One Saturday night, as he lay in bed, Mr. Arthur couldn't stop thinking about the music at my dad's church. Something was missing. Something was not complete. There needed to be something extra. More flair. So the next morning, to the horror of all present at the 9:00 service, Mr. Arthur got out of his seat and walked up to the front of the sanctuary. With a look of purpose, this 80 year old World War II veteran stood beside the guitar player during the middle of a worship song. He then proceeded to bang away on a tambourine he brought from home.Even though that's an extreme example and we eventually talked Mr. Arthur down from the front because slow worship songs rarely have tambourine solos, sometimes we Christians get weird about music. Sometimes when someone tells us, "God really wants me to use my musical ability for the church" we overlook a complete lack of musical ability. I don't know why, maybe we think to ourselves, "That guy sounds awful, but maybe God is hearing something I'm not." So we let beginner guitar players take the stage, karaoke kings grab the mic and keyboard players that know a total of three songs, all of them Michael W. Smith, step in front of the crowd. One church I used to go to had a guy that was horrible at guitar but no one would tell him because they were afraid to hurt his feelings. So instead they just turned his speaker down lower and lower until you couldn't hear him anymore and made him stand over on the corner of the stage away from the rest of the band. Which was far worse than telling him to go practice more.
28 comments:
I've read all your posts and this is the first one I've commented on! I've been in the praise band at Church, and the absolute WORST is trying to keep tempo when someone is banging around on a tambourine or the Congas. They are real instruments that actually DO take talent to play correctly! This is the only blog I read everyday. Funny stuff! Keep it up!
At a church I used to go to, someone once stood in front of the sanctuary waving two giant flags. They were about as big as a person her size could conceivably carry. She was eventually talked down too.
My favorite is seeing all of the people up on the platform praising in a fairly calm manner - and then that one person up there who things that this is a Rolling Stones concert.
this is one of my pet peeves.
Ha ha ha ha. I totally grew up in a church of random tambourine players. There is nothing worse than one on stage, unless of course it is a woman beside you banging away, completely off the beat, with a cheap tambourine.
Are there such things as expensive tambourines?
My church has the "anyone can join the worship team" policy, but we do engage in the "turning down the mikes" trickery. If they want to worship for God, he can hear them without amplifying them so the rest of us have to suffer.
The corollary to this are churches that are small or have few musically included members whose worship leaders expect the same talent level as the megachurch house band down the street.
Our church used to have this crazy lady who had commandeered a tambourine and would whip it out at the slightest sign that music of any sort was about to begin. Once during a guy playing an acoustic guitar and singing 'Annie's Song' by John Denver, crazy lady calmly went to the front of the room and accompanied him. It was awful and yes, it ruined the song, but we had to be nice to the crazy people in our church; there were wet tons of them.
I went to a church that had a lady that would use a 5 foot rain stick on some songs... any idea how long it takes for beads to get from the top to the bottom...
.phil
Interesting... I wonder though, how many people nowadays are seeking just a little bit of glory in "stage worship". For the longest time, the worship team I was one in Calif. kept trying (unsuccessfully) to convince the worship pastor to let us sing from backstage. I do remember a pretty good audition process where I was asked to sing in various octaves, and was also asked to share my testimony.
Although I don't think people should be rejected if they're not great musicians, I do agree there should be some sort of discrimination. After all, you wouldn't allow a pastor with no seminary training (I hope).
there's always a crazy tambourine lady once you cross that 50 person mark...
natalie said:
"Although I don't think people should be rejected if they're not great musicians, I do agree there should be some sort of discrimination. After all, you wouldn't allow a pastor with no seminary training (I hope)."
The pastor of my old church (see above) had no seminary training. :-(
So, um, does this count for the wrong people who try to start the clapping on a song? As a music illiterate, this screws me up every time.
My dad was a music professor and we used to talk about church music and singing. Once, I said something to the effect that God must hear everyone's singing and be blessed by the praise - even the out of tune singers. Dad said, "So God has a tin ear? How can He have a tin ear if He's perfect?" Hmmmmmmm......
We had a guy at my Christian college who was pretty severely physically handicapped (I think with cerebral palsy). So one day during chapel service, he decides to rock the tambourine, strutting out towards the front of the worship team on the gym floor. Well, just as he was about to reach the rest of the band, he suffered a bad fall and crumpled to the ground, slamming down pretty hard. It was brutal to watch, and fortunately one good samaritan got up to help him up. I, on the other hand, sat about 10 rows up, watching helplessly and thinking, "This didn't enhance my worship of God whatsoever." A for effort, though, right?
Holy Cow... This just brought up one of my worst memories of church, ever.
In 1986, when I was 14, I had mad skillz. I mean, rapping was easy then, and I could do it well. My mom found my rapping amazing and entertaining and so decided that I needed to write and perform an acapella "church rap".
Oh. Sweet. Jesus. I really, really, really did not want to do this. My church is a country church, and I felt certain that the farmers and the old people would not want to hear me rap, in addition to the fact that I did not want to stand in front of 100 people and rap. Still, I was only 14, and so in one of the most epic battles of mother v. son in the history of man, I did it.
Words cannot describe the horror and shame that I felt. I had no drums, no DJ, nothing. It was literally Me, standing in front of everyone, and I started in. Shame and time have thankfully suppressed the lyrics in a deep corner of my mind, but I assure you, it was awful. Not only was my performance met with a complete lack of enthusiasm, I was openly mocked by my youth group. Not only that, but when I went to school the next day, the youth group members that went to my school had already spread the news that "Rapping Timbo" had made his debut performance.
Horrifying. HORRIFYING!!!!
Actually, sitting here writing about this, I do remember that I said something to the effect of "You need to take a look at the Holy Book" as an ending.
Pardon me while I go cry....
A pet peeve of mine is when mediocre church bands try to play the more complicated new song that just came out and then butcher it to pieces.
I love your blog!
This post especially resonates with me. I am a trumpet player and always play at any opportunity possible at church. The church that my wife and I attended before we moved had a church orchestra.
First of all, the 'orchestra' consisted of three trumpets, a baritone, a flute and an electronic wind instrument. For any uninformed readers, this is NOT an orchestra.
Next, anyone who had ever played a musical instrument at any point in their life was invited to play. One of the trumpet players was in his upper 70s. He had last played in high school. I loved this man dearly but he had no rythym and no sense of pitch, either. Again, for any uninformed readers, this is a bad thing for any musician.
I griped about this situation more than I should have, I'm sure. I was told that it didn't matter how they sounded because they were there to serve God. I understood that [i]to a point[/i] and I usually left every service feeling guilty for being so angry during the service about the horrid playing.
My opinion was that, yes, we should all strive to give God our best in any endeavour. I simply thought that perhaps the music minister should have considered this more and ended the atrocity that was the church 'orchestra'.
My favorite is when you're playing in the band and someone random in the congregation gets their tambourine groove on. What they don't realize is that while they might be right on the money with the beat, there's more than a little lag by the time the sound reaches us in the band. Confusing! Now that's good fun.
Last week was the first time a Kenyan woman in our church pulled out a miniature shofur horn (only 8" long) and she would just blow for a full minute straight. You could tell she was new though because it sounded like me when I tried to play my brother's trumpet once - just a lot of spit and badness. And people would look back at her and say "praise God". I was thinking, "I hope her chofur breaks in the car before next week."
We used to have horrible "special music" at our church but nobody would ever do anything about it! Now I go to a church with an awesome praise band and they rock!
Yeah being a muso I often cringe at some of the talent (or lack thereof) that can pop up at the front of a church, but worse is when the worship leader decides this is a performance, every wants to hear his amazing crooning voice, and so proceeds to sing between lines and generally get everyone confused and not sure when their meant to be singing and definitely not focusing on giving praise to God
I've spent a lot of my time in churches behind the audio board. When I started working with more contemporary churches that had praise teams of 4-6 each holding mics instead of a choir of 20+ in front of 4 mics.....
Usually I get the same routine 5 minutes after rehearsal at 9:30 am...
Music Pastor: James everything sounds great, I can hear what I want in my monitor.... One thing - Lori - the girl in the flowery dress with the glasses is really happy to be in the praise team - I am glad she is up there. What I need you to do is not to turn her mic on in the house - she can't keep pitch - she's not that good.
Me: Ok, I'll do it, but you really need to talk with her...
Of course in the middle of the second song, she has a solo and her mic is not on for the first 2 lines of the verse.... guess who looks like the jerk.... me the sound guy thats who....
The converse side of it is at my church we hire musicians that don't even go to our church to play in our praise band..... This makes the drummer and bass player of our youth band feel like crap because this send the message - we would rather have these guys that played in a club till 2:00am last night because they are better musicians than you...
Great Blog....you are awesome....
I feel compelled to respond to this one as well as a church audio engineer.
Seems that every church I have been a part of always without fail has the annoying 1-3 clapper. What's infinitely worse is the 1-3 tambourine beater (yes I intentionally said beater not player). While the rest of the world is happily playing and clapping on 2 and 4 the one awkward person always has to go for 1 and 3. And what's infinitely worse than either of those incidents (we're at double infinitely worse now so it must be really bad) is when they TRY to be the annoying 1-3 clapper/beater but they can't even hold the 1-3 so it's double off beat being not 2 and 4 and being offbeat 1 and 3.
My 2 cents.
I need more cowbell! Sorry, that seemed appropriate in my head.
I've been both behind the board and on stage. What I loved (said sarcastically) is the people who would tell me how to do my job. Like the guy that sang at a wedding and thought this was his chance to be the center of attention. He had me turn up the monitors and the reverb until it sounded like a muddy mess. But, hey, it was his show.
I'm also guilty of playing on stage when I had no business being up there. When I finally learned that lesson, I decided not to play anymore. I think I just needed to be humbled, because after that I eventually started playing again, but this time it actually sounds good.
We definitely have too much self-esteem is this country. Maybe that sounds cruel, but it's true. Just watch American Idol. How many folks on there think they are good, when they're not and then are crushed to find out the truth? And how do we convince someone that they are a sinner in need of a savior when they already think they are good enough?
(Ok...I just realized that I totally ripped that off from Todd Friel. Hopefully he won't mind since I'm giving him credit here.)
My husband and I work with our church's youth group, and one of the leaders LOVES to play the bongos/jimbee. The problem is, he has no understanding of the concept of the decrescendo. He will play loud and heavy downbeats with lots of those extra "tat-a-tuh-tat-tats" in between on songs like "I love You Lord, and I lift my voice..." Even when the singers have stopped playing their guitars and say, "Just the voices now," he doesn't get the hint, so it ends up being an often off-beat jimbee drowning out a bunch of quiet voices singing, "I Surrender All" at different tempos. He also loves to harmonize. Loudly. He can easily drown out the entire group, even without a mic. And did I mention that the harmonizing is always just a half-note off?
It has long been a wonder to my husband and I that the majority of worship pastors we have encountered can't really sing... our take on the "worship" department at most colleges is that it's full of the kids who were rejected from the actual fine arts department. bless their hearts.
I remember there was one kind of "special" guy who came to a church I used to go to (christian churches are always full of them) who found out we had a spare tambourine. For two weeks straight, he bashed it like a madman drowning out our delicate harmonies and and clipped rhythms. Until he came back the next week to find it had mysteriously disappeared. I watched the poor guy walking searchingly around, muttering and looking lost, while the pastor's wife looked on, trying to hide her little smile.
Ah Christians.
Yes, YES! Aaron nailed it right on! I hate the 1-3 clappers, too! But the problem is that these are the same people who, if you don't let them clap, they'll grab a banner and prance around whipping people with their ribbon because they're so "lost" in worship...
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