Introducing praise music in an established church

Introducing Praise Music In An Established Church

Praise the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre,

praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute,

praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.

(Psa 150 NIV)

Understand The Problem...

A note before you start. This is a very hard read and may leave you feeling depressed about the whole idea of changing your traditional service. This is as truthful a presentation of what transpired here as I can make it. This article has become more of a history lesson of our struggles and our mistakes. Make sure you read my next article Blended Services Do Work!. It is a lot more upbeat and positive. In it you will learn what finally did work for us. What I have written here still stands as an example of what happens when you are going about it wrong - even though your motives are all correct.

Since you are reading this either you are doing your research in advance like we are all supposed to do, or you are already in a mess and trying to live through it. The last scenario pretty well explains our approach. It is also why I am writing this article. I am by no means an expert, but I can share what we have discovered, whether good or bad. Maybe I can help you avoid some of our major blunders if you are just starting, or encourage you that you are not alone if you are in the middle of the battle. I haven't seen a lot of this type information on the web. It is my hope others will soon offer better information.

The first thing you should do is make certain this change is God's leading and not simply your desire to be cool or to get your way in what style music is used. Even if it is of God it may get very messy. You need to hear and accept that if your services have been piano, organ, and choir driven in an established congregation, once you introduce a praise band, some people will leave. Pastors cringe at such statements. The however is that if you don't try to blend the old with the new some people are going to leave anyway, to the church down the road who aren't bound by our traditions.

I have come to the conclusion that the wrong way to look at this is which group do you want to keep? That is a secular marketing approach and is not the way of love. Instead we should approach this as an opportunity to teach the importance of family, of love, of tradition, of change, and of sharing as we grow in Christian maturity and unity. Unfortunately not everyone will see how Christian maturity has anything to do with change especially if it involves guitars. Some people will leave.

You say that isn't right, after all you have done contemporary specials in your church and everyone seemed to enjoy them. They probably did, but you are viewed differently as a special. No matter your intent, from their perspective you are to some extent entertainment. More importantly, you are excused under the novelty clause. A traditional congregation will pretty much accept anything for one service, but not on a regular basis.

Think about it. Generally speaking you can bring in an artist or local group and they will be able to get your congregation to do things you can barely imagine them doing like clap, stand, and maybe even put a hand in the air (gasp). Afterwards your people will say with enthusiasm how great that was and how they wish we could have something like that happening in our church. If they really meant it praise the Lord, but I am telling you many of them almost certainly do not mean it.

For your sake it would be nice to be wrong here, but I have heard this story too many times to believe that you will not encounter a revolt. When the praise team starts leading a couple times a month and it occurs to some in the congregation that the guitars are on the stage to stay they will stop cooperating with you. It will upset them to see the piano and organ not being used - even though they are being used several times a month. They will be frustrated they are not singing exclusively out of the hymnal - "How do you expect us to sing those songs without the notes?"

When we first started to experience this phenomenon we thought we could fix it by simply playing almost entirely hymns using contemporary instruments. We thought we could slowly add in contemporary songs later. The problem is we did not understand the true nature of the problem. Let me try to explain some of the reasons for their rejection:

For some the piano and organ are sacred. Any other instruments are 'worldly'. Guitars in church insult them especially electric guitars. Don't even mention drums. For others sacred music cannot have a foot tapping beat. It must be solemn. Playing "Holy Holy Holy" to a rock beat is near blasphemy (but a lot of fun for your guitar player!). For some the problem will be that the hymnals were bought in remembrance of a loved one. These issues can be addressed with lots of solid teaching, preaching, prayer, patience, and love. It is possible to gain their acceptance but it will be very slow going.

Then there are those who simply do not want to learn or do anything new. This bunch can be divided into two groups; those whose church experience is based on memories, and those who are unfortunately simply self-centered. The first can be dealt with as mentioned above though it will be difficult. If they have gone their whole Christian life having a religion instead of a relationship it is going to be tough to straighten them out. For them, change is necessary though at the time they will not see it.

The self-centered bunch is where the real problem is going to be found. Change is necessary for them too but they will refuse it. Things are going to be done their way or no way at all. To make matters worse, they have usually worked their way into positions of power and authority in the church so they may dictate their will upon others. I know that is a harsh statement and you are going to be inclined to disagree until you cross them and they come at you with the full force of their wrath. I pray you never understand what I am talking about on this subject.

Get The Blessing...

When you begin leading the music portion of the service it is important you first get your Pastor's public blessing. This is critical. We didn't and it caused untold grief. He encouraged us to lead but did not make a statement granting us authority to lead. The reason you need his public blessing is because without it when (not if) there are complaints he will receive the full brunt of them, not you. The complainers will be very vocal (they always are) and they will make the preacher's life miserable. He will in turn keep the praise team constantly upset by putting restrictions on you. You will think he is trying to hold you back or water you down until you are only a shadow of what you believe God's vision is calling you to be for Him.

Because you won't give up, the complaints will not stop either, so there will be strife in the church, a lack of unity within the group, and discord with the Pastor. None of this is Biblical but it will happen. If you do not keep your focus on the Lord you will find yourself discouraged and feeling like abused stepchildren - unwanted and unloved. The Pastor will get blamed for everything by everyone, while his real crime is trying to protect and hang on to everyone in the congregation and the band. My advice; if the Pastor and the Church Leaders (Elders, Deacons, or whatever) will not publicly support the transition - walk away from the praise band for now but stay active in the church.

Joshua is to me one of the most fascinating men in the Bible. He was with Moses on the mountain when the commandments were given (Exodus 24:13). He was one of the spies sent in to survey the Promised Land. Yet when the people rejected taking the land, Joshua after an initial bought of anger at the people's disobedience, stayed silent and worked along side the people through the 40-year wandering. Because of his faithfulness God used Joshua to lead the children into the Promised Land after the rebellious had all died. My point - God's timing not ours.

That's my advice. It is not what we did. We did not walk away because we believe God has called us to lead an uprising of sorts that we are still in the midst of, one that will prayerfully end in a true revival for this body of believers. That probably sounds self-serving but if it is, then we are the most pathetic of people because the cost has been way too high for it to be about us. By cost, I am talking far more than the material and time expenses. Count the cost (Luke 14:28). For most of you, without the public blessing, my advice to walk away still stands.

Get A Leader...

After getting Leadership's blessing the next most important item is for the church to recognize one person as the worship music leader, otherwise known as the Minister of Music (MoM). This person being recognized as the music authority in the church will take the complaints away from the Pastor. If the Pastor is still listening to them, instead of directing them to MoM, it is his own fault.

It is important for the praise team to recognize a single authority as well. That way there is no question who gets the final say on song selection, rehearsal, who is on the team, style issues, and any number of other things that come up in a group. Team dynamics will simply function better with a clear chain of command. As long as this person holding the position is doing a competent job, neither the church nor the team should be allowed to usurp their authority. If the chain of command is broken chaos will result.

Just as we did not get the blessing we did not appoint a single leader. This further hurt the Pastor more than it did us. It is hard to say you aren't the one responsible when you are the only visible person recognized as being in charge. Within the group, not having a leader sounds like a good idea. Everything will be decided democratically! The potential problem here is human nature, even among Christian family. The dominant personalities will always rise to the top.

Most of the team won't care who is in charge. They will flow with whatever decisions are reached as long as they don't have to make them. Some will complain that only a few are making the decisions but will never offer ideas or suggestions themselves, even when asked directly. Some will be servants who will fall right in behind the dominant person and support them in every way. We should probably all learn from them. Then there will be the sub-dominant personality. This is the one who does not want to be in charge but seems always to be butting heads with the dominant personality.

In our group the sub-dominant individual is me. I spend a lot of time on the lookout for new music to introduce to the group, preparing the lead sheets, and learning the songs in advance. It is important to me not only to know in advance what songs we are doing on Sunday but what songs we will be practicing as well. Chaos makes me crazy. Our dominant personality is just the opposite. He is very free flowing and loose. He makes up the practice agenda on the way to practice if he has time. Arrggh! The point is I am the one who has to watch his blood pressure not the other guy.

Honestly, I paint the conflict within our group far darker than it really is to help you see the need for a leader and for organization. Because we are operating as a democracy, neither of us is acting inappropriately. We do support and encourage each other but what if we didn't? The need for an official leader would be critical in such a case. My advice - get a leader.

Resolve The Conflict...

Because we did everything wrong in the beginning it has led us into some uncharted territory. I scoured the bookstores and the Internet for help but came up empty. I did post on some worship ministry boards and received some solid advice, so you might consider that option to answer your particular needs. Following is the path we took.

Leading twice a month makes it difficult to introduce new songs. By the time it's your turn to lead again the congregation tends to forget a new melody. So we overcompensated by playing the same songs over and over. The people in the congregation who were with us got bored and the vocal minority protested even louder.

It got so bad that we quit playing for several months. The Lord kept tugging at us until we started again. We tried to reorganize but found we were as set in our ways as our old traditional church. So we continued to stumble for a while until God began to push things along.

We kept losing piano and organ players. The church discovered how difficult it is to find someone skilled on these instruments. It is a dying art. The lack of an organist opened the door to our being asked to lead more often. Of course that didn't satisfy some in the congregation. The church voted to pay for a piano player but they still couldn't hold on to one. We would find one and something would happen that would cause them to step down.

One of the pianists insisted that the church have a music committee to oversee and coordinate all aspects of the song services. This occurred at the peak of the opposition to the praise music. Because of the timing, the formation of the committee was misunderstood by the praise team and the congregation. We did not know it came at the request of the pianist. (can you say communication breakdown?) Some on both sides of the issue thought this was a political move to stop the praise music.

I am adding this paragraph after having previously published this article to the web because I think it might help some of you. The reason the opposition peaked at this point in history is because one Sunday morning one of our singers lost it on the platform. Tired of watching several frowning miserable faces week after week, tired of their lack of participation, even worse their discouraging others from participating, the singer let the congregation have it. It was not pretty. I understand where she was coming from and agree with every word she said BUT never ever handle the situation in this manner! There is a proper way the Bible instructs us to deal with those who wrong us. This was not it. In her defense this probably is the best example of the need for leadership’s blessing. It would have taken the pressure off us.

So the complaints increased. We felt beat up. Some in the group stepped down. The Pastor felt beat up. We weren’t sure we would ever be allowed to lead again. This was followed by an attempt to oust the Pastor in order to stop the church from moving out of the '50's. We wondered if things could possibly get any worse. Then the Lord began to move. We watched as He used our politics to change the direction of His church. Several things transpired pretty much simultaneously:

First there was the business meeting where the attempted take-over occurred. It was inspiring to watch as the young people rose up out of their silence to stand up against the rebellion. The silent majority of older adults quickly joined them. The rebellion suffered a crippling blow when their true numbers were exposed. They once had everyone convinced they were the majority. Now they were scurrying to regain control.

Next the music committee issued a survey to find out just what the congregation wanted in its worship music. They were offered three options: hymns, contemporary, or blended. A massive two-thirds responded they preferred blended. This was another blow to the complaint that most people wanted a traditional service. The numbers said this simply wasn't true. The committee actually became important to the praise team at this point by taking the place of a recognized leader. The Pastor is no longer seen as responsible for the music, it is the committee - good or bad.

The Pastor through this ordeal wasn't convinced his position would survive. He explained to us that his restrictions on us had been to protect us from those complaining and to try to keep the peace as best as possible. In light of the increasing turmoil, he decided to take off the restrictions. We were free to play whatever we felt led to play! We chose to do a few services of nothing but contemporary music. It was very well received. Thank you Jesus!

Also at this time we had a family of recording artists/ministry people come in to lead a service. They quickly figured out they had walked into a church in turmoil. Instead of backing off they sang the hymns and contemporary songs with power. Then pumped up the teaching on the need to remember the past and the need to sing a new song to the Lord. It was awesome.

The outcome of these events remains to be seen. What the immediate impact has been is that some who were in the rebelling minority have left. Others have become silent. Although they haven't necessarily decided to accept change, they at least are not hindering it much at the moment. We also unfortunately lost some people simply because they did not want to be part of a fight. I understand that, but the Christian life is a battle. We must fight, though it is our responsibility to make sure our weapon is love.

While our numbers are down a little at the moment, I feel more confident about the future now than I have in years. If we will remain faithful and do our part this local body has the potential to finally move forward to change our community. Understand this is not just about music. It is an attitude of willingness to reach upward and outward instead of just inward as we have so often done in the past.

I won't sugar coat it; this has been a very difficult battle. I pray your situation will be easier. Yes I would do it all again. We still believe God has been behind, and in this, from the beginning. He has a plan.

Practical Help...

Ok, enough politics. Let's talk about a few practical issues.

When you first bring guitars into the sanctuary see to it that they are acoustic guitars. You can add the electrics later after the initial shock is over. Acoustics just seem to be less intimidating to the traditionalist. They equate electric guitars with rock and roll. They equate rock and roll with Satan. Any questions? No, it does not matter that the music they listen to at home has lots of electric guitars - whether it be country, soft rock, adult, jazz, gospel or whatever. That's different, it's not their church. Most praise music sounds great on an acoustic guitar anyway.

Unless your sanctuary is very small you will probably need some sort of amplification. Depending on the instrument you will either need to set up a microphone near the guitar or if it has a built in pick-up system run it directly through your church sound system. Do not allow your guitarist to bring an amplifier into the sanctuary no matter how much they complain. This will escalate the complaints in a traditional church tenfold. You could use a decibel meter and prove to the complainers the guitar is not as loud as the organ and they still won't accept it as the truth. They don't need some fancy gadget to tell them it's too loud. Perception is everything.

The only exception to the amplifier rule is if your sound system is so bad it can't support a praise band. My guess is that in an older piano/organ church this will probably be true. It was for us. We had a six-channel soundboard and a 100-watt power amp. Now we have 24 channels and probably 1500 watts. We have already outgrown the soundboard and on occassion have to add a 6-channel mixer. If you find yourself with inadequate equipment you will have to resort to guitar amplifiers. Start immediately to work towards upgrading the sound system. Hire a professional. Joe in the third pew may have installed the present system but this is out of his league. The professional will know about monitors and speaker placement, eq's, microphones, and sub-woofers. It may be more expensive up front but it is worth it in the long run to hire someone with experience.

The bass guitarist also gets an exclusion from the amp ban unless the sound system can handle the bass frequencies without turning the instrument’s sound into a tiny little toy. Our system can handle the bass just fine. He does not use an amp!

Concerning the sound system: good monitors become critical with a praise band. Vocalists need to hear themselves and the other vocals in order to harmonize. This becomes more difficult the more instruments there are on the platform. The instruments must also be able to hear themselves. The mix people hear in the pews is not even close to what is needed on the stage. Your system needs the ability to support multiple monitor mixes. Consult the professional to better understand what you are going to need. As an example, our drummer wants to hear the bass first and foremost, then the guitar, and much less the vocals. The vocals want to hear each other, then the guitar. Me, I just want to hear guitar - lots of guitar! Actually, I want to hear pretty much what the congregation is hearing but with me a little louder so I can pick out what I am doing.

When you do finally bring electric guitars into the service, I suggest keeping the signal fairly clean, at least at first. Guitar players love their distortion and effects but some of the pew sitters do not. You will have to deal with more than the guitar player's ego if you tell him he has to tone down the effects. Remember you are dealing with the heart of an artist. The electric guitarist will be the most vocal about wanting an amplifier. A lot of the tone comes from the amplifier. The trouble is so does all the volume. Electric guitarists tend to like it loud - real loud. We cannot be trusted!

The electric guitarist should have a multi-effects processor such as a POD. This will give him plenty of sound options though he will argue not all the tone of an amp. He will know the difference but the person in the pew will not. In order to get the electric guitar into the sound system you will probably only need a 1/4" to XLR converter. You can buy one at Radio Shack that is a silver cigar shaped converter for around $12. Most people will be happy with it. Those who are more demanding will want a DI unit (direct box) which will cost from $30 to hundreds depending on what one is willing to pay. The bass player is more likely to actually need a DI than the electric guitarist, for the wider frequency response. Likewise an acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup should be fed into a DI. Use one with a ground lift to stop annoying hum from a poorly grounded system.

We have a trumpet in our group. This creates some interesting sound problems. Our sanctuary is small enough that we do not need to mike the horn. In fact it has been too loud at times. We worked with positioning the horn until we found a location where it was not overwhelming. We tried using a baffle on it but apparently this made it much more difficult to play.

We have four vocalists and each of them has a microphone. Whether you do this or put multiple singers on one microphone will depend on what works for you to get the best sound out of them. I personally can't imagine too many more microphones on the stage than what we have now. I believe we had six singers with microphones for a while. A lot of groups have one or two main singers with microphones and the rest singing as a miked choir behind them. Whatever works best for you.

Drums... Drums are tricky to introduce in a traditional church. At least they were in ours. The big problem is volume. An acoustic drum kit is loud. Well, it doesn't have to be but that depends on your drummer. Our church can comfortably hold 200 people. What seems to work in a sanctuary this size is for the drummer to be sensitive to his volume. If he is bent on rocking out you are going to have problems. Our current drummer is pretty sensitive of the volume. He uses brushes a lot. He tends to play small so as not to overwhelm the sound but still put a nice beat under the mix. He is usually so courteous we actually added microphones to pick up the drums through the speakers. Unless you are blessed with such an individual you might want to hold off on the drums until the praise music gains full support. With a drummer like ours you could even use them during traditional music with the organ and people would not object. If people are complaining, it is probably the volume.

There are lots of other percussion ideas that can be used in a worship service: bongos, congas, tambourines and lots of others. You might consider getting your percussionist to forget the drum kit for a while and try something a little different. A word about the tambourine; despite the fact that Davy Jones (the Monkees) often had a tambourine in their music videos, it is a really bad idea to give one to a miked vocalist. Tambourines are loud and microphones add to the problem. Take it away from your singer!

Another drum option is electronic drums. They feed into your sound system so volume is controlled at the board. There are a few potential downsides to this approach. Electronic drums are expensive. A cheap set will sound cheap. Some drummers tend to object to them just like electric guitarists object to not having an amp. Apparently they feel different to play than an acoustic set and drummers say they do not reproduce all the sounds electronically that they can make acoustically. Yet lots of churches and drummers use them and love them.

Finally, you need a dedicated sound person or better yet a crew to run the soundboard. Pretty much anyone can run sound in a traditional service with a song leader and an organ. It takes real dedication and work to mix several channels together for a praise band. The sound person can make or break the sound. I am sure you have been to a service where the off key singer was way too loud and you couldn't even pick some of the instruments out in the mix. Never underestimate the importance of a talented hard working sound person.

Getting It Off My Chest...

If you have made it this far with me then there is a fair chance you will allow me to whine a little. If you are your group's leader and don't play an instrument I hope this will help you to understand the instrumentalists a little better. This is especially important if you are working with relatively new musicians. Listen now to a few complaints from a guitar player:

You may be able to practice along with a CD in your car, the instrumentalists in the group will either get into an accident or get arrested trying this. Professionals may be able to walk in and play something they have heard only once. We are volunteers. We need advance warning and practice. Lots of practice!

The lead sheets we play from are only starting points. They tell the basic chords of the songs but usually do not show voicings or position. There are many ways to play a C chord, each with its own color. Which we use depends on what best fits the song, but we need time to work this out. That goes for the timing, the strum pattern, and any embellishments we are capable of adding to the song.

Just because we played a song six months ago, it does not follow that we will remember how to play it at the drop of a hat today. If you insist on pulling a song out of the air at practice then do not drop it halfway through the first attempt unless we all agree. If you will allow us a few minutes to pick at the song there is a good chance it will come back to us. Of course if you had told us the week before you wanted to do this song, we could have come prepared.

It is acceptable and understandable to occasionally change the key on a song when the singers are struggling. Do not, however, expect all your instruments to be able to do this at a moments notice. Guitar players do need to learn to transpose. The easiest way to accomplish this is with a capo but this isn't always an instant fix. Brass and other instruments will have to rewrite their entire sheet. I command you not to change the key on a song that you plan to use in the service this week unless everyone in the group is comfortable with the change.

Don't expect us to read your mind. If you decide to go to the bridge or repeat the chorus tell us before you get there. Nothing brings a song crashing down any faster than everyone going a different direction. Praise songs are usually pretty simple in their layout but once we get derailed or lost it is near impossible for some of us to ever get back on track. Work out some cues during practice to help make transitions smooth and practice using them.

It will make your job easier if you make ours easier. While scripture does say make a joyful noise, it also tells us to play skillfully. Again it takes practice to play skillfully. It also takes organization and planning. Be prepared. On the other hand don't plan things out to the nth degree to where there is no room for others to add ideas. We are a team remember?

Just so you will know, most of these complaints are things I have shared with the rest of our team. You will likely hear similar comments. Listen to them. We should all want the same end result; to have a pleasing sound that draws the congregation into worship rather distracting them or drawing attention to ourselves. May that be our goal.

Well, did you notice I never mentioned the songs in this article? That's because each congregation is different. You know what will work and what won't work in your setting.

Thanks for taking the time to read my page. I hope you found something that helped in this rather lengthy rambling. If you did drop me a note. I would love to hear your experiences.

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