A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow
Guitarist Jay Smith spends 45 minutes with us pretty much not talking about guitars at all. Instead we discuss worship, art, venue, and the role of music in the church. If you like discussions that go deep, you won’t want to miss this one.
To connect with Jay in DC, visit our convergence.org
“Eminent”; composed, arranged and produced by Jay Smith
If you enjoyed this episode, check out guitarist, Dan Rebeiz, and small church worship leader, Jayson D. Bradley.
Jayson talks to us about his passion for leading worship in a small church, the pitfalls and dangers of turning worship into a formula, and why the church needs more laments.
For more of his thoughtful musings read “A Worship Leader Questions Modern Worship“, and visit jaysondbradley.com
Brandon (keyboardist for Break The Fall) talks to us about his thoughts as a “Back Pew Baptist“, sitting in the rear of a church, helping with the tech program, watching, and thinking about why we’re doing a lot of the things we do in church.
This podcast all started with a thoughtful tweet (and my followup blog post / analysis called ‘Throw-away songs’):
Why does a third of the church leave during the last worship song? Do we have better places to be than before God?
— Brandon Peoples (@BrrrPeoples) October 5, 2014
Connect with Brandon on Twitter & Facebook.
Check out his Church (especially if you’re in Rayville, Missouri), his amazing band Break The Fall (Amazon, iTunes), and if you ever wanted to master Propellerheard Reason, check out his extensive Reason Tutorials.
God’s Great Dance Floor by Chris Tomlin (Amazon | iTunes).
Pete recommends: Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking
If you have something you’d like to share with the church on the Building Your Band Podcast, please contact me.
by Pete Bulanow
This story begins with the one thousandth time I’m playing “This is the air we breathe” and a simple question that actors ask all the time: what is my motivation? The point being, a good actor (and by that I mean not Keanu Reeves or Tom Cruise – as much as I enjoy their movies) can deliver the same set of words a thousand different ways with a thousand different nuances. What should inform those decisions? Luck? Or outside direction?
Musicians can do the same thing with a song. There is so much nuance in music, that if all we have is a chart, precisely what we want a song to “say” is still totally up in the air. That meaning, that motivation, can be filled in by the musician and sheer luck, or can be informed by something more deliberate.
All the inspiration I ever needed was a phone call from a producer. Cole Porter (1891 – 1964)
If we already decided we don’t want “throw away songs“, someone should be able to fill in those blanks and precisely describe why I’m doing this song and how it fits into the metanarrative of the service. That person is the producer (informed by the service planning process).
This past Sunday, my community did a “Hungry Service”. We were all asked to come to church hungry, having fasted for some indeterminate amount of time, even if it was just breakfast. (The beauty of this kind of thing is that we’re asking people to invest themselves in the service before they even arrive.)
Let me tell you, when you do “We are Hungry” or Crowder’s “Hungry”, when you really are actually hungry, you understand precisely why you are doing the song and it takes on a significant meaning. The longing becomes much more than theoretical and the metaphors are much more concrete.
Do you have any examples of where you didn’t know why you were doing a song, or even had conflicting ideas about it, or success stories?
Why does a third of the church leave during the last worship song? Do we have better places to be than before God?
— Brandon Peoples (@BrrrPeoples) October 5, 2014
I thought Brandon Peoples raised a really interesting point in this tweet. We’ve all seen the people walk out during the last song of a service. We’ve maybe even done that ourselves (I know I have). Sometimes we have places to go. Sometimes people are just trying to get out of the parking lot. Sometimes we may not like the music that much. Some churches try to smooth this habit over and say “it’s OK if you want to leave early”. But I’ll be honest it doesn’t feel great to have worked on a worship song and see people leaving early. I think Brandon is on to something here.
Yet don’t we intentionally program songs to be used in this very way when we use them as transitions at the beginning of a service? I’ve played hundreds of services where the first two songs were used as nothing more than a mechanism to gather everyone into the sanctuary. Essentially, as throw-away songs. Why then should we be surprised when the last song is perceived by the congregation to have an identical purpose – as a transition to the end of the service?
I do think there is a real travesty here, but would argue the issue is with us – the people who plan and create services, not them – the people who are simply trying to read the cues and respond appropriately.
Let me put it this way: what if sermons were used as bookended transitions to a service, so that the time spent in music-worship was safely nestled inside. I reframe this as an absurd argument, to illustrate how we sometimes intentionally treat worship music. Why should it be my skill, the one with which I’ve banked my 10,000 hrs, be the one that treated like Musak? And to Brandon’s point, is this really how we prioritize worship?
Thus we identify a conundrum. We want to gracefully transition people into and out of our sanctuary and worship time without sounding bossy and while creating connection. So starting with these (or other) values, let’s brainstorm solutions that might allow us to achieve our goals better.
So for example, in transitioning to a service, might not an engaging personality do a better job of bringing everyone in before the service begins especially if this is what we’re trying to accomplish? Isn’t this exactly what already happens at the start of any professional music concert? So we’re not really even reinventing the wheel here! But please don’t just take this solution – decide your communities values, decide what it is you really want to accomplish, and then brainstorm ways to solve your problem!
If we do this, I bet we’ll resolve our people walking out early problem because we have chosen with our actions how much we value our music-worship time.
If someone were to critique this sight and what I am doing hear, I think they would probably say that all these articles on the production of music is really missing the heart of worship. That most of this doesn’t matter. And I would understand there point. The intent of doing music on a Sunday mourning (or Saturday night for that matter) is to honor God, to worship Jesus, to invite the Spirit in, and to experience God. It’s really not about the best arrangement, or the best mix, or any of that.
The simple fact is that some people get distracted by the simplest errors of spelling and grammar, which ends up drawing focus away from the message*. I’m not one of those people. I’m gifted with horrible spelling and grammar. But I have seen that deter people often enough from the content of what I’m trying to share (particularly in professional environments) that I understand its importance.
I remember a church with a hired worship leader who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tune his guitar. That’s a guy that needed to go back home. Everything I am talking about here is just as basic, just as fundamental. We really need to get the basics right before we are freed up to be guided by the Spirit.
While music production is not the ends, it is a means. And a means that, if done well, will become effortless and invisible, like the air we breathe.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
p.s. In this case: site, hear, is, there, and mourning, should have been sight, here, are, their, and morning.