I would venture to generalize that Christmas time is perhaps the most challenging month for a church worship pastor/music director. Compared to the rest of the year, December has so much emphasis put on it: typically more visitors at the Christmas Eve service, expectations for what songs are done with a modern or traditional approach, all for one month! Even though the congregation grits their teeth when introducing new songs (every week!) I still sing them. They always come around. A typical Sunday morning comment I hear is, "I didn't really like that song the first time you played it, but man, I can't get it out of my head now. It's really good!" Told you.
Christmas feels different though. So much work goes into learning obscure arrangements from desperate artists trying to put their own unique spin on an over-sung carol. Christmas songs aren't easy to begin with! All that to say, in the church world where staff members wear numerous hats and it's already a struggle to look two weeks ahead it feels like an uneconomical use of time to designate so much attention to one month.
The same presents a similar challenge for the touring industry as well, but perhaps the redemption for all of the hard work is that a Christmas tour can offer a large portion of an artists income for the year. The difference between a Nashville Christmas touring act and a church band presents quite a challenge as well. A touring band by profession doesn't need as much preparation or extensive rehearsal time to pull off a polished production like a church band does. Even with extensive practice time and easy arrangements a church band will often still struggle to pull off the polished professional sound of a studio recording or a professional act.
This is a bigger issue than Christmas music alone. Civilians (my composition professor at Belmont called normal, non-musical people) cruise around in their cars listening to auto-tuned, quantized, professionally mixed and mastered tracks which they grow accustomed to and become in their listening ear their standard for normal. The same civilians step into church and as the band fails to sound anything like what they hear pumping from their Bose system in their Escalade they become critical and disengaged. Of course there is the Biblical call to worship that criticizes civilians for not engaging with their hearts and showing up at church for the show and this should challenge us all to worship regardless of the sound, or the professionally musicality of the band.
Our responsibility, however, as worship artists, leaders and bands is to push our musicians and bands to maintain quality and excellence in everything we do. The charge to our congregation to worship regardless of what we give them is great, but we need to step up to the plate and musically help the church keep up with the standard that technology is advancing to. This is more philosophical than practical which is a direction I quickly get over my head in, but being a part of my philosophy of worship ministry I'll mention it briefly: historically the church and Christian industries have followed secular trends which has removed the church and Christian leaders as trend setters and industry leaders, especially in the entertainment world. In our small community in South Bend, IN where my band consists of extremely intelligent hard-working engineers, computer analysts, doctors, steel workers and salesman, my challenge but desire is to slowly set a new standard of excellence at least at Grace that leads our community in a new appreciation and respect for the arts. Pray for me!
I promise I didn't say all that as a disclaimer to this video of some of worship a few weekends ago, but if it helps as one then I'll take it. Here's our attempt at making Christmas carols relevant, fresh, but not overly difficult for the band. What you are about to witness is a "standard of excellence" set by a single standard definition camera and a board mix. Pure beauty. Hopefully the whisper, "hypocrite" doesn't escape your partially opened lips as you watch with a furrowed brow trying to comprehend what's happening. By the way our church name is Grace. Extend it.
Collin
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