Small Churches – This One’s For You…

We recently started doing a Spanish Service at 12:45 (our 3rd service time).

It’s called “North Point En Espanol”, and the Service Programming Director is actually my sister-in-law, Kelly Moreton . She’s also going to be doing a Sunday recap for the NP en Espanol on her blog. Check out the first one HERE.

Here’s why I think it’s going to be a great resource for smaller churches… The Spanish service is currently running just over 100 people (it’s still new!) and is being held in our KidStuf Theater, which seats a few hundred – so the stage and room size is appropriate for the current size of the service.

And after seeing what direction they’ve opted to take the music and musicians, I couldn’t help but think how it resembles countless small church stages and bands.

But here’s the silver lining for a small church: what the Spanish Service was able to do (and will continue to, I’m sure) with the band set up and small stage was incredible! There weren’t any fancy sets or lights, no giant drum kit, and no cameras or fancy media.

Just a small group of very skilled musicians, playing to their full potential, according to what was appropriate for the songs and the service. The music and worship didn’t feel empty or lacking in any way – primarily based on wise song selection and excellent execution by skilled players.

Musically speaking, the difference was that Todd Fields on guitar and Richard Meeder on bass were really able to fill in the gaps – often playing a little or a lot more than they would in a larger band, but still very tasteful and, again, appropriate. Wayne Viar did a great job on a scaled down kit using blasticks – they cut the volume, but still allow groove and intensity. And Juan Martinez and Rebecca Iraheta sang and lead with authority.

Here are a few pics from rehearsal…

Sunday Summary – Music: October 26, 2008

We were faced with a decision this week that we have to make every now and again…

OK, first some back story: I’m sure I’ve mentioned over (and over) on how we plan our Sunday AM services to be 65 minutes – and NO longer than that.

There’s lots of reasons – turning around the parking lot for the next service, children’s environments, environments that occur between services (Starting Point, Next, etc.). LOTS of reasons.

It also makes it real easy to invite folks when you can prepare them on the length of the service and what to expect. Again, lots of different reasons.

So now and again, we’re faced with a 67 minute service ( Planning Center is a great tool for planning your services – service order, length of each element, etc.), and this was one of those weeks. We knew the length of Andy’s message because he had recorded it at Browns Bridge the week before – and it was a long one. About 3-4 minutes longer than usual. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s essentially the length of a song. We also had baptism and slightly lengthier Welcome talking about some stuff that was going on over the next few weeks.

So again, it’s all those little 30 seconds here and 60 seconds there that add up to us running over – and that ain’t good.

AND DON’T EVEN START with the “let the Holy Spirit lead” and “why short-change the worship experience?” talk, ’cause that’s all forgotten if the parking lot becomes grid lock. That’s when people forget they are Christians and stop showing love and start sharing the middle finger. Yeah – it happens…

Anyhoo – so our decision was to cut a worship tune (so from 3 down to 2), giving us a 63 minute plan, and take the extra minute or two for the Worship Leaders to really engage the crowd and get them involved in the songs. We also officially introduced a new tune this week that has been done in some other environments, and familiarized them with the chorus and explained the meaning behind the song.

Over the last 6-8 months we’ve really found that 2 songs with a little more WL engagement ends up being a more effective worship experience for the crowd versus cramming 3 songs back to back with little or no WL talking. It also frees up some time at the end of the song set to maybe do an extra scaled down chorus with just WL and acoustic – some very powerful, worshipful moments.

So here’s the lesson – quantity of songs is not what’s important. It’s the overall worship experience that counts. (Oh, but you all knew that, didn’t you )

WORSHIP:

All We Need (Charlie Hall tune – but you need to shorten the bridge to 12 bars instead of 16 or that instrumental section gets old fast)

Glory To God (new tune by Steve Fee and Vicky Beeching)

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East Band – Eddie Kirkland, Danny Howes, Brad Long, Richard Meeder, Scott Meeder, Jared Hamilton, Chelsea Brooks

West Band – “Señor” Seth Condrey, Danny Grady, Daryl Lecroy, Joe Lee, Earl South, Mike Bielenberg, Rebecca Iraheta

Spanish Service – Seth Condrey, Rebecca Iraheta, The North Point Music Multitrack Orchestra featuring Pro Tools 7.4.2 and the Digi 003R…

Alrighty, East Auditorium usually gets the love, so here’s a few snaps from the West Auditorium instead…

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What have you experienced lately where “less is more”?

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Calling all Spanish-Speaking Worship Leaders!!

OK, Funseekers – time to spread the word…

We’re starting a Spanish Service every Sunday in the West Auditorium at 12:45 PM, starting this October.

We, however, have one gigantic problemo:

We need Spanish speaking Worship Leaders, pronto!!

We’ve already got a great one to start us off, but we need more – at least 3 more guys. Right now we’re using guys (instead of girls) because we’ll be using North Point Music tracks, which are in guy keys.

So if you know anyone in the Southeastern US that is a great, effective Worship Leader that speaks / sings in Spanish – please let me know!!! We’d love to meet with them and see what happens…

Sunday Summary – Music: June 8, 2008

Bienvenido!

This was no ordinary Sunday. This was a marathon. And it started last Wednesday night.

Yesterday was the first of a three week pilot series for North Point en Espanol – a Spanish language service at North Point.

Here’s the short version:

We normally have 3 services in the East Auditorium (9:00, 11:00, 12:45), but only 2 services in the West. So the idea, at least for this pilot series, is for a traditional North Point style service to take place in the West Auditorium at 12:45 (the 3rd service time).

So how does that happen?

It started months ago with choosing an older series that Andy preached about a year ago and had it professionally overdubbed in L.A. And not some hack interpreter, but someone literally “acting” the voice of Andy – inflections, pauses, idiosyncrasies. Just imagine Andy speaking Spanish, plus a little extra “machismo”…

It also started with a grassroots base of Latinos and Spanish speaking folks within the church to partner with Host Team to be greeters, information tables, etc.

As for the music, we did the same worship songs as the first two English services – but in Spanish! How’s that for a brain twist!

Casey Darnell led the English, and newbie Duane Nisley led the Spanish, while Rosie Iraheta sang BGV for BOTH languages! Rehearsals were almost comical, as the band just played the same worship tunes over and over as we rehearsed both languages.

Throw in a closer for the English services AND a different closer for the Spanish, and you’ve got one crazy week on your hands.

In all, everyone was a real trooper, enduring long rehearsals on Wednesday night and Sunday morning as we all adjusted to the learning curve.

We learned a lot from week 1 of the Spanish pilot, and have since adjusted rehearsal schedules, call times, off-stage production personnel, Host Team strategies – you name it.

Fortunately, due to our typical over-preparation and trying to solve every little problem before it happens, the needed tweaks and adjustments are minor. So that’s good news.

It’s great to be surrounded with other folks that agree that foresee and fix issues even before they happen.

WORSHIP:

East – Todd Fields

West English – Casey Darnell

West Spansih – Duane Nisley

- Salvation’s Chorus

- Mighty To Save

- How Great Is Our God

- How He Loves (English closer) **also be sure to check out THIS version!!!!!

- My Savior My God (Spanish closer)

We’re revisiting a few older, more familiar tunes over these 3 weeks to aid the Spanish service – doing a few songs that have already been translated (to cut down the translation workload) and that our Spanish Worship Leaders Duane and Seth are already comfortable with – again, to reduce the learning curve for them.

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East Band – Todd Fields, Ashley Appling, Pat Malone, Steve Thomason, Danny Grady, Chris Arias, Jen Carrozza.

Yep – a band so good so good, it’ll make you slap yo mamma…

West Band – Casey Darnell, Duane Nisley, Scott Meeder, Richard Meeder, Bill DeLoach, Mike Hines, Jeremy Moyers, Rosie Iraheta

Yep – a rhythm section so good, it’ll make yo mamma slap you back…

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POD X3 LIVE count: 5

All 4 electrics plus Todd’s acoustic.

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What challenged YOU this week?

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