As I was saying in my pre-fessional, I was off stage this week so I was looking forward to seeing things from a different perspective on Sunday. Here’s a recap of our service and then some thoughts:

Sunday, December 2, 2007
“Follow Me” – Worth Living For
Yesterday, Today & Forever – Vicky Beeching – E
You Are – Mark Roach – E
Offering/Announcements
Advent candle & scripture
This Is Our God – Chris Tomlin & Jesse Reeves – E
Jesus All For Jesus – Robin Mark – E
Hear Our Praises – Reuben Morgan – C
Message – “Worth Living For”
Everyday – Joel Houston – B

Good week. Earl’s talk was about engaging people in the “third space” and how to do that in practical ways. I’m becoming more and more convinced that lots of people have lost the basic ability to build relationships. I might blog on that but based on a few conversations I’ve had lately I’m wondering if that’s an accurate thing to say.

So. Third space. Everyone has home, work and a “third space” where they do life – for some it’s church, for most it’s the coffee shop, gym, hockey rink (for Canadians, anyway!), their kids’ little league game, whatever. But the rules for those places are different – we have a different sense of what we’re “allowed” to talk about when we are in those third spaces. And that is the place that we need to engage people with discussions about Christ and what He’s done for us. That is the place where people will be very willing to hear what you have to say – and also very willing to respond and expect you to listen to what they have to say, too!

Okay – some thoughts on the music side of things. I sent these points to our worship leader as well as our main A/V tech guy who happened to be playing guitar this week and we’ve been talking through this stuff for the past little while.

1. Something happened between practice and our first service that resulted in the middle package (especially “This Is Our God” and “Jesus All For Jesus”) to be very draggy. I didn’t know if it was intentionally slow or the band just started slow – we corrected this between services and the band pulled those songs off really nicely in the second service. My point with them was that we need to make those corrections before the first service and lose ANY creeping mentality that the first service is a bit of a buffer or rehearsal in case anything goes wrong.
2. Some of our vocal harmonies had a very distinct 80′s vibe to them and really did not mesh at all with the feel of the songs. We need to correct this and will be having a vocal workshop later this winter. I don’t know if the singers sound like this every week or if it was a case of this particular combination but it sounded way too Hosanna! for my liking. (And that’s what it’s all about really, right??!!)*
3. I was reminded again of the importance of hearing different voices over the course of the service. It doesn’t matter how nice your voice is, people get tired of hearing it after 3 (I’d say) songs. Throw a verse or a chorus or a whole song to one of your other singers and let them carry it. If you’re a girl, have a guy sing lead on a sing and vice versa. I need to get better at doing this.
4. Mixing – things got much better at second service but the sound in first service was really lacking. It just didn’t fill the room, sounded very thin and was basically lots of vocals sitting on a little bit of band. I’d love to have more of a BAND sound rather than a vocal sound being supported by a band.

Those are some of my thoughts from this weekend. I’m so thankful to be a part of a church that has talented and gifted people who are able to lead worship and who are not fully dependant on me to do it every week.

*Relax, that was a joke.