This past week we have been hosting Ike evacuees in our youth center. We also had scheduled our youth worship service. Since our normal place was now living quarters for 112 of our guests, we had to look elsewhere for a place to hold our service. We ended up scaling down and moving the service to our chapel. Our chapel seats about 60 comfortably. While we were a little cramped for space in the stage area, we managed by using a djembe instead of a full drum set and a condenser mic to pick up the vocals. We still had electric guitar and bass but had them run through their amps and keep the volume low. The result was one of the best services we have had in a while. We ended up with an average number for us of about 25-30. Instead of being lost in a large youth gym, everyone was close together, and the band and the congregation were practically one group.
Reflecting back here are the reasons I think it worked so well
1. The band didn’t overplay- Since we were without a real sound system the instruments had to back off and be below the vocals. Using the djembe helped because it lowered the drum volume, therefore everything else could be softer and still be heard
2. The band was in the congregation- Practically the bass player and acoustic guitar were face to face with the front row of the congregation. This seemed to help the us, them idea and made it seem more like one group. In our youth center we have a stage and the congregation is separated by several feet.
3. The congregation could hear each other- Since the band was not so loud, it meant the congregation could hear themselves and each other sing. They started out a little timidly, but it caught on and they began to sing, participate and clap more than they have before.
4 We didn’t lose sound- Since we were packed into a smaller space surrounded by brick walls no sound was sent out into vast nothingness of a big room. The bodies absorbed enough sound to eliminate bad reverb but enough sound from the band and congregation bounced around to make it seem full.
5. We didn’t focus on technology- When we usually meet we have screens, PowerPoint, 16 channels of sound, microphones, cords, cables, amps, speakers, and all the other “stuff”. Since we were moved at the last minute we didn’t have time to set all that up. We had minimal sound, our words were printed on sheets and there were no clever video clips to set up the message.
Thanks for the insight. I subscribed to your blog last week and have really enjoyed reading through your posts. I am at a new community and the youth band suffers from many of things you mention. They overplay constantly.
This post will give us some things to work on, and it’s always more effective when they hear the same things from someone else.
The other thing that made it meaningful was change. We were creative…even though this time, it was rewinding a few years in media (back to songsheets), using a djembe instead of an expensive set… Doing something different can help to “wake up” the band and the congregation…if we get used to things, we tend to treat it like white noise and tune it out. So, occaisionally getting out of the routine can be beneficial.
Maybe God is trying to teach me something. Just after I read this blog post, I got a link to the following article (http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b00701.htm) from a newsletter I get from Youth Specialties. It discusses the myth of the digital generation–basically that kids who’ve grown up with the internet and digital media aren’t nearly as tech savvy as we often assume them to be. It threw out some interesting statistics, such that library use has increased by 60% over the last 10 years, and that the majority of students prefer books and print media over pdfs or digital documents.
I love tinkering with Power Point and my worship software. We are locked into a small room (20×15 or so), so anything we can do to make it seem like we are in a bigger room is something I’ve embraced. Maybe we do need to conform to our small room on occasion and also teach or musicians how to play the same songs in different ways.