tube Screamer’s of guitar blogging! So after two and a half years, I think it’s finally time.

SIGNAL CHAIN

So you’ve got some pedals now, and you’re putting them together. Maybe they’re all Boss pedals (which is pretty much all we had back when I started) so you’ve just ordered them by color. That’s ok right? Well… not quite.

We order in pedals in a certain way (signal chain) because of the effects it has on the sound waves. For example a vibrato pedal affects the shape of the wave form while a delay pedal just repeats that shape. So the order you put the pedals affects the sound you get, and in some cases the way a pedal will act or respond.

Gear Review: The JHS Colour Box

A while back I wrote a full review on The Church Collective for the JHS Colour Box. You can find it HERE.

In the time since I’ve made a few observations to add to what I’ve previously written.

GAIN

This thing is a really, really great gain pedal. Fuzz, Distortion, Overdrive. All great. Specifically the fuzz. I think it’s better or more valuable as an EQ/Tone shaper, but the fuzz sounds really, really great and it’s tempting switch roles.

On Gungor, Doubt & Belief

If you’re on any sort of social media, then it’s possible that this last week you saw 1 (or 20) posts, comments, links, and/or articles relating to Michael and Lisa Gungor, their band, and how they’ve denied the faith or something. This is a funny subject because it’s not strictly about worship. Most of Gungor’s songs don’t translate to the average church (you try doing Beautiful Things and see how that works out for ‘ya 😉 ). But I think it’s worth talking about for a few reasons.

First and foremost, I’ve been annoyed about the whole thing and it’ll be cathartic to get this off my chest. Secondly, because there’s just been a lot of silliness written about it in the last few weeks and I’d like to write something that gets past the rhetoric. Lastly, as worship leaders, we should know where our songs come from, who writes them, and how we should interact with churches who don’t line up with the style and shape of our own.

(See the article that kind of kicked every thing off HERE and Gungor’s response HERE)

NOTE: Michael Gungor (MG) really is representative of his family, band and church. So there may be parts of this post where I’m not just talking about him specifically, but you’ll just have to let the context tell you when that is.

Change

This is an older post, and while I’m not longer at Calvary:Arlington, I think the points are still very applicable.

Real World Worship

This morning I after I got up I was looking over email, news feeds, and social media. There was an older relative complaining that Facebook had ‘done it again’ and changed their “look” on the main page. I honestly hadn’t really noticed much of a change but therein lies the genius.

Change is inevitable. Change will happen. The only question is how prepared we are for that inevitable fact, and how we respond to it. Times will change and your church will change. People will come, people will move on, people will grow older. Most churches seem to do one of two things. Either they do nothing, never changing, never deviating, always the same as the year before, or they they don’t change for years and then one day realize that a change has to be made so it’s sudden and drastic. Why not try a third way, the ‘Facebook…

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