Praise Band

Praise Band!

A psalm. For giving thanks. Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his ; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

(Psa 100 NIV)

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my praise band page. If you are looking for guitar tablature or chords for praise and worship songs that is not really what this site is about. What I hope to accomplish here is to encourage you to use your gifting to worship the Lord. You do not have to play like Eddie Van Halen to lead your church in worship. No matter how seemingly small your ability, you can be used. Trust me, I know.

I play rhythm guitar. Before joining the praise band, I didn’t know a single song all the way through but I did have a Mel Bay book of chords and a lot of desire. I had owned a guitar for years but never learned to play more than a few basic chords. I couldn't change between them smoothly and knew nothing about the timing needed to play with a group.

Our praise band line up, as of the writing of this article in 2005, includes guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, and four vocalists. In the past it also included lead guitar, keyboards, and other assorted vocalists. We have had some extremely talented musicians (instrumentalists and vocalists) in our group. As great a blessing as that is, what has really amazed me are those with little or no experience who have stepped out to be a part of this ministry, myself included. It is amazing to see what Jesus can do with the little he has to work with.

We play a variety of music from the faithful old hymns of the past, to 70's choruses, and modern praise & worship songs. Some people claim not to like hymns deeming them stuffy and boring. Some folks don't like praise songs claiming they are shallow and too repetitious. I like the variety as I believe does God. As there are many different types of people in the world, so there are many different styles of music. Whether strumming sweetly on "How Great Thou Art" or crunching out power chords to "Blessed Be The Name" it is the attitude of the heart that determines the true worshiper.

We all need to consider that though a song or style may not appeal to us, it may be touching the very soul of the person next to us. Corporate worship is about so much more than music and preaching. It is about sharing: sharing our praise, worship, and adoration for our living God, sharing our testimonies of his faithfulness, sharing of our hurts, and our joys, sharing our prayers, sharing our lives, sharing our love one for another. There is also a time in corporate worship to invite those outside of the faith to open their eyes, to see, to believe, and to commit. Think about it, if we aren't willing to share in something as simple as our music service, how can we expect a non-believer to take us serious in other areas?

Our Story Begins...

First a little background... Woodville Baptist Church is located in a rural area just outside a small town in Indiana. The congregation began in 1959. So, we have almost 50 years of tradition and memories - which is a blessing that sometimes seems like a hindrance. If you are beginning your new ministry in an established church setting, you may quickly come to appreciate that last statement.

In the mid 90's several of our men began to attend the Promise Keepers conferences. Coming from our small piano and organ driven worship services into the stadium-filled Promise Keepers events was an overwhelming and life changing experience. Testimony after testimony given by these men - most with tears - declared what an awesome moving of the Spirit they had witnessed. A large part of the experience was the music. This marked the beginning of God working to stir us into a new direction.

One of our men had played guitar in various local bands for years before coming to know the Lord. He had played a few times for the Church, mostly at picnics, before the conferences. After the experience he felt encouraged to start a praise team, but there was a slight problem - except for the pianist and organist, he was our only instrumentalist, and they did not feel led to help start this ministry. Why? God had other plans.

Besides playing guitar, he had regularly sung with Chris B. (our song leader), and Darryl in a quartet. Chris agreed to sing with the praise band, but Darryl felt God was leading him in another direction. Darryl bought a used bass and determined he would accept God's call to play in the band. The only experience he had prior to this was a brief time in his youth plucking on a banjo - which he admits he only learned to play one song.

Next I (Kevin) was asked if I would like to join. At once I accepted. For years I had dreamed of playing guitar in a band. Trouble is, as I previously mentioned, I only knew a half dozen chords and nothing about timing. He had tried prior to this to teach me a couple songs but most of the time I couldn't even keep up with him when he played.

He would write out the songs for us with the chords and bass notes and then he would have to teach us how to play them. To further complicate things, the songs were all new to us so we couldn't feel our way through them or practice without him. Had to be frustrating for him even though he never complained, but we had the beginnings of a band!

Next came Nellie. She had played trumpet in high school years before. She was pretty rusty and her knees trembled when she played. Still, she left her comfort zone and said yes to God's calling. To be fair here, Nellie may have shook a little, but Darryl and I stood like statuary - eyes glued to our notebooks - in fear. We all lived through the early days in spite of our stage fright and we were playing, but God wasn't done yet.

Chris K. sat firmly in his pew listening to us. A new Christian he was pretty sure God wasn't really calling him to play drums. God was pretty sure He really was calling Chris to play. God won. Chris bought a set of drums and began taking lessons. Almost immediately he began practicing with us. He has since moved on and has been replaced by Cody.

Linda and Buddy came forward next as singers, in answer to God's call. That rounded out our beginning line-up. Buddy has since taken a job transfer out of state - we miss you Buddy! Our current line-up includes Rick and Mary on vocals (along with Chris B. and Linda).

Today we have Mike and Eric running the sound. When we first started we didn’t have a sound crew. We set the sound levels at the board before the service. If something wasn’t right one of us would have to run back during a song and adjust it. It was definitely inefficient but we got by.

A Crisis of Belief...

Learning new songs was hard work for all of us, given our lack of experience. We started slow, leading once a month. Then twice a month. We played at a community vesper service - our first road trip - a frightening experience and a joy! God was using us. We were next asked to play at a joint service at a sister church. The doubting Thomas in us wasn't sure we were ready. We said yes anyway.

Then it happened, that crisis of belief mentioned in the "Experiencing God" Bible study. A crisis of belief is that moment when you must decide whether you will trust God and obey His calling or follow what you can see with your eyes. Our lead guitar player and singer, the same guy who taught us every song we knew, the same guy who was the band, was called to worship and serve elsewhere!

Of course we were in a total state of panic. I wanted to go on with the ministry but didn't think we could. I was certain everyone else would want to quit. Darryl spoke for all of us when he expressed that he believed we had been called by God to serve and that calling had not been revoked. Unanimously, we agreed to continue the praise band ministry.

Still, there was that joint service coming up and no time to cancel. It was an evening service. We did our equipment set-up in the middle of the afternoon and ran through our songs. We were a little on edge but not too bad. After practice we had less than two hours before the service. Not enough time to justify going home and too much time to sit and think.

Darryl and I stood in the hallway listening to their choir rehearse - they were awesome! We got to talking about their worship leaders and their musicians - their music degrees, and their years of experience. By this time we knew we didn't belong there. We discussed quietly grabbing our gear and running away. I wanted to at least tell them about losing our leader - begging for mercy - so they would be understanding in the upcoming disaster. We did neither.

To this day that service remains as a faith bench marker for us. The songs went great. We hit (nearly) every note. More importantly, the faces of the congregation were faces of worship. An interesting transformation happened during that time of worship. Unquestionably, it was the power of God at work. Our own people told us we had never sounded better. You see, that evening we turned it all over to God. We knew we could not do it in our own strength. He gave us a passion that evening to play more aggressively for Him than ever before.

We love our former guitar player/leader, and still get to fellowship with him from time to time. We cannot even begin to express our appreciation to him for his willingness to be used by God to start the praise band and begin training us. At the same time we learned our biggest lesson by God calling him to serve elsewhere. I have intentionally left him nameless so you will not miss this point: before, we were 'his' band - certainly not by his choice, but by ours. We were walking by sight and not by faith. In his absence we learned the truth - we are the Lord's Praise Band! God is good, all the time... and all the time, God is good!

That does not mean we don't struggle anymore - because we certainly do. God did not tell us it would be easy. Just that it would be worth it.

There are a few individuals that contributed much that are not part of the team today and weren’t there when we started so I didn't have a proper place to thank them in this article. I mention them now: Angela, Markie, and Debbie gave of their vocal talents. They understood how to sing from their soul. Mike had a real heart for worship. He is now singing “O Lord You’re Beautiful” before the throne. Hazel was nearly blind from diabetes. We printed out all the words with the largest bold font we could use so she could praise along with us.

Kathy played keyboard. She used a pretty inexpensive one from Sam’s Club but some of the voices sounded amazingly good through the P.A. system. On lead guitar we had Barry. He could get more sound out of a $59 guitar (not kidding) than most people can out of the best equipment. He always told me, “The tone is in the fingers!” I want an upgrade; instead of better tone wood, I want better tone fingers!

Many of those I just mentioned stepped down during a very difficult time for our church and the group. To get a better sense of our struggle read the article linked below, "Introducing praise music in an established church".

Links to some of my articles:

Praise Band A little bit about how we got started.

Our Continuing Journey latest updates.

Introducing praise music in an established church This has become more of a history lesson of our struggle and our mistakes

Blended Services Do Work! The experts were wrong - We finally figured out how to make it work!

Come Let Us Worship And Bow Down The problem of Idol worship in the church

Hymns Versus Praise Songs A humorous look

A Little Musician Humor Lighten up!

Guitars! Jesus wants me to have a new guitar?

Terrorism In The Church Take a stand against spiritual abuse.

Cool Links Some helpful resources

Guest Article:

Blended Worship - Good for the Body A wondeful article by Pastor of Music Ron Man