Happy Monday everyone! Yesterday we started a new series at RVC which means 1) new themes 2) new graphic elements and 3) new music!
The series is called Through The Storms of Life and adresses the way we react to the hard times we all face in our lives. Specifically, we’re discussing prayer and it’s place in our day to day lives. We’ll be looking at a few different passages over six weeks and providing opportunities for our congregation to pray for and with eachother.
Here’s the set we used to launch the series:
-You Came To Give Life (Luke Mundy)
-Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
-Your Love Never Fails (Chris Quilla)
-Enough (Chris Tomlin)
-You Never Let Go (Matt Redman)
-Jesus Lord of Heaven (Phil Wickham)
I took the entire week after Easter off (well… off from my day job… I still did church stuff, but it was all pretty relaxed) so I felt a bit underprepared. Add to that the fact that Your Love Never Fails and You Never Let Go were new and that You Came To Give Life is only 1 week old and things were a little shakey musically. We pulled it together, but things just weren’t happening at the level I was hoping for. Really, this just confirms (once again) the value of rehearsal. The one hour practice/setup/soundcheck prior to service time just doesn’t cut it!
So… I may have to get creative about practice time. Any suggestions? I’d especially love to hear from others leading in a mobile church with limited/no access to a sound system or rehearsal space during the week.
You may already do this but our worship pastor has recorded most of the songs we do with vocals and acoustic guitar. Each week we get the songs on Tuesday and are able to practice “with him” and get a feel for how he plays the songs.
@Kyle Ray :: Funny you mention that… I was considering YouTube videos this afternoon. Do you find that recordings work well for your team? I’m not sure if our musicians would actually listen.
We played You Never Let Go on Sunday also… Great song! A lot of fun to play also… Great opportunities for dynamics. The room my band plays in for services Sunday nights isn’t set up until Saturday nights, and we tear it down again Sunday night… So we practice at another church on Wednesday evenings. They have their own practice there before we do, and we just play when they are done. So maybe see if you have a connection you can use just for practice space at another church? We just bring our guitars (and I bring my amp because I am picky) and use what they already have set up. It’s not a long practice usually, but it gets everything grooving before Sundays. Otherwise, we have found that playing acoustic (with hand percussion instruments and whatnot also) in someone’s living room helps too, just to get a feel for where we are headed in a particular song.