WorshipCentral

Hello Mark.

I am not an adult, I am part of the youth.

In our church we have a youth band, which I am part of.

We have a youth service on the second Sunday of every month.

We bring in new songs a lot of the time (:

We rehearse each Monday 7-9

We practise many songs and figure out ways to make them ours

Although we keep the mains of the song.

I know this isn't really answerin your question, but I thought I would fill you in with the extra details ;)

Our main band who play each Sunday morning have a parctise each Wednesday 7-9 x

I am sorry if this has no help :L

ummm... we practice every thursday, 7-9. and get to church an hour before the service so we can have a quick run-through a few songs for about 30-40minutes.

to be honest, i get a bit annoyed at the fact that we don't use that many new songs, because a few members of the worship group don't go to events such as Spring Harvest and Soul Survivor. we do teach new songs to them, but we only use a few in Sunday services.

We have a practice monday evening from 8 until everything's covered - new songs, songs we haven't done in ages or different arrangements will generally take longer. If it's me then songs that the band know inside out will generally just get a run through to check everything's ok.

After that we generally meet half an hour before the service starts to run through any things that anyone's unsure of, or else just play for a bit as people come in :)

3 different services, 3 completely different styles of music, lol.

9.15am Service - More hyms etc, practice is on a thursday night at 6 till 7

11.00am Service - more modern stuff, practice on a weds, 7.30pm till 9

6.30pm(Encounter) - aimed at 18's-35's more youthy, practice at 4 on the sunday for 2 hours.

If we want to learn a bulk of new songs for any of the teams we generally use a whole saturday, 9-5 with lunch sorta thing. Can be quite tiring though.

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we normaly pratice on a tuesday 7-9, go through all the songs and get to church an hour early to do a quick run through, not sure what we will be doing as of september though as we will just start having 2 morning services

We have a group practice each Thursday night from 8 till 10 usually. With a 30min prep an hour before the services on Sunday.
We also set aside one of these practices each month to meet,pray and worship together as some members of the band play very often thereby missing the opportunity to worship in the congregation.

I am shocked :O

Our church has 5 different bands, so we only ever play about once (well one morning service) a month, we only ever practice 2 hours the monday before we play, and for 30-40 mins on the day just 2 get sound levels right.

I guess the reason everyone practices so regularly is because they play every week?
I would love to practice every week :D
Ant :D

I think that the more regularly you play, the less often you need to practice. If you are playing every week then the only reason to get together in the week to is to learn new songs (and introducing a new song in church every week is likely to annoy most of the congregation) and to just worship/chat/pray together/have a jam.

I think people can become too dependent on rehearsing and knowing songs inside out to the point where any kind of spontaneity or uncertainty during worship can become prohibitive rather than liberating.
We need to be competent musicians but we also need to be open to where the Spirit is leading every time we worship which may mean playing songs in an un-rehearsed way and playing totally different songs to those planned (which is why I disagree with planning your 'set-list' more than a few days in advance - what if your church has experienced a tragedy that week but the pre-planned set-list is full of joyful songs rather than those that express grief - and vice versa?)

Finally, playing and rehearsing 1-2 times a week is quite demanding, especially for people with families and/or busy jobs. It is easy to become 'worship-fatigued' and be in a place where we are just going through the motions rather than approaching each meeting/rehearsal with anticipation.

I am a member of the youth at my church but there is not a youth band that would like a sax/clarinet player in the eve anymore. So me & penny who sings joined the sunday mornings and we are now only rehearsing once a month for the following month and get all the music the singers do the singing i turn up with the music i have at home for both instruments and then decide which i am playing on what instrument and then just turn up each sunday morning and play them and then i also have time to transpose any new ones and play them at home

weekly for sunday evening, and monthly for sunday morning. we turn up an hour before the sunday morning service, and run through all the songs though