Category Archives: Music
A few more details :: As I said on Monday, the merger happened in October 2011. Kim didn’t join the team as worship leader until January. We began having two worship experiences, traditional and modern, the following February. Before then Bethany Community was providing a blended service.
So, for Kim, the only way was up. Everything was new and with that newness came the responsibility of putting together a band for the contemporary service.
Fact :: in the same way Gilbert was very deep in their talent, the opposite was the description of the Tempe team. We didn’t even have one player at each of the needed band positions. It took about six weeks before we had a drummer and a bass player from the church community.
And those musicians we had needed to learn to play well together.
I will have to say, that Kim didn’t hesitate to present to me a plan for growth. Her plan very much included a Music Director (MD). And she had the perfect person to fill that position, Mel.
Mel and Kim had worked together for quite a while. She knew very well his success. And frankly, his success was well know by me too, so it wasn’t a hard decision.
Mel is a professional musician, a bassist, and has played with many very musicians in many genres of music. His skill as a musician was valuable. More valuable, however, was his ability to teach musicians to grow in their skill and in their ability to play well together.
And Kim and Mel’s teamwork has paid off. The band on our Tempe campus is SOLID! VERY! Their continued growth has attracted new players. We need more, but without doubt they are a team that any accomplished musician would want to be on.
And one more important note :: in less than a year, Kim has built a team 2 musicians deep at each band positions. That’s crazy good!
So I brag.
Way to go SV Tempe. You are growing. Can’t wait to see how good you can really become!
OK and Yes, the title is totally cheesy. Totally, but so very true and descriptive for the subject of this blog post.
First, let me remind you of some recent Sun Valley history.
In October of 2011, Sun Valley merged with Bethany Community. It was an exciting and somewhat scary time for both churches. Both were excited because they anticipated great things happening — God things. They would also tell you the unknown was a little scary. Why? Well, many have planted churches. Many have rescued churches in trouble. But mergers? Not a lot of examples to learn from.
In short, it’s been a year now and things have gone very well. Growth has happened. And yes, some things did change. Actually, lots of things.
One of those things that changes was the way the SV Tempe campus would do worship. You see, Bethany was more traditional in style. Sun Valley is a more contemporary or modern style church. And Sun Valley would be the model in this merger.
So what did that mean? It meant that the Global Creative Arts Team would provide both a traditional AND modern worship experience on the Tempe campus.
We decided to keep the traditional service instrumentation very simple. We use a piano and periodically use an organ. The modern experience would utilize the typical worship band :: drums, lead, acoustic, bass and keys.
And this brings me to the focus of this blog post :: the band on the grow.
Last week I celebrated the great things happening on our Gilbert campus with our volunteer bands. This week I get to celebrate the wonderful things happening with our Tempe musicians.
I’m excited about this story. So is Kim, our worship leader at SV Tempe.
Wednesday, I’ll brag a little and give you some specifics about the what and why of our success in Tempe.
As I revealed on Monday, our volunteer musical team on our Gilbert campus is deeper and wider than any other time in Sun Valley history. And Matt, the worship pastor is pumped about it.
At no time in my 27 years of ministry have I had this experience and neither has Matt. He currently is at least 5 deep at each band position.
So what does this change? Firstly, It gives Matt an opportunity to try a brand new plan for the first six months of 2013. This depth has allowed us to now organize the weekly musical teams a bit differently.
Five teams have been established (drums, lead, bass, vocal). Matt brought together a few key leaders and they literally looked at he talent available and drafted these five teams. The fun part about the draft was not to place good players with not so good players. That wasn’t necessary. Remember, the article is entitled, “Deeper and Wider.” All the musicians meet a high bar and thus, the draft priority was to put together teams we felt would play well together.
Next, Matt invited all the musicians to a dinner just a couple of Sunday evenings ago. They were asked to sit according to a seating chart. Later in the dinner, after a brilliant talk explaining the plan and motivating the team, he revealed the new plan–the new teams.
Everyone was excited. Very excited.
Matt made very clear the pros of this plan. He explained the specific responsibilities they will now have and how the commitment had somewhat changed. They now had a particular team to bond with. Play with. Grow with. Lead with. Worship with.
We are blessed and are excited what worship will now become and how it will grow on the Gilbert campus.
I’ll keep you posted as we learn from this new plan.
Some of you may remember the children’s song “Deep & Wide.” It was a simple little tune that teaches that God’s love is deeper and wider than any other we have know or have experienced.
This analogy recently came to my mind as I tried to describe what we are experiencing with our volunteer musicians on our Gilbert campus. We are deeper and wider with every musical position for the very first time.
And we are loving it.
And it has created great opportunities for Matt, our Gilbert campus worship pastor.
We are currently 5+ deep at every band position: lead, bass, keys, & drums. I’ll have to admit this is the first time I’ve experienced this. Yes, we are deep and wide.
So what does this mean?
Like I’ve already mentioned, it means that Matt has many more opportunities in the way he leads and organizes this group of volunteer musicians. I have been amazed at how he has been able to contain his elation and design a new plan for his team.
He designed a new plan and then ran it by a few of us for input. Then he pulled together a few super volunteer leaders to help him spell out the plan. And finally, he had a dinner for all the players and their spouses and unveiled the idea.
I know. I’m speaking in code. Why? Because I want to reveal all the specifics of Matt’s idea on Wednesday. See ya then.
The worship leaders at Sun Valley Community Church decided to introduce new worship tunes through music video. When they presented me with the idea I loved it and gave my enthusiastic endorsement.
The team had a great time shooting the videos. Everyone was pleased with the results. The music video not only gave us the opportunity to teach a new song but introduce two of our new worship leaders to our three campuses.
It was well received. We played the video before the worship began–during preservice announcement slides. It was also placed on our Facebook page a couple of weeks prior to the introduction.
We’re tweaking the process as we go. Overall, I like the mileage we got out of our efforts.
Have you tried this method of teaching new worship songs? If so, what’s your input? Do you have other ideas?