We've been doing a short Praise and Worship time before our traditional service this summer. We don't have a flashy worship team, its just myself, SWMBO, an acoustic guitarist, and our Minister of Music on piano. Obviously, that's not us on the right!!
We don't sound all that bad, in fact one of our older saints says she thinks I have a fantastic voice. Of course, I'm not so sure how good her hearing is. That said, we make a Joyful Noise.
We only do three songs, and our guitarist is still learning and does mostly chords, and only in certain keys. Our Music Minister tries to play all four parts on the piano, and does his darnedest to slow down even the fastest contemporary song.
However, this week, both the guitarist and the pianist are out of town on vacation. So, I get to find karaoke versions of songs to use as accompaniment. I'm sure not going to do this a Capella.
That said, we're lucky to get more than 20 people during this time, and most of them show up about 5 minutes before the main service, with the rest of the congregation showing up during the passing of the peace just before the call to worship.
Needless to say, our congregation is not all that enthused about this. I do realize that contemporary music is not for all churches, nor is it the cure-all for a church that is not growing, but anything that makes Stodgy Presbyterian a bit less stodgy helps. So we try, and we sneak in a contemporary hymn about once or twice a month, just to shake things up. The problem is, we really need a rhythm section to keep our pianist (and sometimes the guitarist) on the beat.
And so it goes ....
