{"id":9210,"date":"2012-07-31T08:21:17","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T08:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/?p=9210"},"modified":"2019-07-31T08:28:26","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T08:28:26","slug":"worship-band-function-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/worship-band-function-band\/","title":{"rendered":"Worship Band Function Band"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sometimes I encourage musicians who have only ever played on worship teams to go and join a function or covers band and play venues outside the church. This kind of approach invariably pushes them out of their comfort zones and can be quite challenging on all sorts of levels but can be highly beneficial. They learn to play songs that stretch their skills, they get a much deeper understanding of the catalogue of rock and pop music that modern worship music draws upon stylistically, they make new friends – especially important if their only close friends are part of their church network, and possibly most importantly, they discover how to engage, communicate and connect to people who aren\u2019t duty bound to participate or even stay in the room if they\u2019re not very good!<\/p>\n

That said I\u2019m sure many of us have become victim to the scenario where our church comes up with an idea to do an evangelistic event with the worship team providing the entertainment. What never fails to amaze me is how many leaders expect their Sunday worship band to suddenly morph into a \u2018play any request\u2019 function band for outreach events, weddings and other special occasions. All too often the event is too ambitious and falls flat on its face because everyone, including the musicians underestimate the sheer amount of rehearsal the whole thing needs to cut it.<\/p>\n

Very often if the team have only ever played worship music they have no idea how to play pop, rock, disco, soul etc authentically. Even when it comes to learning songs and practice so many church musicians tend to have a \u201cclose is good enough\u201d mentally without really investing the time into nailing the part in detail. Sonically too, if the sound techs have only ever mixed worship the whole dance floor experience is way too quiet, way too loud, or all you can hear is the acoustic guitarist! In short, many of these events just sound loose, under rehearsed and half baked.<\/p>\n

Then there is the performance element. Again many musicians who have only ever played in church have no idea how to woo the crowd onto the dance floor and keep them engaged all evening. Or worse, how to communicate to an audience who doesn\u2019t know them isn\u2019t \u2018for\u2019 them and if they don\u2019t like it, doesn\u2019t feel compelled to stick around! Unfortunately for some worship teams\u2019 \u2018performance\u2019 has become a dirty word, even though in reality many are expected to perform on Sunday to one degree or another, so we kind of do it, but try to make out that we don\u2019t. But when it comes to actually needing to perform to engage people, they have no idea how.<\/p>\n

The word performance in church circles can often be cited as quite a selfish act of drawing attention to oneself for vanity\u2019s sake but in terms of leadership, the skill is to know how much performing is necessary to draw people in, make them feel comfortable, happy, safe, to help them understand the journey of the moment. And of course if different settings that level of performance varies. It\u2019s a moving target, and the more varied performance situations we put ourselves in the better we get at understanding that target.<\/p>\n

The key and of course how this relates to leading worship is knowing the amount of \u2018performance\u2019 necessary to lead people to help them feel comfortable, engaged and then get out of the way! For someone who shies away from extravert tendencies, it\u2019s realising that providing clear, confident engagement helps people feel comfortable, relaxed and focused. So open your eyes and ears and engage with people. Try to intuit, and see if you need to go beyond the planned to get your congregation off \u2018worship autopilot\u2019.<\/p>\n

And for someone who enjoys the buzz of working a crowd, let\u2019s make sure to constantly reassess how that the dynamic that draws and engages people can be best used to point them more towards Jesus than us and our enjoyment of being center stage. To rework a clich\u00e9 \u2018performance, it\u2019s not about me\u2019.<\/p>\n

Other posts you might like:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wedding function bands \u2013 can you really pull it off?<\/a><\/p>\n

Should musicians get paid for playing at weddings?<\/a><\/p>\n

And if you’re the guitarist and need to learn some function band songs fast, check out our online rock and pop guitar lessons<\/a>. Many of these are songs that we play in the function band I run (photo above).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I encourage musicians who have only ever played on worship teams to go and join a function or covers band and play venues outside the church. This kind of approach invariably pushes them out of their comfort zones and can be quite challenging on all sorts of levels but can be highly beneficial. 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