Creating Chemistry: The Obstacles

Chemistry is an important thing in any relationship. Especially when it comes to your band members in your church. You can never overestimate the power that is added to the music when the band gets along, works well together, and enjoys playing with each other.

I’ve discovered that this can a little more difficult to achieve at Crossroads. At Crossroads we have a list of musicians we use, and we hire them out, meaning we pay them. This is my first experience being in a church that hires musicians as opposed to having volunteers in the church play.

Now, you might be thinking, “Well that would be great. I’d love to be able to pay musicians. Maybe then we could have some real high quality music.” Yeah, I thought the same thing.

While the quality of the music might, and I stress MIGHT, be better, there are some things that come with paying musicians that I did not anticipate.

The main thing was creating chemistry between the band members.

Chemistry is something that I value very highly in ministry. But when you have a list of 10 different guitarist, 5 different drummers, 8 different worship leaders, 4 different backup singers, 4 bass players, and then you throw in the audio volunteers, well you have literally hundreds of different personnel combinations. Then you add in thee fact that your pastor wants a different worship leader every week. And you’re top 2 guitarists can only play every other week. And then you find out that all of your drummers are not available on the same week so you have to bring in someone you’ve never really heard before. And…

Ugh!

It’s enough to drive you absolutely insane.

So I feel it’s very difficult to get the chemistry that I would like to see between band members. Now, let me stress one very important thing…

Competence does NOT equal chemistry.

Just because you have a bunch of very talented musicians does mean that they will have chemistry. Chemistry doesn’t come from just being able to show up on time and play your parts correctly and with the right timing.

Chemistry is about each player knowing one another’s skills, being able to compliment each other, and knowing they don’t have to worry about the other playing their part in the band. They also need to learn how each other communicates, and how to properly communicate with to another band member.

Now do you see why chemistry is so hard to come by when you have so many different musicians? Having a lot of different musicians means you have a lot of different personalities. And let’s be honest, some personalities just don’t work well together, especially when you’re talking about musicians.

Ok, now that you know some of the obstacles having a lot of band members can create, tomorrow we’ll talk about some of the things we’re doing to try to get over those obstacles.