Hymnals and Looking Backwards

Should Churches Go Back To Using Hymnals?

This post from the Ponder Anew blog has been floating around the interwebs recently. It’s technically well written (good grammar choices, punctuation, etc) but it falls flat on the lack of strength in it’s own arguments.

I’m sure the author is a nice guy, good husband, and a brother to me in Jesus. But he’s also holding the flag for a past tradition. According to his argument, it’s not enough just to sing hymns. We have to sing them using traditional (old outdated) technology in church buildings with traditional (old outdated) architectural styles. Why? Because that’s the way the author likes it.

The authors post is summed up with three foundational principles:

Secular Music In Church?

I saw an article on the Worship Links blog about the legalities of secular music in the church. I thought it was a worthwhile topic and since they only talked about the legalities, I’ll try to cover the broader issue. More and more churches are playing “secular music” in their services. It’s happening both with the live band on stage, and in the background music. What was once unthinkable to many is now a common place in churches all across the Western World. What’s going on? Why is this happening? Should we be worried or is it no big deal?

This Was Fun

Here’s a video of worship at my church a few weeks back. We had to change things up because it was VBS week, so the stage was totally stripped from it’s normal set up and we had a lot less room than we normally do. It was not a normal Sunday.

There’s a few reasons that I’m posting this:

“Let’s Sing That Again”: Vocals Cues In The Worship Service

Last week I was at a Pastor’s Conference where many different worship bands and leaders served leading us in worship before the sessions. Almost all of them fell victim to the trap of overusing vocal cues in their leading. What is a vocal cue? Why would someone use them? How can someone overuse them? Well, let’s talk about it.

The Electric: Chord Voicing

In this series I try and address different aspects of the practical side of playing electric guitar in church music. This week we’ll talk about chord voicing and how they can be used when playing in the church band.

 

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PLAY THE G CHORD

A while back I was asked to play electric guitar at the last minute. The church had an electric and an amplifier and that was it. No overdrive pedal, no delay, the amp  had some reverb but the options were pretty much just “on” and “off'”. What’s a guitar player to do?

The Electric: Setting Up A Guitar Rig For Worship. Part 4- The Guitar

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

This week we’ll talk about setting up your electric rig for the first time or upgrading it to something better, specifically Effects. This is part 4 of a 4 part series. Part 1 can be found HERE, Part 2 can be found HERE. Part 3 can be found HERE.

SO NOW IT’S TIME

Now that you have your amp and effects squared away you need to look at your guitar. As with all of the post in this series, this is not a buying guide where I tell you what to buy. It’s meant to be a starting point from where you go on to do your own research and make your own informed choices.

Change

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 way’?

The Electric: Setting up a Guitar Rig for Worship. Part 1-Starting Out or Stepping Up

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

This week we’ll talk about setting up your electric rig for the first time or upgrading it to something better. This is part 1 of a 4 part series. Part 2 can be found HERE. Part 3 can be found HERE. Part 4 can be found HERE.

Who Is This For?

I guess I’m writing for two different people. The first is the worship leader who has been leading for a while, and only used an acoustic guitar. The way music is going this worship leader wants to start using an electric guitar as their rhythm guitar either every so often or a majority of the time.

The second person is the one who has an electric guitar set up, but it’s not very good and they want to get serious about it and they are going to use it mostly or specifically for church music.

Vocal Range, Hymns and Other Questions

WordPress lets me see the Google searches (who uses Bing?) that bring people to this blog. I thought I’d use those search queries to do a miscellaneous topic post of sorts. So let’s start off with…

One Step To Playing Better This Sunday

What’s one thing we could all do better this Sunday?