Performance Hang-Ups

HouseCat71 said:

that is one of my favs. We play that in church quite a bit. I love to sing that one.

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Yes, Stuart Townend has good heartbeat grasp for Biblical lyrics.

HouseCat71 said:

So I'm done for a while until I change my diet, lose weight, take meds, etc. Things that are easy for others but not me at my age.

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I know the feeling! I have veg' only for an evening meal, nut roast, or a little feta cheese with the veg'. Arm and Hammer Bicarb' sorts out the acid, but I have to keep off chocolate (should keep off chocolate) as it gives me acid. Any meat of fish is eaten lunch time.
I don't eat anything with flour/wheat products...(oops...I love carrot cake)
so like you, I play piano, and sing along in my poor quality voice...trying desparately to avoid all the food I know I shouldn't eat.
I have just put in google, acid reflux diet! it looks helpful...

HouseCat71 said:

Please keep me and our worship team in your prayers. One of our Worship team leaders moved away. She was the one who kept great time and knew all the songs really well. The two ladies who are left um...well, we are lucky to have them, but....they mess up a lot without the other gal. One of them, if you try to nicely correct her timing issues; she gets a little defensive so I just...let them mess up. Then, they look at me like what happened? LOL. It's a musical adventure every Sunday, one which keeps us all humble. Still...Lord, please send us someone who can take over the music and keep us all in time! :-D

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This has all the hallmarks of two people who somehow got on the team but were never formally (and rigorously) auditioned. There were probably no agreements signed either, and no formal expectations listed in those agreements, correct? Well, unfortunately, those people are in fact on the team now. And let me guess... They're volunteers, right? Well, good luck trying to get them off, or even putting pressure on them to improve. Except that's just what needs to happen. I'm guessing this was a classic case of Hire Fast, Fire Slow instead of the other way around which is the correct way.

If it's any consolation, I see this all the time around here. Come to think of it, I've never played for a praise band that doesn't have this problem at least to some degree.

I don't think prayer's going to do much, because your remaining worship leaders are easily able to fix this issue without divine intervention. God's job is to do what we can't possibly do even at the limits of the faith we ought to have, not to do what we're well able to do but might feel a little uncomfortable doing -- especially when the problem is 100% self-inflicted (not by you, thankfully, but by the people running the team you're singing for). Best cure for falling down is to get a few skinned knees like your team's gotten with this mess. The memory of the experience will push the team to exercise greater vigilance around future "hires."

I'd raise the issue with one of the remaining WLs, tell that person you're not happy with the skill sets of those two people, that you're not comfortable putting out a shoddy product for God, and that you want to see improvement within X number of weeks. Then see what happens. If nothing, then you can decide whether you want to stick around or look elsewhere to serve.

Lucky for you you're more or less on the periphery when it comes to having to deal with the problem, amen?

Yep, I understand the short supply of talent outside of the metropolitan areas. But it's better to have two or three people up there who really know their stuff, than a half dozen hacks who got on the team just because they show up on the property every week and happen to be nice people.

Think about it... Would you rather listen to six total amateurs committing assault and battery on the latest Elevation Worship release, or two highly-skilled people like Plumb and her acoustic guitar player (who's also a fantastic harmony singer)? Just those two. Like this:


See, it's not about numbers of performers; it's about quality of the performance. There are frighteningly few organizations that get this. To illustrate: I've lost count of how many times I've done a worship gig where a known hack/underachiever failed to show up, and the end product came out fantastic because all the garbage he (or she) routinely adds to the mix wasn't there this time. In fact, I don't think it's ever not happened that way. All it takes is one person to spoil the end product.

Your question about my work: I don't attend church, nor do I have formal ties to any. I'm a contract worship bass player and singer -- a mercenary if you will. This arrangement benefits all parties. But that's another topic.

Bass4Jesus said:

our question about my work: I don't attend church, nor do I have formal ties to any. I'm a contract worship bass player and singer -- a mercenary if you will.

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Wow. You and I have vastly different views on this ministry.

I would NEVER play (as anything other than a temporary fill in) in a congregation I did not attend and was not a member of (at least provisionally). Most congregations I have attended required a minimum of one year full membership before being on the worship team.

And I would NEVER take money for playing or singing.

Hey Dave, re. attachments to the church, I've run across churches up here that do want you involved in other ways, but I've also run across others that couldn't care less. And a couple of churches that are in the middle somewhere, where they'll keep needling each player until a) they (the churches) stop the harassment 'cause they eventually realize it's never going to work on that particular individual, or b) the player will rage-quit after a few months because he's had it up to here with the... well... you know the word. One multi-site around here even demands you be on site in the audience on the weeks you're not scheduled to be on stage. As far as I'm concerned, that's directly from Satan because it puts a cap on the player's ability to fully leverage his skillset for the Kingdom -- a skillset that was given to him at birth by God. (I'm guessing the real reason behind it is so the player won't be able to look around and possibly start playing for competing churches on his free Sundays. This is especially important when the player is an A-lister, 'cause the last thing the "home" church wants to do is to share that level of talent with a competitor in the same county. Good luck trying to get anyone at the home church to admit that, though. I'm sure their refutations have been well-rehearsed beforehand.)

So, yeah, I guess we've got pretty much of everything around here.

For those wanting to join a church's praise band, I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to get a copy of the player agreement or expectations document and read it carefully before you audition. Never go by verbal assurances. Vigilance exercised at the front end will pay off long-term. If the church doesn't have their expectations formalized and documented, or they do but they won't give you a copy of it, I would urge you to consider that a huge red flag. Bear trap ahead.

Well, this is the difference between the churches that continually haul in new believers and the churches that haul in few if any. Excellent, well-produced performances are what help attract and retain a congregation, especially the younger ones and/or the lost ones. They're not the only contributor, but they're a big part of the equation. That's just the way it is these days. We're competing for the eyes and ears of a generation whose eyes and ears are constantly getting bombarded with secular content, much of which is technically advanced and of extremely high quality. We cannot change that. We either compete on that preordained playing field, or we lose by failing to meet the standards set by the secular entertainment world and considered the norm by the average Jane or Joe.

There's a wide gulf between "getting the job done" and getting the job done with excellence and professionalism. I strive for the latter, and I constantly push the teams I serve to do the same.

A church that wants to remain static -- and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; it depends on the church's mission statement -- may do fine with average talent doing average work. I've played in churches like that. In fact that's how I got my start in praise & worship music. The great thing about there being so many different types of churches and worship available is that it's nearly impossible for someone not to find a worship style that fits his preferences. Around here, you name it, we've got it: everything from pro-level musicians working 70' wide stages at large multi-sites all the way down to rogue 10-seat Baptist churches with a bad furnace, a couple of acoustic guitar players, and a lousy singer. Whatever works to fulfill the mission God has given church management, as long as management's ears stay open over time.

[EDIT: Fix wrongly-worded sentence in last paragraph.]

Bass4Jesus said:

One multi-site around here even demands you be on site in the audience on the weeks you're not scheduled to be on stage. As far as I'm concerned, that's directly from Satan because it puts a cap on the player's ability to fully leverage his skillset for the Kingdom -- a skillset that was given to him at birth by God. (I'm guessing the real reason behind it is so the player won't be able to look around and possibly start playing for competing churches on his free Sundays.

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Where is the idea that you are a vital part of a local assembly - and that your service in the music area is only one expression of that connectedness?

Bass4Jesus said:

There's a wide gulf between "getting the job done" and getting the job done with excellence and professionalism. I strive for the latter, and I constantly push the teams I serve to do the same.

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There is also doing the job as part of a covenant community. It has been said by some modern theologians looking at the P&W phenomenon of the last 40 years as a close analog to marital sex.

If that is so, even if you have a tremendous skill set, would you travel around demonstrating that from partner to partner? I don't think so.

DaveW-Ohev said:

Where is the idea that you are a vital part of a local assembly - and that your service in the music area is only one expression of that connectedness?

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Believe me, if I weren't booked for a particular Sunday, I'd consider that role. However, the instrumental & vocal talents God gave me are scheduled for Sundays indefinitely, plus occasional Saturdays, and I think Mondays are about to get added to that schedule. My objection was that the church in question almost certainly used that "gotta show up even if you're not playing" rule to keep talent out of the hands of competitor churches. (And there is huge demand for skilled talent around here. It's almost nonexistent.) In my mind it's not fair for a church to hog talent to keep it out of the hands of other outfits that could benefit from it.

There is also doing the job as part of a covenant community. It has been said by some modern theologians looking at the P&W phenomenon of the last 40 years as a close analog to marital sex.

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You meant premarital sex, yes? In my opinion, the comparison fails because our job as believers is to go out and make disciples, not hang out in a closed community. If the former is outwardly promiscuous, then the latter is inwardly masturbatory. We should be outward-facing and taking risks, not inward-facing and playing it safe. Jesus's disciples did ministry by going on the road. If they stayed in one place, it was never for long. It was the Pharisees who stayed in their synagogues, all wrapped up in themselves. But if we do that, how does that help bring people into the fold? Even conservative performers like Johnny Cash and his wife would appear often with Billy Graham while he was on the road way back in the -- oh boy, I hate to think how long ago that was. Envision this: If Cash were able to play for huge crowds on the road every Sunday, and if he truly knew that was his heavenly assignment, and if someone told him he had to warm a seat every other Sunday rather than play for the Kingdom, I'll wager he wouldn't hesitate to give whoever that was the International Single Digit Salute.

It comes down to this: How many new believers can I leverage per unit time -- my time? The best return on my time is to church-hop the modern, outward-facing, disciple-making multi-sites as their needs require, and do my best to attract new believers by helping bands put out the best product they possibly can. Speaking figuratively rather than in specific numbers, I want to be the guy who dumps ten talents into the boss's hands when he comes back, because five is how many he gave me to start with. I want to wear out working my butt off to bring in new believers, not rust out hanging out with people who already believe.

Bass4Jesus said:

In my opinion, the comparison fails because our job as believers is to go out and make disciples, not hang out in a closed community.

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Yes, we go out and make disciples; but I suspect that you do not understand that dynamic very much. It is a one-on-one training that is intensive. IT is a mutually agreed on well-defined relationship for a specified period of time. And it works best in the "closed community" as you put it.

Discipleship in first century Judea had 4 main goals. The teacher was to impart and the disciple had to:

1 - To memorize their Teacher’s Words
2 - To learn their Teacher’s Traditions and Interpretations
3 - To imitate their Teacher’s Actions
4 - To raise up Disciples

Bass4Jesus said:

But if we do that, how does that help bring people into the fold? Even conservative performers like Johnny Cash and his wife would appear often with Billy Graham while he was on the road way back in the -- oh boy, I hate to think how long ago that was.

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I remember Cash BEFORE he met June Carter.

Envision this: If Cash were able to play for huge crowds on the road every Sunday, and if he truly knew that was his heavenly assignment, and if someone told him he had to warm a seat every other Sunday rather than play for the Kingdom, I'll wager he wouldn't hesitate to give whoever that was the International Single Digit Salute.

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But of course there is a HUGE difference between an entertainer (christian or otherwise) and a worship musician. A worship musician has an audience of ONE.

Bass4Jesus said:

My objection was that the church in question almost certainly used that "gotta show up even if you're not playing" rule to keep talent out of the hands of competitor churches.

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I had to think on this one for a few minutes. There is so much wrong in here it boggles my mind.

First off - WHY on earth would congregations consider themselves "competitors?" Do the leaders of the various groups not meet together and coordinate their efforts?

Maybe those various congregational leaders need to be discipled in "playing well together..."

Dave, I'm sorry but I can't continue this debate. It's turning into a giant time sink. I disagree with almost every statement you've made in this thread. I wish you all the best, however, in whatever work you're doing to advance the Kingdom.