Worship Team ... To Stay Or Go.

The first Sunday in August, I joined the worship team at church (Link). Making that commitment was a huge thing for me as I do not make or take my commitments lightly.

For the last month, however, I have been re-evaluating whether the decision to join was the right one or whether I should find another place to serve within the church.

Time Commitment -- The rehearsal time required seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. On Thursday nights there have been a couple of times when I arrive home around 11 PM. By way of justification, the team leader has been incorporating new songs, which adds to the rehearsal time. But, most of the rehearsal time is used by the band. They spend a lot of time fine tuning rhythm or chords. Necessary for them, but unnecessary for me. I'm just a vocalist. And, my energy level has not been that great lately and is practically gone at that time of night.

Favoritism -- We have a lead singer, *John. There are three back up vocalists, *Sam, *Ron and me. Then we have a keyboardist who also attempts to sing, *Linda. The other player in this scenario is *Kelsey, the sound guy.

*For anonymity, all names have been changed.

Because Linda's primary function is keyboards, she often sings intermittently and doesn't always pay attention to tone. Which means that she often sings off key. She's an alto and stretches for notes that are out of her range and usually hits them flat. The sound guy, however, mixes her nearly as loud as the lead singer. Because of my perfectionist nature this has, in all honesty, bothered me some.

Last night, however, the sound guy approached the back up singers (except Linda) and told us that we needed to take note of how John works his microphone and when we get "hot" vocally, we need to pull our microphones away. Then he looked at me and said, "You know, when you hit your high notes, pull the mic away." I said, "I do ..." (remembering specifically that there were a couple of occasions I had the mic at least 12" away from my mouth last service.) He then extrapolated about how last week we were hitting some high notes and it just "overpowered the sound system." He went on to say that he would turn us up in our monitor so that we could hear ourselves better, but we have to help him by working our mics and then he would help us. I didn't say anything more, thinking maybe he was right. It struck me as odd, though, that he was complaining about the strength of my voice when just three weeks ago they switched my mic to a more sensitive one so they could hear me better.

Emotionally, as a performer, I felt deflated and unenthusiastic throughout rehearsal. (Note: Do not critique a performer BEFORE they perform.) I also feel unenthusiastic and trapped by thoughts of future rehearsals and performances. I love singing but not in an unfriendly environment.

That feeling was not improved by the many gremlins and bugs we encountered throughout rehearsal last night. Our monitors were not calibrated properly and all we could hear were instruments and even those sounded like they were in a tunnel. John kept messing up the songs because he was so distracted by the bad sound. Nothing Kelsey did was able to fix the problem. In fact, Kelsey seemed rather apathetic to our requests to turn down the instruments and turn up our vocals.

I prayed all through rehearsal, trying to figure out what was going on. Is this an ego issue for me? Maybe partly. But, then, I'm oversensitive to that possibility, because when I joined I was afraid that I would have ego problems by doing this.

As I left rehearsal last night, I drove home listening to the CD of last week's service. To my ear, there was no point that mine or Sam's vocals were overpowering or over modulated. In fact, it was one of the best mixes I've ever heard of our group. The one thing that WAS noteworthy is that Linda's vocals were tempered to about the same level as the rest of the background vocals and at some points, her vocals were drowned out.

Did I mention that Linda and Kelsey are married?

The Decision -- I realize that we are singing for God's glory. However, to be the best we can be, I really think we need to work as a team on our sound. That means that the mix of the vocals should be precise and unbiased. I believe Kelsey's critique was unfounded, unwarranted and based on a personal bias towards his wife.

I'm meeting with Sam this afternoon to provide him a copy of last week's service. If he feels the same as I do after listening to it, I think the next step is to talk to John about how we feel. If nothing is resolved, it will be back to the prayer board to determine if the worship team is the right place for me to serve.