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Music in the “under-resourced” church
It’s easy to feel the lack of musical resources at church. You’d love to have a big church band, but all you've got is a couple of piano players, a violin, and a guitarist who first picked up the instrument three months ago. There’s a constant shortage of people to fill the rosters, and you struggle to get through all the songs in your limited rehearsal time each week. Especially when the musicians arrive half an hour late.
Then there are the tech issues. Your sound system dates from the 1970s, and the person operating it - let’s face it - he hasn’t got much of an idea. Someone keeps misplacing the overheads, and even when you check they’re all there before the service, when the congregation stands to sing it’s either the wrong song, or there are typos all over the place.
And the congregation is a musical brick wall! You’re sure that if you could only raise the standard of music at church - then they’d get into it. But not only do most people at church seem utterly indifferent towards the music (your attempt to get some clapping going results in a momentary smattering of hands for about 10 seconds) but some of them actually complain - either they don’t like the song selection, or the style of music, or it’s too loud, or too soft… you even heard one person say they dislike the music so much that they wonder why we bother singing at church at all!
Welcome to music ministry! You may be surprised to hear that many of these problems, including the feeling of being “under-resourced”, are common even to large churches. Everyone wishes they had more: “If only we had more musicians! More talent! A better sound system! More time to rehearse! A more vibrant congregation that wants to sing!”
I have a friend who used to play electric guitar for one of largest churches in Sydney, with one of the most well-known worship teams in the world. They’d have everything sorted, wouldn’t they? Think again. I went on a road trip with him one summer, and he kept getting phone calls from his music director desperately asking for help filling the music roster for the month. It turns out half the music team had decided to go away for holidays.
More resources don’t necessarily take away the feeling of not “having enough” - enough time, people, gifts or equipment. In fact more resources can make you feel more limited because everything is twice as complicated.
We all feel limited. But that’s not the fundamental problem. Above all, there are two problems every church music team faces:
» 1. We get our expectations from the wrong places
» 2. We don't recognise what God has already given us
In the following sections we’ll think about the answers to those two problems. Hopefully in the process you’ll see that your church isn’t really under-resourced after all.