The choir lead worship yesterday. I also picked several people to sing with me on mic’s. Kristie, soprano, Christine, alto, and Don, tenor. At Thursday’s rehearsal Don was coming down with something and couldn’t sing, but was there for our rehearsal thinking that he would be better by Sunday morning. Pat our lead guitar didn’t make it. He had called me last week and said that he couldn’t make it, but did have the music and was practicing and I said that would be fine, “See you Sunday morning”. Of course I completely forgot that and wondered for most of the rehearsal where Pat was. I gave him a call and he called back explaining all that I had forgotten which I promptly remembered.
That wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that I also had about 50 voices in the choir on risers waiting to sing all the congregational songs AND the Hallelujah Chorus. Yes, this was the Sunday that we traditionally sing the Hallelujah Chorus. And it’s not just the choir that sings, it, we also invite others from our congregation to sing with us (as long as they have sung it before). They can come to any of three rehearsals we have to practice with us, and then on Sunday morning come up and sing with us.
So let me recap Thursday night; Don’s sick, no guitar player and a lot of new people ready to sing, and I’m the leader of this group.
With no orchestra this year to back the Hallelujah Chorus up we had one piano and a synthesizer playing a string reduction part. It still sounded pretty full. But I did missed the low brass and the piccolo trumpet a lot though.
Sunday morning:
Pat’s there ready to play (yeah Pat), all the other instrumentalists show up, the choir is there, Kristie, Christine and …. and …. Don is not there. He’s still sick, and no Don means no tenor part. I get me, Kristie, Christine together and work out some parts for one of the songs and it sounds pretty good. For the other songs we will just go with melody and alto where there is an alto part.
How do I say this next part…. Let me see… bottom line, not everyone was prepared. We had a lot of people on stage which up’s the ratio of the probability of someone not being ready. During one song the modulation didn’t happen correctly. One song didn’t start correctly. In the Hallelujah Chorus we had an instrument drop out for a couple of measures. Only two instead of three parts, and that’s not Don’s fault. But I’m sure every worship leader can identify with this, that, this was not what we had in mind when we planned the service. In fact that was not in anyone’s mind. We all wanted to do our best. I truly love all our musicians, instrumental and vocal.
We want only the best for our Lord. What ever we do we want it to be the best we can. Excellence? Can you expect excellence when you have volunteer musicians who only have the music for one to two weeks, before time, practice with everyone (well almost everyone) once for about 3 hours? Excellence, probably not, but we want the best that can be done from everyone participating. I really do believe almost everyone in our worship arts ministry understands what it means to be a worship leader. And everyone in our ministry knows that they are all worship leaders.
So what do we do? You love, you talk to them, you encourage them. And you put this behind you. However, I think I might remember this for the future, to make sure that this happens less often.
This blog was going to be about me. No really, it was going to be about everything I had to do on Sunday. It was going to be about all the people I had to make sure were in the right spot at the right time. I was going to talk about how I had to make sure that while all this going on around me I still had to lead worship. I had to lead the musicians, lead the vocal team, lead the choir, lead the congregation, lead everyone…. Wow, was I ever wrong about that!
Sure we knew what mistake we made but God is still in control and hearts were touched by the Holy Spirit. He was there.
Thank you for being a forgiving and a merciful God.
