GOING FROM TRADITIONAL TO CONTEMPORARY

So you’ve taken that new job and you’re trying to figure out how to make some much needed transitions without causing yourself or your church unnecessary “bloodshed”.

I’ve been talking to some worship minister friends of mine who are either in this phase of ministry or about to experience it. During these conversations I’ve found myself telling the story of my very first worship mentor and decided to share it with the hopes that it can be helpful even to those of us in established ministries.

WATCHING IT DONE WELL

I was at a church in Oklahoma City during high school through college and during that time I had sung in the high school worship band and the adult choir and gotten to know the worship minister for “big service”. His name was Josh and he was in the Air Force and was working for the church part time. Once I was in college I began leading the high school worship team and had done so for a couple of years when the worship minister asked if I would be willing to do an internship that paid a little bit weekly. As part of my internship I continued to lead worship for the high school band as well as play keyboards and sing in the adult services.

Now at this time the worship wars of the 90’s were in full swing and raging across many churches. This unfortunate problem came from a tension to either embrace fully more traditional worship that included mainly hymnody and used piano and organ as instrumentation or choose contemporary worship that consisted of choruses and recently written songs and performed with a full rock band instrumentation.

Mainly there was an either/or approach where both sides tended to demonize each other and build arguments as to why their style and preferences were biblical and the only right way.

It was into this mix that I watched my mentor successfully transition the church into what many people called “blended worship” without any casualties or causing a church split.

KEY PRINCIPALS

Bridge The Gap (Find Common Ground)
There was a group of older men in the church that had a bluegrass circle that got together just for fun to play from time to time. One of the strange things that I have found is that while many of the older generation didn’t like drums in worship, they seemed to forget about them if they were part of a bluegrass band. Not only did he begin to sit in with them playing bass but was also able to invite a drummer to begin jamming with them. This was Josh’s inroad that helped him start the church worship transition. He found a style of music that was embraced by the large group of people who loved traditional worship and used it as a bridge to introduce common elements in contemporary worship.

Build Respect and Relationships
As they played their instruments, they also laughed and joked, had serious talks as well as prayed together. Over time they saw him more as friend than “paid staff”. Not only did he get to know them better personally, he also showed respect by playing their style of music and not showing contempt for it. As Josh built his relationships on the foundation of respect it not only strengthened his reputation with the guys he was playing with but with the larger community that those men were part of.

These two first steps were crucial to the process because they gave him credibility and trust beyond just his job title.

Incremental Change
Part of bridging the gap was bringing the drums into the bluegrass group who practiced on Sunday nights in the sanctuary. This was the visual cue of what to our church represented the Incremental Change that was starting to take place. The drums were used in rehearsal for months and stayed on the stage but weren’t played on Sunday morning. There were murmurings but no one could complain because they hadn’t been played yet. This is where the genius really becomes apparent.

The worship pastor built a relationship with a segment of people that had a stake in the traditional worship style and now it was time to expand that influence to the larger group. He asked the bluegrass band if they would mind doing a worship night once a month on a Sunday night that they dubbed “pickin and grinnin night”. It was a worship service that was all bluegrass with full band and old and young people alike hand clappin and singin.

Patience
I don’t remember exactly how many months they did this but I do remember that drum set sitting there on Sunday mornings not being played. To this day I’m amazed at the amount of Patience it takes to make a major transition like this. Now that Josh had built his bridge founded on respect and relationships of a large group of people, it was time to break the sacred barrier of Sunday Morning Services.

It was time for the Pickin and Grinnin band to do special music on Sunday morning, drums and all. At first it was just special music once a month. Because this group was respected by the congregation as well as had become familiar it didn’t seem weird for them to be doing special music. Imagine, an all traditional church with a full bluegrass band, singing, standing, clapping the very first time that drums had been played live on a Sunday morning. It was astounding to me. No complaints of the music being too loud or irreverent. Just people worshipping Jesus.

Josh scheduled the group more and more regularly until no one could remember when the drums had gotten on stage and people didn’t even take notice of them. From there he made the next step of using them on the intro song of the service. Then after that song was over, it was back to piano and organ. Again this pattern of just one song with drums and then back to normal was repeated for months.

For me, it felt excruciatingly slow but I can see now that he was slowly stretching people without breaking them. This pattern of unfamiliar to familiar repeated for over a year. But each intentional step eventually added two songs with drums, then three, until finally the whole set was done with a full band.

To this day, it is one of the most influential lessons in worship ministry I could have learned. For the sake of making this memorable, here are the bullet points:

Bridge The Gap

Respect and Relationships

Incremental Change

Patience

As for my own experience I would like to add one additional lesson that I have learned in my experience of helping to transition a church in it’s musical worship.

Continued Incremental Change

The moment you stop adapting with time is the moment you run the risk of creating a we’ve always done it this way or my preference is the only biblical way culture. The responses of the heart never change but style is fluid and if you’re not careful the generational riff can slowly widen if you settle on one style and stay there. Keep making small changes regularly. Introduce a song that’s just on the edge of what people are used to every three months. Switch up the order of service. When continued incremental change occurs, it’s easier to stay out of a rut and get stuck.

We can all learn from the “How To’s” and “How Not To’s” of worship transition. What would you add?