Rule #4: Choose wisely.

There has been some discussion at St. Dorcas' about how to improve the general standard of the music during church.

Sometimes the size and make-up of the church is a bit of a barrier to this. There are only so many talented musicians out there, and the smaller the congregation, the lower the chance of hitting more than one or two (if that). One of the reasons that churches like Mars Hill in Seattle can do music so well is their sheer size - with thousands of church members, they will get quite a few talented musos just by force of statistics.

The culture that church members are primarily drawn from is another big factor. At St. Dorcas', like at most Anglican churches, people come from a pretty upper-middle-class sort of background. This means that most Anglican churches will be able to field several pianists (with training in classical piano), a smattering of flute/trumpet/etc., and a guitarist or two, but will struggle for bass players and especially drummers. The uni students generally study very sensible degrees which will lead to real jobs at the end rather than no-good arts degrees which leave plenty of time for growing long hair and messing around in bands.

This can't be easily changed - but I think there is an easy way to improve the standard of your church music regardless of what kind of musos are currently serving in your church. I think that song selection can really help. Things like choosing songs that suit your musicians' instruments and your church's culture, ditching songs that are past their use-by date, playing fewer songs overall and introducing some new material can get you streets ahead for a relatively small amount of effort. The sorts of factors involved in song selection will be addressed in more detail in future posts - but for now, why not have a little scan through your song list and see if all of those songs are pulling their weight. Could some be ditched and replaced with others which will better serve your purpose?

Choose wisely...