What if old people complain about worship being "too loud"?

[yourinnervoice]

Shane - First, Respectfully apologize to the elderly member. Let her know that it is not your intention to cause distress in her Worship Service and that you appreciate her input.

Second, where does she sit in relation to where your bass speaker is pointing? Maybe some rearranging could do the trick. (I pray to God you're not running the bass through the house system!)

The church I am attending has 2 Sunday Services - Traditional and Contemporary - For this very reason.

As JIVE4005 said: "If you work it towards LOVE it'll work out fine!"

 

[talitha]

I pray to God you're not running the bass through the house system!

Why did you say this? Isn't that the best way to control the volume on it? And if you record the worship set, would the bass be on the recording if it's not run throught the house?

blessings
tal

 

[yourinnervoice]

Why did you say this? Isn't that the best way to control the volume on it? And if you record the worship set, would the bass be on the recording if it's not run throught the house?

blessings
tal

Good question Tal.

It is not always the best way to control the volume. You are multiplying the sound (The sound is coming out of the bass speaker and how many number of speakers you have in the house.) It is up to the bass player or band leader (not the Worship Leader) to control the volume on the bass.

If you're recording the worship set there should be a mic in front of the bass speaker running to the system, but not letting it come out of the house speakers. You'll have a great bass feed for recording purposes.

 

[talitha]

yiv, I am grateful for this info....

On our worship team the band leader and the Worship Leader are the same person. Another factor is that we have an Aviom in-ear moniter system augmented by some small moniters on the ceiling pointed at the platform. Aviom does not carry a lot of bass sound to the moniters, and many of us (especially the bass player, of course) on the team really want to hear the bass - but if we were to turn it up to the point where it would sound good to us, it will blow the congregation away. As a balance, we have a head soundperson who is very shy on the bass volume and will only turn it up to audible when she's directly instructed to. The suggestion you made about the mic might be a problem-solver!

Thanks


tal

If you're recording the worship set there should be a mic in front of the bass speaker running to the system, but not letting it come out of the house speakers. You'll have a great bass feed for recording purposes.

 

[yourinnervoice]

Tal - Happy to have been of some useful information.
While it may not work for every set-up, it has been of great success for us.

 

[SGM4HIM]

Regarding The Bass Going Through The House.... We Had Our Sound System Set Up By A Sound Engineer And He Did Run The Bass Through The House. It's Easier To Get A Good Recording This Way. Also, How Can The Bass Player Or Band Leader On Stage Know The Correct Setting For The House? Most Bass Players Or (name Y Our Instrument) Feel They Are Not Loud Enough Anyway, More Cowbell! More Cowbell!!

 

[yourinnervoice]

Regarding The Bass Going Through The House.... We Had Our Sound System Set Up By A Sound Engineer And He Did Run The Bass Through The House. It's Easier To Get A Good Recording This Way. Also, How Can The Bass Player Or Band Leader On Stage Know The Correct Setting For The House? Most Bass Players Or (name Y Our Instrument) Feel They Are Not Loud Enough Anyway, More Cowbell! More Cowbell!!

BTW - I LOVE MORE COWBELL!!

Depending on the acoustics of the particular church you may have to run the bass through the house, but this is not always the case. The bass speaker is usually enough. I had mentioned that I hope they didn't have their particular bass running thru the house, since there was a complaint.
I did mention about runing the bass thru the house for recording purposes.

You are right, we can never be too loud. It takes a good team of "musically-mature" ministers to be able to accomplish a good music mix. There are different ways a band leader can properly adjust the sound; from working with the sound person in the back, to having a person in the congregation - providing signals to the band leader. This has worked great in many instances.

These are just suggestions that work in various venues. It's not something that can usually be discovered and resolved in one day or in one service.

 

[talitha]

This is good dialog - who'dathunk? lol......

One problem we have is when our team plays at another location besides our church (usually smaller) - in order to make everything audible so you don't just hear the drums, it all needs to be cranked up. We have a REALLY GOOD drummer and a wonderful Spirit-led hand-drum/conga player. It did help when we put mics on the drums just for monitor purposes and gave the drummers the in-ear moniters (well, they both wear cans, but you get the picture) - they kinda self-adjust their playing in order to hear the music. But when we go elsewhere we're back to regular monitors....

One tip for drum-kit players that our drummer came up with - he takes several thin dowels and electric-tapes them together to make the sticks he normally uses - this enables him to play with the same energy and passion but less volume than the regular sticks.

blessings
tal

 

[SAM9]

It grieves my heart that so many of you think worshipping God requires loud church music (one poster said "it can never be loud enough"). What's worse, you don't seem to care who it is a problem for.

Also, is it honoring to God to abuse and damage the gift of hearing He has blessed you with?

One of you mentioned that King David had some loud worship services. Maybe so, but he didn't have amplifiers.

Another suggested earplugs for those who have a problem with the volume. With the volumes we are discussing here, earplugs do not work; the sound waves go through you at this level.

You need to ask "What does it mean to worship in spirit and truth?" The answer of course is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and spirit and love your neighbor as yourself. I don't see that Spirit demonstrated here. The majority of posters here exhibit an extreme lack of care and consideration for their fellow man and the selfishness and rudeness of pagans at a rock concert. I don't think you understand Christianity at all.

 

[SGM4HIM]

SAM9,

Welcome to the forum! Good points overall.

I do think your last point however was overstated." I don't think you understand Christianity at all. "

Hope to hear more lively responses.

 

[BarbaraJean]

Honor the elderly with the love of Christ, our primary function as priests/worshipers and encourage "open" communications with her/them as its better for them to be heard than to up and leave. I'd encourage the development of a open channel between the worshipers and the worship leader/pastor where people can feel comfortable with going to him/her and sharing their likes and dislikes. Communication is the greatest key in any family situtation.
As a word of encouragment, this issue has been going on for thousands of years... may we always do everything "as unto the Lord" and what we "do to the least of these, we do unto Him"

William
oomuse.com - the home of prophetic worship

I agree with this point of view.

I'm a person who loves my music loud - even in church! But.... all of our musicians and special singers need to remember that they are worship leaders. That means their purpose in the service is to lead the congregation into the presence of God through worship.

One of the things I like the least in a service is a singer who stands before the congregation and spends 5 minutes talking about his/her talents and accomplishments and use the service as a stage to perform.

I've also seen men and women who are there with no selfish motive but there to do what God called them to do - make the music program something that honors God and ushers His people into true and earnest worship.

If you are the type of person who is playing his guitar for these purposes then don't allow the complaints to discourage you.

Just remember that although some of our elderly saints may be somewhat grumpy sometimes they are still to be respected by those of us who are younger. They have been in church for years and years and are having to make adjustments to all of the changes. just as you and I have trouble worshipping to their older styles they are having difficulty worshipping to the newer styles. Hopefully, the leadership is keeping an even balance to provide everybody an atmosphere of worship.

Put your arm around the lady and give her a genuinely kind squeeze and tell her you bet she could play that guitar better than you do. Make a friend of her. Get to know her, show her some love and respect and I bet you'll help her to enjoy your music and she'll be a fan!

God bless you as you minister for the glory of God! It's an awesome blessing!

 

[BarbaraJean]

tell here if she dosent like it to not come or to use ear plugs and keep rocking for God!!!!!! yeah!!!!!!!

That's a joke, right? You can't honestly find any way to justify that scripturally. Okay, I know you're joking. You have to be.

 

[WolfBlack]

most of the times it can be a soundboard issue, now a days people prefere to run the bass guitar into the house PA. my church has a few soundguys that are on rotation, and not all of them get things as balanced as the other etc.

 

[Shaner]

I'd like to thank you all for your input! Our system is actually quite large, and my bass amplifier is only for my stage monitor we keep my amp at a minimal volume. We run my signal through a direct box and my amp because the house system has 18 in woofers and reproduces a thicker deeper bass than my amp it's just a little tough to get the balance between stage volume and house Volume. Aaron Shuust's bass player told me that when your playing small gigs it's good just to have a DI box and sent directly to the mains so you don't have to worry about stage vs. house volumes.

 

[dave88]

We have this problem in our church in England. The hall was built in 1934, and is therefore not designed with acoustics to suit a 500 db PA system. I have hollered continually for the last year about this, because many church members find it far too loud. My cries have fallen on deaf ears up to now, and I recall one incident where the drummer (one of these performance oriented rock stars) was thrshing away to the point where he drowned out the piano, bass, guitar and singers. When I (being on the sound desk that day) told him he needed to be a bit quieter his answer was "oh just turn everyone else up". When I told him that everyone else was already over-gained, his reply was "well if people don't like it there's a Baptist church up the road"! I was flabbergasted and annoyed. People with such an attitude do not deserve to have any congregants. My advice would be to first ensure that the music is acceptable, and that the attitude of the church is one of inclusivity (instead of the exclusive "don't like it go somewhere else"), and tone it down if necessary. You'll never please eveyone, but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

[SGM4HIM]

My cries have fallen on deaf ears up to now....
.

I hear you! and agree.

 

[MikeMcK]

They're welcome to come to our church. We manage to have very meaningful worship without having a rock concert.

Lots of hymns, lots of doctrinally accurate songs, usually just a piano.

 

[PRAYZR]

At our church we usually have the ushers pass out ear plugs as people file in.then before we play something really heavy,like our teams tribute to White Lion,we announce "okay, all the elderly people,place the plugs in your ears! if the music is still too loud after 1 minute,take the plugs out and eat them.this will result in 30 minutes of temporary hearing loss." this usually seems to work out pretty well...

 

[Outofthebox42]

Hey!

While I do agree that it's AWESOME to just crank up the bass and let the guitars go nuts, I also agree that it's difficult to worship when your ears bleed haha.

What our church does, is we have this little device, not very expensive, that you hold in your hand and point towards the band, and it tells you the decibel level. Anything over 110 decibels is said to cause hearing damage. And it hurts. So if you have a limit like that, and you stay within that boundary, then if someone comes up to you and says something in complaint, you can tell them that you've monitored the sound level and that it's within the guidelines of healthy noise level. If they have a problem with that, it's their deal. You've done what you can to make sure everyone's comfortable.

Hope that helps!!

Christie
myspace .com/christiespiritfire

 

[thrufaithalone]

"Anything over 110 decibels is said to cause hearing damage"

It doesn't have to be over 110 decibels: From gemplers.com:

110 dB – Average walkman set above the halfway mark, full-throttle combine, 10-HP vane-axial barn fan: Anything over 15 minutes exposure per day can cause damage.

Churches do not seem to be about showing compassion and mercy, but about having our own way at others' expense. What makes people think God is impressed with our rock concerts? We are supposed to worship in spirit and truth; to care for each other, to lay down our lives for each other. Where is the spirit of esteeming others above ourselves?