To-do List

Time to start preparing for our church anniversary which is in June.

We'll probably have live music so this will be more akin to what the rest of the country is doing. That leaves me to figure out what we should sing. I know I want to sing Every Praise is to Our God. Still thinking about the rest. I'm also going to ask if my aunt, who used to lead P&W but left when she got married, if she wants to join the team for this service. We also have one member of the church who wants to join the team on a permanent bases.

We also have to find uniforms. Last year, we ordered shirts for the ladies and wore black pants or skirts. The tops looked nice so we'll likely go in the same direction. Since we only have 1 male, he wore a black suit and picked a tie that matched one of the colors in the shirts. That was pretty easy.

Last and probably most important, we need our mics in decent working order. One stand collapses to half its size and I don't know how to keep it tightened. Two mics must be of lower quality because they always sound muffled or lower than the 1 good mic. And there's another mic that is ok. I could really use some technical support. I have know clue what I'm doing.

Will keep you guys posted about how this all shapes up.

Last Sunday's playlist:
Create in Me a Clean Heart
This is the Air I Breathe (... Somehow, even though we sing this song frequently, I managed to mix up the words)
I Will Always
Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

Easter P&W

Happy Belated Easter Weekend!

If you are like me, then you were in church a lot this past weekend. My organization belongs to a larger organization so all of the churches in the Midwest District met for Good Friday service. Usually we do a corporate praise team, of which I'm sometimes a member. This time, for whatever reason, they decided to let one church's praise team take charge.

While, I'm not a huge fan of the selections of songs for the corporate praise team, I have to admit that this time, they sounded good. I actually knew the songs! This is one of the problems that I usually have singing corporately - there's not a lot of say in what we sing. They tend to pick these dreary sounding, dead songs that no one (meaning I) have never heard. I don't think a district meeting is a good time for songs that aren't in the top 40, IMHO. I'd rather sing an oldie but goodie that everyone knows than the latest random off of a new artists' LP. That's just me. But I digress. The song selection and sound was pretty good.

Sunday followed suit. I did my best Israel imitation and tried to talk a little more between the songs. It went well. This is definitely not my forte, but I'm trying. Guess I got inspired by Resurrection Sunday. But now I have bigger fish to fry. My praise team has not rehearsed in probably at least a month. We've got to get back on task.

I ordered about 4 tracks for us to sing and we've only sung 2. Of those 2, we've only sung them once. Which means no one probably remembers the words or their parts. So we've got to start over. My goal is to build our arsenal of songs by at least 5 this year. I'll let you know how that goes...

All in all, Easter weekend was pretty good for P&W at the services I attended. At least no one fell backwards off of the stage, as was the case at my mother-in-law's church. (I know I'm wrong for laughing, but if you knew how big their stage is, you'd wonder how could anyone manage to fall.)

Good Friday Play List
You are the Living Word
Lord You're Mighty
(I'm drawing a blank on the others. I wonder if that means it wasn't as good as I remember. lol)

Easter Play List
High Praise
How Great is Our God
Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Emmanuel (We worship you)

Wow, really?!

I gotta keep it 100: P&W was outta control this Sunday. So much so, I stopped P&W to tell my ignorant (and I mean that in the true sense of the word - i.e., not in a mean/evil way) audience that it's an insult to me and God for them to not stand when asked, talk, and walk during P&W like nothing is going on. I straight pulled a Pastor Morris! (My old pastor, God rest her soul, used to check fools real fast.)

But seriously, I can't believe people were as rude as they were. I guess I shouldn't be shocked. As I mentioned in my blog's subtitle, this is my experience as a P&W leader at a small, ghetto immature-congregation church.

One funny thing did happen. During the business meeting we had following Morning Worship, Pastor asked if anyone had any other topics they'd like to discuss. To which one of our younger members said "Yeah, the praise team needs a hype man!" #dead #rofl

All I can say is that God knows when we need to laugh.

I guess that's why the Tye Tribbetts and Kirk Franklins of gospel are so popular. Sometimes you need theatrics to get the point across I guess. (Sad, but true.) Lord help me, cause that's just not my forte.

There's a lull in my life

Today's title is an old Nat King Cole classic that I've only heard Natalie Cole sing. (Love her singing the old stuff.) At any rate, this is how I feel about my worship team right now.

So we ordered some new tracks about a month or two ago. We had 2 great rehearsals and since then people have been out sick, at work, absent due to the weather here in #Chicago, and busy dealing with other parts of the ministry. Due to these challenges, we're kind of at a moment of inactivity when it comes to rehearsal.

Is it asking too much that the praise team be on point in 2014? As the P&W leader I guess I better start leading! I used to be cheerleader for like half of my life, so I gotta muster up some "We've got spirit,yes we do" into the troops. If the praise team isn't excited to learn some new songs, how do we expect the congregation to be excited about worship? Time to ante up!

Let's Guess

Let's guess how many rehearsals it will take my P&W team to learn Richard Smallwood's Total Praise before we actually roll it out on a Sunday. Right now we are at 2. 

This song is bananas for the altos and tenors. (Technically speaking I should take the "s" off of alto and tenor since there are only 1 of each. Did I mention we are a small praise team?) 

I'm going to guess it's gonna take us 2 more rehearsals. Stay tuned for the final number...

iLead Escape

So did I tell you that I finally attended Tasha Cobb's live P&W teleconference a couple of weeks ago? Man, it was the truth! William Murphy was the guest leader for the night and he brought an awesome word to us all. Here are some of the things I learned from Pastor Murphy:

• You cannot offer up publicly what you have not offered up personally.
• Every hit song you hear on the radio is not for your P&W team. 
• Every song that speaks to you personally is not necessarily what you should sing to the masses.
• The reason there's so much drama in the music ministry is because that's the same area where Satan began his downfall.
• We've got to speak things into existence. And I don't mean speak them in your head. Say them out loud. Profess and proclaim it to yourself and others.
• As the leader, you cannot allow discord and negative people to disrupt the entire team. Nip things in the bud by speaking to that person privately and telling them that they need to get it together or leave the Praise team.
• Be friendly with your P&W members and the audience/saints.

Seriously, y'all. It's hard to sum up how powerful, enlightening and refreshing this call was. It was truly anointed and you should join me on next months' call.  Every first Monday at 9 Eastern. Conference Call #. 559.726.1200. Follow the call on Twitter: @TheiLeadEscape

Impromptu

This Sunday, my praise team did something very different for us. We sang to a new track without rehearsing. Normally I wouldn't suggest this, but I thought we could handle this song because we've been singing it a Capella for years. It went pretty good, I'd say.

Guess I just got tired singing some of our regular songs and wanted to do something different. We will be having rehearsals soon and I'll keep you posted on how our new tracks go.

Happy Monday, Everyone!