In
26 years of ministry,
it's been my experience that there's always been some amount of
friction between musicians and the churches they serve.
Musicians are a special breed of people, with a special purpose
and calling [2 Chronicles 5]. They are utterly unlike any people
you know (unless they are also musicians). They don't think the
way regular folk do. They don't have the same interests or
appetites regular folks do. I know fairly few musicians who are
sports fans. I know fairly few musicians who go bowling or
particularly appreciate small talk (unless it is small talk
about music). Musicians eat, sleep, dream and breathe music.
Musicians will, likely, not want to come to your cookout but
will drive from here to eternity to hear (or, better, play
alongside)
other musicians. When a musician is in the church, sitting in
the congregation, he or she is, on some level, desiring to be
playing. It's inbred. It's what we do. The most basic advice I
can offer you for dealing with these people is for you to come
to terms with the fact They Are Not You. Just accept the notion
that you will, likely, never understand their perspective on
things. That they have their own unique view of the world, and
the church they go to is not the same church you go to because
their view of the world is just that different.
To be fair, and no offense to anybody,
musicians tend to be more practical and better informed than a
lot of lay people and even ministers. Musicians know Where To
Put The Flower Vase. Seriously, if you're not sure Where To Put
The Flower Vase, ask a musician. They know. Musicians tend to
see the world through the eyes of, well, a musician. They tend
to see things in 32 bars with a turnaround, and attend to
practical matters of the church in a less emotionally-driven way
than non-musicians, who see much of what goes on in the church
in the context of a larger tradition and in the fuzzy warmth of
childhood memories of This Is How We've Always Done It. Joy
Banks, Minister of Music at King Solomon Baptist Church, adds,
“Musicians are temperamental. It's because we're creative. We
are, in most cases, able to use both sides of the brain. There
have been studies done with children that show creative children
test smarter in some subjects. If you read music, it's similar
to reading a second language.”
Musicians like change. Musicians, one of the most oppressed
demographics in the Christian community, white or black or
otherwise, tend to appreciate the evolution of music and
technique and style, while a great many Christians prefer to
remain fixed at whatever point in time they stopped growing
emotionally: to 1965 or whatever fond yestertime they remember
as being the best years of their lives. This clash of
perspectives, often an extreme one, leads to friction and
misunderstanding between musicians and the church family, which
typically results in the musician fighting a losing battle to
move that large, gregarious plant from in front of his field of
vision. As a musician, I've come to accept defeat as a foregone
conclusion. My view of the church and its goals will be forever subject to the
will of people holding on to a time long gone, a moment in
space where they perhaps felt safe. Most of us musicians have
simply come to terms with the fact that, in the black
church, the piano will nearly always be fifty feet away from the
organ, and other unshakable truths of the black church.
If you really want to know what's on our minds, here's a few
fairly universal complaints from our side of the street as well
as a
few constants in church design and function that are uniformly
and consistently wrong. Things we do just because, well, that's
how things have always been done, like bright red carpet in the
sanctuary. Enough already with the bright red carpet. I know
your grandmamma had bright red carpet in her church, that
there's always been bright red carpet in the church, but,
seriously, enough with that. It's just wrong. Bright red carpet
quickly turns to dirty red carpet. It looks just terrible. It hurts your eyes and, to be even more
blunt, it makes God's house look tacky, if not like a house of
ill repute. The only reason, the only single reason, anyone ever
puts bright red carpet in a church is because that's the way
it's always been done. To all churches with bright red carpet,
I don't mean to offend anybody, but,
your church is facing backward. The church should face forward
and be forward-thinking, facing the future unafraid. More
important, a church should be more than just a place for you and
your buddies to hang out at. It should be a ministry, a vehicle
that reaches beyond your walls.
Pews, like bright red carpet, are an anachronism as well. They are expensive, heavy and impossible to move. They are wholly impractical for today's worship services, as their installation limits the uses and configuration of the main sanctuary to one purpose only. Chairs are much more practical. They are cheaper. They are easier to maintain, to replace and, certainly, to move around. They are typically more comfortable for the long haul than pews. You can re-configure your church for special events and special needs. Chairs seat more people because there is no wasted space, no hold-a-coat space, no too-small-for-me space. One chair equals one butt. But, as a musician and a minister, my main peeve list tends to deal more with music and sound in the church, with things that make a church inefficient and make a music director or music minister's job so much more difficult.
