irish_admiral
From Cardiff Vineyard
Hey all...
Just wondered if - with the popularity of some bands like Mumford & Sons, Fleet Foxes, Mutemath etc - whether anyone had tried going a bit more folksy in their worship set style and incorporating ukuleles or similar to band setups?
Or am I just being led astray by little 4 string gitfiddles?
We've tried it. It was fun. It worked on some songs, it's required new arrangements to the songs. We found that doing the songs like the record in a 'mumford' style actually only made it sound dated. Plenty of energy helps. It also worked more in our evening service than our morning - not sure about the relevance of that.
quite a bit. some songs really lend themselves to it.
Robin Mark songs usually work, and we do when I survey to the tune "the water is wide" which has a lovely folk vibe
I led with bouzouki for about 6 months after taking the top off my left middle finger. only 4 courses of strings meant that the chords were easier to fret with only 3 available fingers!
How's it been received by the congregation & pastors? Was it something pre-arranged, or did you just go for it for a bit?
we just do our own thing.
couple of weeks ago we did "lord I lift your name on high" in the style of the Steve Miller band....
got a great groove going!!!
we just like to have fun I guess!
We've done more acoustic type services with percussion instead of drums and acoustic guitars but nobody (to our knowledge) plays banjo, mandolin, violin etc. So (and nearly approaching a point) we tend to pool styles from the people who play. So if you have folksy people use them.
I personally think that if one or a band try to cop a style then it comes across as insincere. For example a few years ago we had a lot of Gospel players and singers and we naturally tended towards that style with some of us faking it. Now we are more rock orientated (and possibly heading more acoustic).
At London School of Theology chapel a few weeks ago we had a harpist, a guy who plays banjo/accordion/uke, and I played guitar and a kick drum. So musically it was a mix of Mumford and Florence - we did 'Over all the earth' and 'All I have' from RESOUNDworship.org, both in a Mumford dum-chick style; great fun!
But we also wanted some genuine expressions of folky faith, so we structured the whole service around the Northumbria Community Morning Prayer (you can get it from their website), and also used two songs from the Iona Community, a Taize song, and some Celtic hymns. The style sprang from the musicians we had, but it facilitated a deep and reflective time of worship.
I'd definitely encourage people to branch out into other styles - it makes you re think what you're doing, and allows you to use musicians and draw in congregants that wouldn't normally connect with the 'default' style.
We have been doing it for around a year on and off. Some times it really works, but it depends on your songs. I think because the church as a whole isn't exactly the quickest of the mark when it comes to change, I've found that if you do songs that are very familiar and whether the rhythm of the melody doesn't change even if the rhythm of the instruments does, it works well.
We did the whole set a couple of weeks ago in the style of Laura Marling/Mumford & Sons and 'Praise Him You Heavens' in particular works really well. A lot of people connected with God through it as it breathed fresh life into songs.
We've also done a set of funk/soul and came up with an arrangement of 'Our God' which was funk-tastic!
At St Thomas Crookes, part of our vision for worship is to have Music on Mission. We get quite a few guests walking through our doors, so we want our music to draw them into worship because it is familiar to them stylistically, yet rich theologically.
This discussion makes me think about why trying new musical styles in regular church services might be a good or bad idea. I guess the bigger question is does it serve our congregation to change up the music stylistically?
Nicklawmusic said "We've also done a set of funk/soul and came up with an arrangement of 'Our God' which was funk-tastic!" Thats nice and it was probably fun for the band to do something different, but was it more distracting than engaging for the congregation?
I can see purpose in rearranging a song to make it lift to new heights, or soften to invite more intimacy, but I have to ask, what is the purpose you're trying to achieve by introducing a new genre to your congregation. My position may come across a little conservatively, but in reality I want to see the church minister in culturally relevant ways to all cultures. Perhaps if you have a passion for folk music, the body of Christ would best be served if you worked with your church leadership to start a more alternative styled service. Thoughts?
We've done some songs in alternate styles and it's always worked well, although I wouldn't want to do everything differently all the time.
We've done a folk style Christingle service (Mumford-style arrangements of Joy To The World, Go Tell It On The Mountain and Hark The Herald), an 80's hair metal arrangement of 'Salvation Belongs To Our God', a caribbean/reggae jam version of 'Yesterday, Today and Forever' (which was a LOT of fun :D) and a remix of 'Saviour Of The World' (SOTW tune over the intro chords to 'Scarred' by Dream Theater).
These were all good fresh expressions of worship, but I can see that it makes sense (for my church at least) to stick with the U2/Coldplay style that most people are comfortable with for the main part.
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nope it works amazingly well we do worship in one setting with bodhran (celtic drum) irish whistles and mandolin/violin and acoustic guitars... absolutely fantastic times playing and worshiping together. Go for it so long as you have good musicians it will be a blast! We all just turn up with our instruments and all pitch in taking turns leading and stuff. (most people do play by ear which is a valuable skill with this type of worship set up!)