worship (re:Dan Dean)

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>>>>> "Ray" == Ray Harrell <harrell@execpc.com> writes:

    Ray> Yes it does, and I can witness to poorly played music. Not
    Ray> only is God not glorified, but it ruins the song, and
    Ray> destroys the mood and flow of the spirit. Our older musicians
    Ray> are not the best, but they are the main musicians (pray for
    Ray> us). I can count on one hand the number of services that they
    Ray> have played in sync and everything has gone perfectly. More
    Ray> often than not, the drummer will get off beat in the height
    Ray> of the service, and things will just crumble from there. Our
    Ray> previous choir director had considered singing all A Capella
    Ray> songs because our musicians were so pathetic.

We have some pretty good musicians, but on Easter Sunday, the day we
moved into a new building (we rent -- we are a home missions church),
we discovered to our dismay that our entire sound system had been
stolen!  The sanctuary we are using is in a Lutheran church, and they
have a little Bogen tube-type PA from somewhere back in the early
1960s, and it is pretty pathetic, but thats all we've got in there.
Our pastor got permission for us to use their main sanctuary on Sunday
afternoons for our service then, and we still use the old sanctuary
for mid-week Bible study.

The main sanctuary has a pipe organ, which is not really suitable for
our style of music, and the accoustics of that hall were designed to
provide *PLENTY* of natural reverb to enhance the classical pipe organ
sound.  Unfortunately, I don't think NSA crypto gear could scramble
the sound of our worship music any more than this big echo chamber
does.  To top it off, the "sound reinforcement system" there is an
Electro-Voice unit that was designed to provide a mild boost to
acapella classsical choir music and to the spoken voice of the
preacher, and that is all it was made to do.  It has a big mid-range
horn hanging from the ceiling, poorly disguised with grill cloth.  It
sounds like a reject from a little league baseball field.

The net result of all this is that our music sounds fair in the old
sanctuary because the room accoustics are not so awful, but in the big
sanctuary, the musicians cannot even hear each other.  I must look at
my wife's mouth to even tell if I am on beat, because I cannot hear
her.  Forget trying to hear if you are in the right key.  If you don't
communicate the key before the song starts, and watch carefully for
modulation hand signals, then we wind up playing 12-tone music instead
of gospel harmony :-\

The drummer can only hear the drummer, and he must sit behind the
other musicians, so all he can do is watch the mouths of people in the
congregation to try and stay on beat.  When I play piano, it can only
be heard if no other instruments play except for singers.  When I play
the synth (the Hammond C3 with the Leslie is in the smaller sanctuary
-- no place to put it in the big one, and its too heavy to move every
service), I play thru a tinny little guitar amplifier, and frequently
cannot hear myself.

We have been talking for a couple of months now about getting a new
and good sound system, but last Thursday evening, we heard that there
might finally be a peice of property about to become available so we
could have our own building and do it right.

I don't mean to sound like I am making excuses.  My wife is an
excellent singer, and as one old saint put it years ago, "You can hear
the Holy Ghost when she sings."  I am a decent keyboard player, and I
also play baritone sax.  We have an excellent guitarist who also leads
song service frequently.  We have two good drummers who trade off so
they each have a chance to work at the altar.  Our bass player is
good.  We can stay together and sound good, if only we can hear and
see each other.  

In a building of our own, we could set up the instruments and sound
system and arrange the platform so everyone could see each other.  We
could leave it this way so it way always ready to go.  Right now, we
spend 45 minutes setting up before each service, and another 30
minutes tearing down and hauling all the stuff down the stairs into
the storage closet in the basement.

Pray for our church that the Lord will make a building a possibility
for us soon.  Thank you!

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
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Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
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